40. Anonymous

40

ANONYMOUS

S he doesn’t scream. I’ll give her that much. The wine glass in her hand shatters against the floor, dark red spreading across the pale wood like a crime scene. Her eyes stay locked on me—wide, disbelieving. Terrified, yes, but not of me. Not yet.

“What the fuck!” she says, her posture fragile, as though the air itself might collapse around her if she moves too quickly. “You were supposed to be?—”

“Dead.” I cut her off. “Yeah, well, surprise.”

Her hands shake, but she doesn’t move. Doesn’t run. Smart. That’s always been her: the kind of woman who freezes when the world starts crumbling. Just long enough to think. Just long enough to fight back. But tonight, she’s not fighting. Not yet.

“I need you to sit down,” I say, stepping closer. “We need to talk.”

“I can’t imagine what we’d have to talk about.” Her voice hardens, but her body betrays her—feet inching backward, calculating, weighing her odds. She knows I have every reason to kill her. She knows what she’s done. I know what she’s done. But that’s not what she’s really afraid of. It’s that soon everyone else is going to know, too.

“Charlotte,” I say, handing her a fresh glass of wine. “Sit down.”

She doesn’t move, but her eyes narrow. The fire’s coming back. Good. I want her angry. Anger is easier to deal with than fear. Anger is useful. Anger will cause her to slip up.

Her lips part, but no words come out. The silence between us stretches, taut and brittle, like a rope pulled too tight. Neither of us wants to be the first to let go.

“I need you to listen,” I continue, moving forward cautiously, like approaching a wounded animal. “Because I don’t have time to ease you into this, and frankly, neither do you.”

She stiffens. “I don’t want to hear a damn thing you have to say.”

“Actually, you do.”

“Actually, I don’t. You used me. Lied to me. Manipulated me.”

I exhale slowly, my words hanging in the air like smoke. “Maybe. But not in the way you think.”

I can see the wheels turning. She’s replaying every moment of the last three years of her life. Starting with the one where she first believed I was dead. “You were in the van,” she says, her voice wavering. “I saw?—”

“You saw what you were supposed to see,” I interrupt, my voice steady, deliberate. “You saw what I wanted you to see.”

Her breath hitches, and for a split second, I can almost see her unraveling. Then the mask slips back into place. “This is really not what I was expecting.”

I glance around the interior of the boat, contemplating the mess she’s made of everything. “Tell me about it.”

Always one to move quickly, she’s shifted from disbelief to Oh, fuck.

“So what now?”

I’ll never understand why it takes so long for her to come back around to reason. “Now, you sit down.”

“None of this makes any sense,” she says, but finally, she takes a seat.

“It would if you’d shut up and listen.”

She gives me that signature death stare, the one I’m very familiar with, and I have to say I’ve missed it. “J.C. Clements. J.C. Warren—that was his real name.”

“I’m aware.”

“Well, that was just the first lie he fed you. There were more. A lot more.”

“You act like this is news to me. He abducted and tortured me. I didn’t figure honesty was his best quality.”

“It is going to be news to you, Charlotte. All the ‘evidence’ you never bothered to question, because it confirmed what you wanted to believe—that should definitely have been news to you.”

I let the weight of what I’ve said settle between us.

Her eyes narrow, and I can almost hear the cogs turning behind them. But there’s no hiding from the truth. Not now.

“You’re saying Warren lied about everything?” she asks, her voice a mix of disbelief and something darker.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m saying you fell right into his hands.”

Her expression falters, the ground beneath her shifting. I know it’s hitting her, slowly, piece by piece. But it’s not enough yet. It’s not enough to make her see everything.

“You’ve been played, Charlotte.”

“You’re lying.” She gulps down half of the wine in her glass. “You?—”