Nate waits, then says, “Thought so. You paying rent on that place? Because if not, the lease is signed by a ‘J. Ashton,’ but the credit check is linked to your AMEX.”
My hand tightens on the mug. Knuckles go white, the familiar itch in the shoulder where the tendon’s never healed right.
He keeps going, filling the silence like it’s a contest. “Device is a MacBook, old model. User logs in as ‘jean-baby.’ I’m assuming it’s a “she” at this point. Not a lot of security. I sent you the full dump, but here’s the interesting bit—she didn’t just upload the files. She edited them. The deepfake app is basic, off-the-shelf, but the source material came from a university IP, and it matches a raw vid uploaded from somewhere near you in the Minneapolis area.”
I want to ask how he knows all this, but I don’t. Nate lives for this shit. The lower the stakes, the more he cares. But this time it’s personal, and he knows it.
“Who helped her?” I say, voice flat.
“No one,” Nate says, and for the first time he sounds a little respectful. “She’s running solo. I think she was pissed off. A lot of angry Google searches, a lot of time on revenge sites. Classic scorched earth. It’s not even about the victim, honestly—it’s about the abuser.”
I set the mug down, hard enough to chip the bottom.
Nate takes the cue and winds down. “You want me to burn this Jean baby chick? I can do it. Or you can handle it yourself. Your call.”
I look up at the ceiling, the molding traced with perfect lines, the faintest whisper of a cobweb in the corner. Then I look at the phone.
“I’ll handle it,” I say.
He gives a low, impressed whistle. “Didn’t take you for the vengeful type, but all right.”
I don’t answer. The line goes quiet.
Nate finally says, “I hope you find the motherfucker who did this.”
I hang up without a word.
The quiet that settles over the study is so total it hurts. The light from the desk lamp has gone sullen and low, flickering at the edge of brownout. My eyes go flat. I see the chain of events, every link laid bare: the Sigma party, the raw footage, the stepdaughter I rescued, the ex-wife I failed to break. The woman who needed to hurt me so bad that she’d torch her own blood just to leave a scar.
I’m not angry. I’m not even surprised. The only thing that surprises me is how cold I feel, right down to the center.
I sit there a while, watching the light in the room fade to a colorless gray, feeling the edge of the world close in. I don’t move. I don’t let myself move. I just count the seconds as the room gets darker and darker.
In the end, it’s not the pain that gets me. It’s the weight. It’s always the weight.
When I finally get up, my legs are stiff, my jaw locked so hard it clicks. I grab the frame from the shelf and turn it back up, the picture of Jeannine glaring through the glass like a warning.
I leave the study, phone in hand, ready for the next move.
Because the only thing worse than a mother who wants to destroy her daughter?—
—is a man who’ll do anything to save her.
22
MY PERPETRATOR SHOWS HER FACE
MARY KATE
It’s been two days since I discovered the videos, and I haven’t been able to sleep. I haven’t been to class. I’ve ignored all calls and messages from friends because my reality is too brutal, too painful, at the moment. But now, we’re coming to the culmination. My heart pounds at a thousand miles an hour as I stare out the mansion’s window. The afternoon light is white and flat, the sky behind the windows blued out and hard as a screen. It’s just me and the clock and the ache in my legs from pacing, nothing else moving in the entire front parlor. I walk the perimeter, past the double-height windows and the echoing marble, my bare feet whispering on the stone. The hem of my sweater is balled tight in my fists, sleeves shoved up so I can keep digging nails into my palm.
The only sound is the grandfather clock by the door: tick, tick, tick, every second slamming down like a gavel. I wish I could kill it, but I’m afraid of what the silence would reveal. The cold here has a kind of personality—clinical, omniscient, always watching.
Across the room, Kent is a study in negative space. He stands with his arms crossed over his massive chest and his jaw locked,framed by the vacant hearth. He doesn’t speak, but his attention burns—follows me like a sniper’s dot, always a step ahead of where I’ll be next.
I turn at the edge of the rug and walk back, trying to pretend I don’t feel him tracking my every move.
“You’re wearing a hole in the floor, sweetheart,” he says at last, voice low and dry.
