Soren's eyes go red at the edges.
It's the first time I have ever seen this version of him. Polished, glacial, untouchable Soren Ashby looking like someone has taken his skeleton out.
"And in my second life," I say.
He doesn't answer.
I do.
"In my second life I didn't sell to you. I went off-grid. I rented a workshop in Yonkers. Paige still found me. Wesley still torched the lab. The night before I died I called you and begged you to call the FBI. You told me to get out of your life."
Soren's voice is shaking when it comes out.
"The man who said that to you on that night was not me."
I narrow my eyes.
He keeps going, fast and low, like he is rationing oxygen.
"The ring is the external controller for an experimental cortical implant. Project Threshold. Sub-dermal, neuro-stabilizing — Ashby-Vance built it for me after the accident, to suppress sensory-overlay seizures. Wesley had system-admin credentials on the firmware. He inverted the output channel on my speech."
"He could take you over."
"He could interfere." Soren closes his eyes. "It made me say the opposite of what I meant. It made me put together arguments that would justify what I had just said."
I think about the second voice I heard inside the band of the ring.
I think about every time Soren shut me out with his mouth and reached for me with his thinking.
It isn't a split personality.
It's that ring.
I laugh, short and ugly. "So every time you broke me, you had a medical excuse."
His face goes whiter.
"It is not an excuse. It is my failure."
That, finally, sounds like a person.
He says, "This time. I will hand you every piece of evidence I have. The Ashbys. Wesley. Paige. Whatever any of them owes you. I will collect."
"No."
I shrug his coat off my shoulders.
"My debts. I collect them myself."
His fingers tighten. He doesn't take the coat back.
I let go.
The wool falls to the sidewalk between us.
Soren doesn't bend down for it.
【She doesn't want me.】
I stop with my back to him.
The voice came in clear. There is no ring on his hand.
I look back at him.
Soren is standing where I left him, eyes red, shoulders held too straight. He cannot have spoken aloud. His mouth has not moved.
I go back to the Lispenard atelier and tip out my entire jar onto the steel table.
Joy capsules: 12.
Truth capsules: 2.
Fear capsules: 0.
And then there is the one I have never sold.
Regret.
Black wax. Hard as a pebble. Distilled from the 4 minutes between when my heart rate dropped below 30 in the Bedford Hills infirmary the first time, and when it stopped.
I have only ever been able to make 1.
In my first life I never had the chance to use it.
In this one, I had told myself I was making Paige eat it.
Three days later the press release goes up. Wesley Vance: arrested on charges of attempted murder, wire fraud, medical-device tampering, and conspiracy. Paige Marchetti: arrested as co-conspirator. Marchetti Supply's small-business loan is called by the bank that afternoon. Margaret and Frank stop being interviewed by Town & Country and start being interviewed by their insurer.
My parents call me 18 times in 3 days.
I don't pick up.
Soren doesn't call.
His attorney comes to my door instead, with a manila envelope.
Inside: a single-page transfer document. 30% equity in Threshold Bio — the subsidiary Ashby-Vance is spinning off to absorb the cortical-implant program and all its liabilities. Effective immediately. Vesting waived.
Clipped to the document is a yellow Post-it.
"Not compensation. Evidence preservation. — S.A."
I read the Post-it 4 times.
Then I sign.
It is not forgiveness.
It is the math being correct.
The day after I sign, Vivienne Ashby-Vance shows up at my street door alone.
No driver. No assistant. No coat by the right designer this season. She looks like she has lost 8 pounds in 3 days.
"Miss Marchetti. I would like to talk."
I do not invite her up.
She doesn't push. She holds out a flat archival box.
"Soren asked me to destroy these. I couldn't."
The box is full of letters.
Cream Ashby stationery. All handwritten. All addressed to me. None of them stamped.
The earliest is dated "7 days after your sentencing — 2021."
"Iris. Wait for me."
The latest is dated the day before I died the first time.
I don't open the letters.
The paper is older than I expected. The handwriting is still the same.
Like the man. Hides everything. Hides it until it ruins everyone.
Vivienne is watching me from the bottom step.
"I used to think your capsules were going to destroy him."
"You'll be relieved to learn," I say, "that what destroyed him is you."
She lowers her head.
"I'm not asking for forgiveness. I came to tell you Soren hasn't been able to take a single capsule since the NYPD took the ring. His implant is unstable without the paired controller. He's been hospitalized twice this week. His doctors said if it goes another 4 days like this, his nervous system is going to flat-line."
My fingers stop on the lip of the box.
"Why are you telling me."
"I'm not blackmailing you. I am asking."
This woman, who used to keep me out of her son's vicinity with a glance, lowers herself another inch.
"Iris Marchetti. Please. Sell him 1 capsule."
I look at the bend in her spine.
I feel nothing victorious about it.
I only feel tired.
"$10 million."
She says, fast, "I'll wire it."
"No. I want him to come buy it himself."
Her eyes come up.
I close the door.
At 10:14 PM that evening my buzzer goes.
Soren is at the entry. Through the camera, I can see he is holding a thermos and a small canvas tote. His face is the color of skim milk.
"I made you broth."
I open the door but stay inside the frame.
"You can't eat solids. Who's it for."
"It's for you."
He looks down. "You used to skip meals when you were distilling. I had your father's mother's recipe pulled. The bone broth and the soft egg. From the 1991 Marchetti family cookbook."
I almost laugh.
"Soren. You're playing the long-suffering devotee. It's late for that."
He says, "I know."
No defense. No counter-argument. No interior voice in my ear.
He sets the tote down outside my doorframe.
"I won't ask for the capsule tonight. Don't open the door for anyone else. There are two men sitting in the SUV down the block who are not press."
I go still.
The fire-stair door bangs open at the end of the corridor.
Soren shoulders me back through my own doorway and slams it shut behind us. His back hits the door a half-second before the first body does, from the outside.
"Iris. Open the door. Iris."
My father.
His voice has been hollowed out by something stronger than drink.
"You ruined this family. Your sister is going to do 9 years. You happy now."
I am already on the phone with 911.
Soren puts a hand over mine on the phone screen. "I called Building Security before I came up. NYPD is 4 minutes out."
It is not just my father in the hallway.
I can hear at least 3 other men with him. Heavy steps. The voice of one of them — calm, almost bored — saying, "Frank. Tell her she signs the affidavit or we make this a problem for everyone."
Marchetti Supply's lender is not a normal bank.
My father is here to make me sign a victim-impact waiver requesting leniency for Paige, so the lender can use her freedom as leverage on him.
The door bucks. The deadbolt holds for now.
I have the black wax capsule in my closed fist.
Soren sees it. "What is that one."
"The kind that breaks people."
He doesn't argue with me. He doesn't tell me not to use it.
He says, "If they come in, I'll be in front of you."
I look at him.
He smiles, very small.
"I learned from last time. I won't try to make the call for you."
The deadbolt gives.
My father comes in first, eyes hot, hair wild. "Sign it. Now."
I do not step back.
I open my hand and hold the black capsule up between us.
"Take this first. Then I'll sign."
He is suspicious. The man with the bored voice cuts in from the hallway. "Frank. Hurry it up. She's also got 30% of Threshold Bio. Make her wire it after."
My father's eyes flicker.
He snatches the capsule and bites down.
1 second.
2 seconds.
His face freezes.
Then his whole body shudders and he drops to his knees in the middle of my entryway.
He starts hitting himself across the face. Open-handed. Hard.
"I was wrong. Iris. I was wrong. I was wrong."
My mother appears in the doorway. She has been crying for three days; her face is destroyed. She sees what my father is doing on the floor and her hands fly up.
"Frank. Frank."
My father is on his hands and knees crawling toward my ankles. Snot and tears on his face. Twenty years of him is coming up out of him at once.
"I saw you. I saw you in there. You were calling for me. You were calling for me and I didn't come. I was at Paige's birthday dinner."
My breath leaves my body.
My mother is frozen halfway through the door.
My father has both arms over his head. He is howling.
"You were hurting and I didn't come. You were hurting and I didn't come."
My face goes cold all the way to my hairline.
My mother lunges past the lender's men and grabs my forearm.
"Iris. What did you give him. What did you give him."
I take my arm back.
"Regret."
Her face crumples. "Give me one too. I need one too — I need to know — "
"There are none left."
She stops.
I look at her. "You can know on your own. Try it sometime."
The NYPD is already coming up the stairs. The lender's two men are smart enough to lift their hands. My father is taken out in cuffs, head down, still crying my name in the elevator.
The hallway empties.
Soren has a 4-inch splinter of door frame in the meat of his left forearm. He's still standing. Blood is running off his wrist onto my floorboards.
I pull my emergency kit out from under the kitchen sink.
He hasn't moved.
"It's fine."
I put my eyes on him. "Sit."
He sits down on the kitchen stool.
【She told me to sit.】
【She's still going to clean it.】
My hand jerks.
His head comes up. He has felt me hear it.
"You can — "
I do not answer.
His ears go red. He drops his eyes to the floor.
【She heard that.】
【She heard that one too.】
【Stop thinking about wanting to hold her.】
【No, keep thinking it. Want it anyway.】
I press the cotton swab into the wound hard enough that he hisses.
I don't change my expression.
"Think one more inappropriate thought and I will pour the entire bottle of antiseptic into your mouth."
He shuts his lips.
His thinking says, in a voice slightly softer:
【As long as she doesn't throw me out. I'll take that.】
I tape the gauze down. I do not look at his face.
"Go home, Soren."
He goes.