Wesley's smile thins out.
"Miss Marchetti. Don't be hysterical."
"Worried about telling the truth."
"I am not required to participate in performance art."
I take one step closer.
"Then explain to everyone watching how, 30 seconds after my sister hit the floor, you already knew the hallway cameras would prove I attacked her."
Wesley's eyes change for the first time.
Vivienne frowns. "What does she mean."
I tap my phone twice and play back the livestream's own audio.
Wesley's voice, clear: "The hallway cameras will sort the rest of this out."
I hit pause.
"Less than 60 seconds after she fell. You knew. The cameras hadn't even been pulled. How exactly did you know what they were going to show."
Wesley collects himself. "Common sense."
Soren speaks suddenly. "Wesley. Take it."
Wesley turns his head. "Sir."
Soren is looking at him with no temperature at all.
"You just said her capsules came back clean. Take it."
【Take it.】
【I want to see what you've been doing behind my back.】
Wesley is quiet for a beat. Then he reaches out and takes the capsule between two fingers.
He lifts it toward his mouth.
The capsule never gets there.
He swings my forearm down and behind my back and walks me three steps toward the emergency stair access. The whole motion costs him less than a second.
When the room reorients, there is a small kitchen knife from the catered staff lounge pressed against the side of my throat.
The bystanders scream and scatter. Two nurses drop their tablets.
Soren's face wipes clean of color.
"Wesley."
The polite mask is gone. What's underneath is bored.
"Sir. Stay where you are."
Wesley's mouth lowers to my ear.
"Miss Marchetti. How many lives is it now. You still haven't learned to keep your mouth shut."
My blood freezes.
He knows.
Soren takes one step. "Let her go."
Wesley walks me backward another foot. "Of course. In exchange for the ring."
And there it is.
He never wanted the formula.
He wanted the matte-black titanium signet ring on Soren Ashby's right hand.
Soren slides the ring off his finger.
The blade presses harder against my throat. I can feel a thin sting where it has nicked the skin.
Wesley says, low and clipped, "Slide it across the floor."
Soren doesn't move yet.
He looks at me.
"Iris. Close your eyes."
【Don't be afraid.】
【This time, I will not let you die.】
This time.
He remembers all of it.
I don't close my eyes.
Wesley laughs against my ear. "Mr. Ashby. Still so arrogant. Last time you tried to save her, you walked her into Bedford Hills yourself. And how did that work out for you. She died on schedule."
A high hum starts in my left ear.
To save me.
Wesley keeps talking, slow, like he has been waiting 3 years to say it.
"You thought a state women's max was safer than the outside. Nice theory. The Ashbys have hands inside that building. So do I."
Soren's face is bone white.
Vivienne whips around. "Wesley. What did you just say."
Wesley smirks. "Spare me, Mrs. Ashby-Vance. You're the one who paid a CO at Bedford to watch Miss Marchetti. You were terrified she was going to control Soren and put the company in the hands of a girl who sells perfume out of a Lispenard loft."
Vivienne's voice shakes. "I wanted her away from him. I didn't want her killed."
I am listening to the two of them argue and something inside me starts laughing very quietly.
So my first life didn't end in an accident.
So Soren put me in Bedford because he thought the cages could keep me alive while he hunted the people inside his own company.
So he didn't tell me.
So it didn't work.
So this bill is still in his name.
My left hand, hanging at my side, eases the stopper out of the jar.
There is one capsule left.
It isn't joy.
It isn't truth.
It is the fear I distilled out of my own body in the 38 hours before my heart stopped the first time, while I lay strapped to a Bedford Hills infirmary bed.
Wesley feels me shift and yanks my wrist back.
"Don't move."
I smile at him with my mouth, not my eyes.
"Too late."
I crush the capsule between my fingers.
The wax shatters. A fine ash-gray powder hangs in the air for a quarter-second.
Wesley breathes it in.
The fear capsule has no sweetness.
What it does is force the body to live, for 90 seconds, inside the worst image the mind owns.
Wesley screams. The knife drops out of his hand and bounces twice on the linoleum.
Soren is already there. He shoulders Wesley off me and turns me into his coat.
Wesley folds down onto his knees on the linoleum with his hands wrapped around his head.
"Don't come near me. Don't come near me — get away —"
He scuttles backward on his palms like something is walking down the hallway toward him that no one else can see.
I bend down and pick the knife up. I bring it under his jaw.
"What are you afraid of, Mr. Vance."
Sweat is rolling out of his hairline. His lips have gone purple. The capsule has him by the brain stem.
He starts babbling.
"Not alone — it wasn't — Paige — Paige came to me — she said all we had to do was crush Iris and the formula was ours —"
Two doors down the hallway, the gurney with Paige on it has stopped moving.
Paige sits up. Her color drops to the same paper-white as Vivienne's.
Her fingers seize the bedsheet.
The TikTok Live is still up.
The comments lose their minds:
@finance_baby: PAIGE PLANNED IT
@truecrime_aunt: HE JUST CONFESSED ON LIVE
@nyc_gossipdaily: this is the biggest UES scandal of 2024 i am SHAKING
Paige starts shaking her head. "He's lying. I don't know him. I don't know who that man is."
Wesley turns his head toward her gurney. His face is wet and contorted.
"Paige. You said you'd marry me."
"You said Soren wouldn't last 18 months. You said once we had the formula we could shave the neuro division off the parent."
Vivienne sits down on the bench behind her. Her hand is at her sternum. She has stopped breathing for a beat.
My mother is frozen at the gurney. Her mouth opens.
"Paige. Honey. He's lying. Tell me he's lying."
Paige's crying stops.
She turns toward our mother and her face flips. The grief drops off. What's underneath is older than Paige and meaner than I remembered.
"Mom. You actually believe her. Not me."
My mother whispers, "No, baby, I just —"
Paige rips the IV out of the back of her hand.
"Enough."
She points at me, voice high and not crying anymore.
"Why does Iris get to have everything. The formula is hers. Soren is hers. Even my own parents look at me like I'm the dent in the car. Why is it always her."
The NYPD takes Paige out of the building in cuffs, still crying.
She cries beautifully. She has spent her whole life perfecting it.
In my first 2 lives, my parents would have already been on the phone with their lawyer, mid-sprint to the precinct, ready to throw a body in front of hers.
This time, they stand on the sidewalk and don't move.
My mother looks at me. Her eyes are unfocused.
"Iris. I didn't know."
I cut her off.
"You knew."
Her face drains.
"You just didn't care."
She tries to speak. Nothing comes out.
My father clears his throat. "Iris. We're family."
I turn my eyes on him.
"When Paige hurt me, you told me to be the bigger person."
"When I proved my innocence in court, you told me I was embarrassing the family."
"Now that she's caught, you're telling me we're family."
My father's face goes purple.
Soren is at my elbow. He starts to speak.
I lift my hand and stop him.
"My family. They died a long time ago."
I turn around and walk out the lobby doors.
Soren follows.
The wind on East 77th is sharp. He pulls off his suit coat and drops it around my shoulders.
I try to throw it off. He catches the lapel.
"Iris. I know you hate me."
I laugh.
"Mr. Ashby. You misunderstand. I don't hate you."
His eyes lift a fraction.
I finish.
"I find you disgusting."
The color drains out of his face.
The inner voice doesn't come.
I look at his right hand.
The ring is gone. NYPD bagged it as evidence the moment they had Wesley face down on the linoleum.
Without the ring, I can't hear the second voice from inside the band.
I can't hear Soren's ridiculous love-sick interior either.
It's quiet. It's better.
He says, hoarse, "In your first life, I put you into Bedford because I found out Wesley had bought a CO to kill you. All the public evidence was already on you. I thought if I walked you in myself, I could keep eyes on you while I built the case against him."
I nod. "And then."
His throat works. "I was in a car on the FDR. A truck went through the divider. I was in the burn unit for 3 months. When I woke up — "
I finish the sentence.