Page 72 of A Light in the Darkness
She doesn’t question me as we take the last few steps together, pressed side by side in the narrow corridor.
When the hall opens up into the living room, lit by large work lamps in every corner, she gasps. And finally, I see it.
Shock. The first true emotion I’ve seen on her since… well, since I watched her leave me.
The shock doesn’t last long, because it turns quickly to confusion as she looks from the woman in a heap on the ground, to the senator standing above his wife, a bloody knife in hand.
Chapter forty-three
Claire
“What the hell?” Remy snaps, taking an angry step toward the senator. “What did you do?”
“She’s alive.” Victor assures him, his knuckles white around the blade wrapped tightly in his hand. “I just… I had to do it at least once.”
“She doesn’t look alive.” I say, glancing up at him and then back to the body of the woman who helped me find my freedom once.
“I knocked her out. She wouldn’t stop screaming. I…”
“Well, yeah,” Remy says, “You stabbed her. What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. I just… I got so mad. I—”
“What is going on?” I ask.
Some part of me is telling me that I should have never walked into this situation, that something is wrong. And yet I can’t make myself feel worried— If not for the numbness, because it doesn’t make sense that they would hurt me. The senator pulled me out of the fire, and Remy… he hasn’t spent the last six months paying Moose a small fortune to keep me alive so that he could kill me himself.
Remy appraises me, and I don’t know what he’s looking for, but he must find it because he nods. “Wake her up.”
Victor drops down to rouse his wife, but Remy wraps an arm around me, turning me in the opposite direction. That’s when I see the table set up, all the instruments placed atop it. It unlocks a memory somewhere…
The first time Remy brought me to his basement, when he had Eric Giante tied to his chair.
When I glance at him, he’s looking down at me, thoughtful. “The day I had you on my boat for the first time, you mentioned your social worker… how she was the only constant you ever knew… how she handled your admission to Darrington.”
“Yes,” I say, because he almost seems to be looking for confirmation.
“That was by design. Addison, over there?” He nods his head behind me, where I hear Addie moan as the senator hauls her up. “She’s the one who put you into the system.”
I stare at him, not sure where he’s going with this, or why I’m here. “Of course she did.” I say, glancing out of the corner of my eye to see the senator dragging her to her feet by a handful of her scarlet hair. “That’s her job.”
“No, it’s actually not. Addison Massarini? She’s the wife of Senator Victor Massarini… your father.”
I’m not sure what sort of reaction he expects at that information, but I have nothing to give him. No shock, no confusion, no amusement. I just stare at him. “No…” I take them in—Victor with his large hand clamped over Addie’s mouth… the wedding band noticeably absent.
Her eyes are wide, but she doesn’t have the power to fight against him, particularly since she’s tied up with enough rope to hang the whole town. She looks like the hero from a cheesy silent film when the victim ties them to the train tracks.
“He is. He suspected as much the first time he met you. He stole your toothbrush to run a DNA test, but the results weren’t a match.”
Victor is watching me, his lip between his teeth. He looks completely different from the first time I met him at Remy’s house in Costa Rica, and different from when he sat next to me on the plane. Then, he’d been composed, perfectly polished and put together just the way you’d expect a man who works for thegovernment. Last time, I hadn’t exactly focused on what he looked like, but in hindsight, I realize it was more like this than not.
Anxious.
“But that didn’t sit right with either of us,” Remy explains, “so we tested again. This time, we did it without telling his wife. And wouldn’t you know?” He hands his phone out to me in his large palm. I hesitate just a moment before accepting it to look down at whatever he’s showing me.
There are a bunch of words that look like a foreign language for all the sense they make, but one thing stands out among the rest.
Probability of paternity: 99.9998%
