He tries to walk, but the bullet in his leg is making that a little hard for him.
"Please—"
He stops when I bring the gun up to him again, and this time I smile listening to him beg.
Begging.
Something moves through me that I don't try to contain.
“She begged in the bathroom. She begged you to stop and you didn't stop.” I tilt my head to the side a little, as he watches me, but I see the fear in him. “And then you threatened her to lie, to save yourself, she’ll never beg people like you again ever.”
Olivia Banks spent years on her knees in front of people like Leo Holt.
“Then you came to college and thought I would forget what you did to me. You thought I would forget the nights behindbars, for something I never did.” I take another step closer to him. “I never forgot, I planned, I planned for this very moment.”
I want to hear the word. I want the last sound out of his mouth to be that one single word, that small brokenplease, because she said it too and nobody gave it back to her and he’s going to know what that feels like for every second I decide to let him stand here.
“Pl…ease.” The word stutters, and it makes me smile.
I let him say it a third time.
Then I raise the gun.
He squeezes his eyes shut. His hands are trembling now, the please dying on his lips, and I look at him over the sight and I feel completely, entirely clear.
He has always been so small.
I pull the trigger.
The sound disappears into the silencer.
Leo Holt goes down and I stand over him in the silence that follows, my gun still raised, and I breathe once. Then again.
Lowering the gun, I stand in the apartment for a moment longer.
I don’t feel relief. Just the absence of something that has occupied space for so long it stopped feeling like a presence and started feeling like weather; constant, atmospheric, and just the condition of being alive.
It's gone now.
Leo Holt is gone. The notes are gone. The calls to his father, the pattern on the road, the version of my life that started unraveling the night he decided Olivia was something he could hurt and get rid of.
He’s gone.
All of it.
I turn around and walk out of the door, down the corridor, down the stairwell and out through the side entrance into the cold night air and I don't look back.
It's done.
That was always the only thing that mattered.
Thirty-Seven
Olivia
The womanon the phone has a kind voice and a long list of numbers. I’m standing in the kitchen writing the numbers down on the back of an envelope because I can't find anything else and my hand is shaking slightly, making the pen skip.
I knew this day was coming, the day I had to find out how much the hospital bill was going to cost me. As the numbers escape her mouth, I’m trying everything not to throw up, because I’m going to be in debt for the rest of my life.
