Chapter 13: The Call That Shatters
The silence in Jennie’s bedroom was a palpable thing after she ended the call. It wasn’t an absence of sound, but a dense, humming void where the casual lie from Leonid’s manager still vibrated in the air. He wasn’t scheduled. He didn’t call in.
She lowered the phone, her movements slow and precise, as if any sudden motion might shatter the brittle shell of her understanding. The white walls, the silk drapes, the impeccable order of everything around her—it all seemed to tilt, a pristine painting sliding off its nail.
He had lied.
The pieces, sharp and ugly, assembled themselves in her mind with a definitive click. His glassy, red-rimmed eyes at the café hadn’t just been from weed. They had been from shock. The flinch at her touch. The way his gaze skittered away, landing on anything but her. The distance in his voice, a gulf where only warmth had been.
He followed her to the warehouse.
He saw.
A coldness, so profound it felt like heat, bloomed in her chest. It was a crystalline rage, fracturing through her veins, making her fingertips tingle. She curled her hands into fists, her manicured nails biting deep crescents into her palms. The pain was a pinpoint of focus. He had witnessed her. Not the her she lavished upon him—the sweet, devoted girl who brought him soup and memorized the way he took his coffee—but the other one. The real one. The thing that lived in the silence after a final breath.
She loved him.
The thought followed the rage, a desperate, wounded counterpoint. It was a physical ache, a hollowing out beneath her ribs. She loved the way his black curls felt between her fingers, the low rasp of his voice, the scent of tobacco and cheap soap on his skin. She loved the way he tolerated her need to be near him, a miracle she had never expected. The idea of that love dissolving, of him looking at her with the same revulsion she’d seen in Mina’s eyes, was unendurable.
A whimper escaped her, a small, wounded animal sound lost in the vast room. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, seeing stars in the darkness. Think.
Her mind, usually a scalpel, felt blunted. Options presented themselves, stark and unforgiving.
Kill him. The solution was clean. Final. She could do it. She could make it beautiful, a sacrament of their love, their last embrace. She knew how. The hidden compartment beneath her bedside drawer held tools that whispered of such finalities. But the thought of his body going cold, of those dark eyes glassy and empty, of never hearing him say her name again—even in fear—made her stomach twist violently. No. That was destruction. That was loss.
Keep him. The alternative was a dark, shimmering fantasy. The soundproofed library wasn’t just for studying. Her family’s resources could make a person vanish. She could have him here, forever. Safe. Hers. She could explain everything, make him understand the necessity of her work, the cleansing purity of it. But he would hate her. And Jennie craved his love, not just his presence. A gilded cage was still a cage.
Make him forget. Not literally—the poisons she knew brought sleep, not amnesia—but through narrative. Through a story so compelling, so emotionally logical, that it would overwrite the horror he thought he saw. He was high. He was stressed. He was confused. She could seed doubt, nurture it, until his own memory became the enemy.
She lowered her hands. Her face in the black-and-gold vanity mirror was pale, her feline eyes wide and dark. A single, perfect tear traced a path down her cheek. She watched it fall, detached. Then she blinked. The vulnerability was wiped away, replaced by a flat, calculating resolve.
She would fight for him.
Picking up her phone, her thumbs moved swiftly, decisively. The message was simple, devoid of the usual hearts or pleases.
‘We need to talk. My place. Tonight.’
She sent it, then stood, walking to the floor-to-ceiling window. The manicured grounds of her family’s estate stretched into the dusk, all controlled beauty and hidden fences. She replayed the warehouse night, frame by frame. Had she slipped? Had she been seen arriving, or leaving? Her work was always so careful. But love, she was learning, made you reckless. The journal upstairs, signed in his name—was that a flaw? A thread he could pull?
It didn’t matter. She would weave a new story tonight. One where she was the victim of a monstrous coincidence. One where his love for her would battle his doubt, and she would ensure love won. She would cry. She would tremble. She would show him just enough vulnerability to make him her protector, not her accuser.
Her phone buzzed. His reply.
‘Okay. 9?’
A simple confirmation. No questions. No deflection. That was bad. Old Leonid would have asked why, would have pushed, would have wrapped a layer of annoyance around his concern. This was the quiet of a man facing an executioner.
Jennie typed back, her expression serene.
‘Perfect. I’ll be waiting.’
She breathed in, deeply, centering herself. The plan formed, intricate and layered. First, the setting. The bedroom was too intimate, too suggestive of other comforts. The library was too stark, too much like an interrogation room. The sunroom, perhaps. Soft lighting, the city glittering in the distance—a panorama of normalcy.
Then, the costume. Not the sleek dresses he liked, but something soft. A cashmere sweater, worn leggings. Hair down, slightly messy. The girl he wanted to take care of.
Finally, the performance. It would be her greatest. She walked to the hidden compartment, not for a blade, but for her journal. She flipped to the entry on Mina. She read her own clinical notes, the recorded last words. This was the truth. Her truth. She would have to bury it under a mountain of better, more believable lies.
She closed the book, her fingers lingering on the cover. She thought of his hands, the prominent veins she loved to trace, the warm weight of them. The memory brought that melting tenderness, followed instantly by the icy fear.
He was coming. He knew. And she would have to look into the eyes of the only person she had ever loved, and convince him that the monster he saw was a figment. Or she would have to become the monster he feared, just to keep him.
She placed the journal back in its hiding place and smoothed the duvet flat, erasing the impression it had made. Everything was in order. Everything was ready. She was calm. She was focused.
The only thing left was to wait, and to hope that the love she felt for him was a weapon strong enough to carve a new reality into the both of them.