Chapter 4

4: 4

Because a body had turned up in the basement, they hauled me back to the precinct for questioning.

Kyros Capital's legal team arrived and bailed me out on grounds of insufficient evidence.

But the moment I stepped out of the precinct, notice from the board reached me.

Three directors had jointly moved for a mandatory psychiatric evaluation.

Some of the accounts under my name were frozen too, on suspicion of insider trading.

Raymond didn't just want to silence me. He wanted to swallow Kyros Capital whole.

That night I didn't go home. I slipped into the Farley villa alone.

I went in through a side door with cameras on purpose, and let a bodyguard find me in a third-floor guest room on purpose.

Raymond didn't call the police, just as I'd expected.

He locked me in the room Elise used to live in.

The false Elise came in carrying a bowl of calming broth.

"Vanessa, why are you back again?"

She set the bowl on the nightstand.

"Raymond already promised me. As long as you agree to treatment, he won't hurt you."

"He's stripped me down to nothing, and you're still speaking up for him?"

I let the exhaustion and pain show on my face.

"Elise, when did we become like this?"

The false Elise sat down beside me.

"From the moment you refused to accept that I'd grown up."

"Is that so?"

I looked at her.

"Then do you still remember what the old director left us as a dowry, right before she died?"

She paused a few seconds, then drew a jade peace-clasp pendant from her collar.

"Of course I remember. A pair of peace-clasp pendants."

"You're wrong."

"The old director was so poor she couldn't even afford painkillers. Where would she get jade?"

I tore the pendant off her neck and smashed it hard against the floor.

"What she gave us were two plastic hairpins from a dollar store."

The expression froze on the false Elise's face.

"Elise kept hers in a tin box. For more than ten years she couldn't bear to wear it."

I pressed closer.

"You read her memories, but you'll never understand why a two-dollar thing could be worth more than jade."

"Because you never went hungry with her, never picked through trash with her, never carried her ten kilometers down a mountain road when her heart gave out."

"And you were never in that fire, listening to her tell me over and over, Vanessa, you can't fall asleep."

The tenderness in the false Elise's eyes drained away, bit by bit.

"You think you understand her?"

Her voice turned old and hoarse all at once.

"It wasn't your name she called out before she died."

My heart felt like a knife had gone into it.

"What did you say?"

"She kept calling for Raymond."

The false Elise leaned in close to my face.

"She begged Raymond to let her go, begged him for the sake of what they'd been to each other, to give her a quick end."

"As for you, she said only one thing."

"Don't let Vanessa know."

My tears spilled before I could stop them.

That really was something Elise would say.

The false Elise began to laugh.

"But look at you now. The one she gave her life to protect, and we dragged her in anyway."

I lifted a hand and wiped the tears away.

"Thank you for telling me."

"What?"

"Thank you for letting me know she was protecting me right up to the last second."

The Primordial Gold Thread shot out from my sleeve and wound around her wrist.

She let out a shrill, agonized scream.

Black blood seeped from the edges of her skin, and dense lines of stitching surfaced across her face.

I pulled the thread taut.

"You don't deserve to wear her face."

The door crashed open.

Raymond stood outside with his bodyguards.

"I knew all along you got caught on purpose."

He raised a pistol and aimed it at my chest.

"Vanessa, you really are harder to handle than Elise."

"At least she couldn't bring herself to be truly cruel to me. You've never had a heart at all."

"My heart, I gave all of it to her."

I looked at him.

"What's left is only enough to kill you."