Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Get out." I ended the call.

Jared walked in and took my phone.

He glanced at the call log. There was only one name in it: Jared. The darkness in his face vanished, replaced by a strange, smug satisfaction.

"I knew you couldn't let me go. All this spooky nonsense is just to get my attention, isn't it?"

He tossed the phone onto the bed, pulled up a chair, opened the first-aid kit, and started picking the glass out of my hands with tweezers.

His touch was almost gentle.

"Chloe's just a naive girl who hasn't seen much of the world. She wanted to learn something, so she tried a few home remedies. You're the one who sponsored her. Be the bigger person. Don't hold it against her."

He looked up at me, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. "Go get Leo tomorrow and bring him home. Chloe can keep treating him."

So he still thought Leo was alive.

To him, Leo was probably just a toy I'd hidden somewhere.

"Leo is dead." I looked at him and said each word slowly. "He was killed by the poison you poured down his throat with your own hands."

The tweezers stopped. His face darkened. He stood up and looked down at me like I was a lost cause. "Aurelia, you're hopeless."

He slammed the first-aid kit shut and walked out without looking back.

The next morning, as soon as I came downstairs, I heard Jared on the balcony, shouting into his phone.

"What do you mean you can't take it down? Who told you to post that?"

The PR manager on the other end sounded close to tears. "Sir, it was posted from your personal account... You scheduled it yourself, with top-level permissions. We can't delete it..."

One corner of my mouth twitched. I wanted to laugh, but I couldn't.

It was the Jared from three years ago.

He was using this man's account to get back at him for me.

Jared hung up, stormed into the bedroom, and hauled me up off the floor. "Aurelia, are you insane? Exposing Chloe's private life online? Are you trying to drive her to kill herself?"

"It wasn't me."

"Then who was it?" he snarled. "Tomorrow I'm bringing in a reporter from the New York Times. You'll tell them, to their faces, that you made it all up during a psychotic episode. Then you'll apologize to Chloe."

I looked at him and said nothing.

He bent down close to my ear, his voice low and cold. "Say no, and I'll petition the court today to have a judge declare you severely mentally ill. You'll never see Leo again for the rest of your life. Alive or dead."

The blood in my veins turned to ice.

He knew exactly where to stab to make it hurt most.

Seeing me shake, Jared gave a satisfied little grunt.

His phone rang. He glanced at the screen, and his voice went soft at once. "Chloe? Don't cry. I'm on my way."

He left me there on the floor like a bag of trash.

I crawled over, picked up my phone, and opened my chat with the Jared from three years ago.

The stuff online. Was that you?

The reply came instantly. Yes.

Everyone who hurt you deserves to burn.

Including me.