“Oh, Otto. There’s so much you don’t know. The way I used our sweet Nicholas to get to you, the way I tortured him andthreatened you to make sure he didn’t help.” Her words were like little needles prickling along my skin.
Lies. They had to be lies, but…
“He helped you.”
“Oh, he certainly did. By sheer accident, he led me to you. And then I made sure he watched every day while I hurt you. But…” Her gaze swung back to London. “He’s a little snake, isn’t he? He waited until I thought he was over his little infatuation with you and he killed me.”
None of it was making sense. He’d killed her?
She’d tortured him?
He’d…
Fuck, I could remember the way Nikki was in the room every time. The way he never took his eyes off me, even if he never helped.“Look at me, Otto.”He’d said it before I’d died, like he wanted me toseesomething.
“What do you know?”
“Everything.” She held up the book again, and I suddenly got it. “All the answers are right here in his journal. Don’t you want to know what really happened, Otto?”
My eyes focused on the book. It really was the only way I would ever know—the answers were trapped in her head, in her hands. I couldn’t get them from London because losing him would be worse than never knowing.
But Elizabeth…
“What do you want?”
Her eyes flicked from my face to London in my arms. “Him. Come on, Otto. I know what your body wants to do. I know what your instincts demand. I want to see him suffer the same way he watched you suffer, the same way he mademesuffer. I want revenge.” She smiled again, and the warmth of it made my stomach turn. “In a way, you were more my son than he ever was, and I just didn’t know it. Come on…” She took a few stepsback, carefully keeping the gun trained on us as she went. “We can both win this game.”
If she’d actually read the journal, if what she was saying was true and Nikki had nothing to do with killing me… how could she think this was still a game? If she realized I was with London, if she realized I’d protected him…
How could she think this was something she could win?
Still, when she took a few more steps back and I realized she was making her way to a lit fireplace, something in my chest squeezed tight.
“Why don’t you let him go? Tell him to walk over here, or all the answers are going to go up in smoke.” Elizabeth turned the book in her hand, half gesturing toward the flames.
How many lifetimes had I hunted Nikki down for these answers—how many people had I killed trying to understand what had happened to me, to fill up the hole it had left torn in my soul?
Everything I’d wanted was between those pages.
At least… everything I’d wanted before.
Now…
“Don’t.” London’s voice was a soft, desperate sound, and he pushed away from me in a quick motion. The blood on his hands, slicking his arms, made it easier for him to slide out of my grip, and the gun Elizabeth held swung in his direction. “Don’t… don’t. I’ll do whatever you want. Just… fuck. Stop hurting him. You’ve done that enough, haven’t you?”
“We’ve both hurt him, don’t you think, Nicholas?” The sound of her calling him that made my head spin. I’d done it when we’d first met… but that felt like another life. Everything was a jumbled mess with her standing here, impossible and almost inevitable.
It almost felt like it had to come to this moment, like it had to circle back around to where it had ended…
“I’ll give you whatever you want. Just put down the book.”
London’s eyes weren’t on the book, though—they were on the gun that had swung from my head to his, and I realized exactly what he was doing. He’d killed a man for me, and now it seemed like he was willing to sacrifice himself to make sure I was out of harm’s way. It’s what we’d both been doing… trying to step in front of the other.
“London.” My voice was soft, careful. If she was telling the truth, and he’d never betrayed me in any life… then how it was before was still true. “Stay with me,” I whispered. He’d asked me the same thing before… and I needed him to give me the same answer now that I’d given then.
We were better together than alone—I trusted him to stand beside me.
“Of course,” he answered, and his eyes tore from the monster in front of us to swing back to me. “In every life.”
