Chapter 4

So she had known all along.

Hidden inside the old music box was the cargo-hold inspection sheet from before the cruise ship caught fire.

The defective batteries Curtis had sourced were where the fire began.

Before Seraphina vanished, she'd slipped that sheet into the music box and entrusted it to Jill for safekeeping.

What Curtis wanted had never just been the trust. It was that one piece of paper that could put him in prison.

I'd seen the false bottom of that music box once, while helping Jill sort through her old things.

The paper had gotten damp, so I gave it to Elaine Fox for archival restoration.

Before the power cut out, Jill wrote Curtis's name for the first time in her lucid-day log.

Only then did I have Elaine hand the original over to the police.

Curtis flew into a rage and clamped both hands around my throat.

「Where is it?」

「With the police.」

A shrill siren rose outside the window.

Curtis's men broke into chaos.

Chair and all, Rex slammed backward into the kidnapper behind him and fought the knife out of his grip.

Someone lunged at him from the side with a blade.

I didn't have time to think. I threw myself in front of it on instinct.

When the knife drove hard into my lower back, it didn't hurt the way I'd imagined.

I just couldn't stay standing.

Rex caught me, his hands shaking beyond control.

「Gwendolen.」

Leaning against his chest, I saw him cry for the first time.

Not because Seraphina had disappeared, not because Jill had collapsed.

Because of me.

The knowledge only left me tired.

「Rex.」

His tears fell on my face.

「I'm here.」

「Don't take me to your family's hospital.」

He held me tight.

「I won't. You're going to be fine.」

I wanted to say more, but everything went black.

When I woke again, there were no city lights outside the window.

Elaine sat at the side of the bed.

She was Jill's attending physician, and the first person to oppose the stand-in therapy.

「The knife nicked a blood vessel. The surgery's done.」

I flexed my stiff fingers.

「Where's Rex?」

「Out looking for you.」

Elaine handed me a phone.

In the news, a transfer ambulance had caught fire under the overpass.

The police statement said a female patient had gone missing, with a large amount of blood and my personal belongings found at the scene.

Curtis's men had slipped into the hospital and tried to silence me during the transfer.

The police had swapped vehicles ahead of time and gotten me into a protected ward. The one that actually burned was empty.

「The task force can protect you, but you have to change your identity.」

「No one in the Delgado family can know you're alive.」

I looked at the screen.

Rex stood beside the burned-out ambulance, his white shirt soaked in blood.

He was tearing at the charred door with his bare hands, palms scorched raw and bloody, and he didn't stop.

If I'd seen this three years ago, I probably would have forgiven him his coldness.

But now, all I felt was how absurd it was.

While I was alive, he treated me like a contract he could renew whenever he pleased.

It took my death for him to admit it hurt.

Elaine watched me.

「Have you decided?」

I closed my eyes.

「I have.」

That day, a new name went into the witness protection files.

Anna Sutton.

Gwendolen Swanson was listed as missing in the kidnapping case.

Three months later, she was confirmed dead in that transfer accident.

I left no note.

I only asked Elaine to pass Rex one line.

「The last knife Gwendolen took for him settled the debt of these three years of loving him.」