“It doesn’t matter what he said. I want to hear it from you.”
Her eyes grow misty and she’s quiet for a long moment as she studies the wall just beyond my shoulder. When she finally looks back at me, her expression is guarded, closed. “A man broke into our house to rob us. He found me at home and thought he’d have some fun. But before he could finish what he started, my brother surprised him and got himself killed saving my life. Is that good enough for you?”
I watch her hug her arms around herself. She’s trembling. “And the nightmares, tell me about them.”
“It’s not them plural. It’s just one. One nightmare.” She juts her jaw stubbornly. “You want to know what it is? Want to know how selfish I am?”
I don’t answer. Just watch.
“It’s not what you’d think. What normal people would dream about. It’s not my brother.” She stands up, walks halfway around the chair then turns back to me. “I mean, he lost his life that night. I lost him but I’m still alive and if it weren’t for me, he’d be here now. If it weren’t for him trying to get that man off me.” She swallows, wipes the tears from her eyes with the heels of her hands. “After what he did to save me, it’s not even him I see in my dreams. It’s that horrible man. His face. The way he felt. The way he smelled. His hot breath on my neck.” She looks like she might throw up, but she draws in a deep, shuddering breath and focuses on me. “I can’t stop seeing that man’s face, but I’m forgetting what Christian looked like. Do you know that?”
“That’s normal, Isabelle. You don’t have to feel guilt over that.”
“Yes, I do. That nightmare is all about me. All about what happened to me. Not him.” She shakes her head. “I get to the part where… where he’s pushing off my jeans. I can feel his hands like they’re on me—”
“I broke his hands. His fingers.”
She looks at me and I imagine she’s processing as she speaks. “That’s when I wake up. When Christian came into the room.”
“Isabelle—”
“I dream about when I felt that man between my legs.” She’s looking straight at me, eyes huge and wild. “I dream about him almost raping me. Even though I got to walk away.”
“You didn’t exactly walk away.” I get to my feet, walking around the desk toward her. She shakes her head, backs away.
“It doesn’t matter, Jericho. I’m here, aren’t I? I’m alive. Christian is in the ground when he should never have been there to begin with. If I hadn’t called him, he’d have been safe. It’s why he came, you know that?” She wipes more tears. “I’d called to ask him to bring me my favorite soup from the deli nearby. I was sick and he’d gone to work. I asked him to get me soup like he wasn’t busy enough already. If I hadn’t been so selfish—”
“You’re not selfish.”
“He brought the soup during his shift break and got himself killed.”
She’s backed herself into a corner. I take her arms, squeeze them, and don’t let her go when she tries to scoot past me.
“If he hadn’t come home, a lot worse would have happened to you,” I tell her, deciding it’s time. Because she’s been carrying the guilt of her brother’s death on her shoulders for years when it wasn’t her fault at all. When it was the fault of those who pretended to care about her.
She struggles against me and I pull her into my chest, cup my hand around the back of her head.
“I would have survived,” she says, talking against my chest. “Even if he’d succeeded and done what he’d wanted to do, I would have lived.” A sob wracks her body and she wraps her arms around my middle.
“No, you wouldn’t, sweetheart.” I keep her cheek against my chest and hold her tight.
“He didn’t need to die,” she says like she hasn’t heard me.
“It would have been you who died if Christian hadn’t come home.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t know that,” she says, drawing back to look up at me.
I waver again. Is she ready to hear this? Even with the proof I have? She’s fragile still. So is the pregnancy. But I can’t keep it from her any longer. It’s not right.
“I do, Isabelle. I do know.”
Her eyebrows furrow as she tries to understand.
“Danny Gibson was hired to kill you that night. He was told to make it look like a break in.”
She shakes her head. “What? No. That makes no sense. Why? You’re wrong.”
“Carlton Bishop learned about your existence years before publicly claiming you as his half-sister. He only did because he was bound to the way the inheritance is written.”
“Inheritance? What does my brother’s murder have to do with a stupid inheritance?” she shoves at me, walks away. “I don’t care about any inheritance!”
“I know you don’t,” I tell her, closing the space between us to rub her arms, to hold onto her as I tell her the truth.
“Let go.”
“No. You need to know.”
“He lied to you. That man lied to you,” she says.
“I have proof. I’ve had proof since almost the very beginning.”
She just shakes her head.
“Carlton wanted you out of the way. You needed to be dead. The line needed to end for him to keep hold of the inheritance. He has no heirs.”
“He didn’t know who I was.”
“He did. And he hired Danny Gibson to make it look like a robbery gone wrong.”
She sets one hand against her stomach as if protecting the small life inside. The other is wrapped around my bicep.
“Gibson was paid out of one of the Bishop charities. It was diverted via several accounts and then withdrawn. It’s an intricate scheme but is doable if you know what you’re doing.”
“The trial…they never found any trail. There was no money trail, Jericho.”
“The bastard deserves to rot in prison, but so does Carlton Bishop.”
She moves to sit down, and I follow to sit beside her. “You’re wrong. You have to be.”
“I wish I were.”
She presses her hands to her face, rubs, shakes her head. “He came to the hospital. He took me in. Took care of me.”
“Because he had to. IVI knew about your existence and so did the executors of the Bishop estate. He could no longer hide you, so he took you in to control you. Maybe to wait for his next opportunity.”
At that she shoves my hands away and jumps to her feet. “No! No. I don’t believe that.”
I’m up too as she walks toward the door. “He gave just one instruction to Danny Gibson. Do you want to know what it was?”
She shakes her head, opens the office door.
“Make it bloody. That’s it.”
She stops. Drops her head.
“That was his one requirement.” I get to her, wrap my arm around her from behind. “I’m sorry, Isabelle. I don’t want to hurt you but it’s the truth. I’ll show you the proof. I’ll show you.”
She turns in my arms to face me, studies me for a long, long time as if trying to gauge if I’m telling the truth.