Page 89 of Lust
The polls were unfavorable without major supporters backing him. It didn’t matter if he won or lost this election; Tris would make a great leader in the future. There was nothing I believed more in this life.
Tris was meant to change the world.
And he had changed my life. It was an inexplicable feeling, but he had become the very air I breathed. I had handed my heart over to him with trepidation, pleading for him to take care of it. Because if he didn’t, I’d shatter into so many pieces that I’d never be able to rebuild myself.
It was a petrifying feeling, for he was in possession of my whole life in his hands.
However, that didn’t mean I had to stop torturing him.
After dumping out the remaining salt, I proceeded to fill it with the replica I had purchased. There was only one folly in my well-laid-out plan. I had used Tris’ laptop to order the salt replicas through his Amazon account because I accidentally left my laptop at the shelter last night. I doubted that he’d check his past orders on Amazon but might notice it if they emailed him a receipt.
I took the stairs two at a time to reach my room and pulled open his laptop that was sitting on my bed. I popped in the password—my birthday—and then searched his email for the order receipt so I could delete it.
God, Tris received way too many emails. I had to filter through them to find an email that resembled an Amazon order receipt.
Odd.
The email was fashioned after one of those Amazon email receipts… except it wasn’t when inspected closely. The memo on the bottom had only two references—initials and a date.
A date that seemed familiar.
That’s the date Tristan had shown up at the shelter unannounced and found me with Tobias. That night, Steve had taken Tobias home, then sent a hefty bill for his efforts because those were Steve’s initials in the reference section.
It didn’t make sense. Steve was part of Tristan’s staff. Why would he need to go through these hoops to get paid and make it look like something it wasn’t?
There was no incriminatory information on the invoice, but a thought froze my blood. The only reason there’d be such an invoice was because there were too many to keep track of.
I thought what happened with Tobias was a one-off. Was it not? How many of these requests did Steve fulfill, and how often?
I did a quick search in Tristan’s email account. There were so many similar invoices… all dating back to four years ago when my supposed bad luck took root.
I had told Tris that I would shatter if he broke my heart again, but I was wrong. I didn’t shatter. I was simply numb as I pulled out my phone for my calendar and bank statements, lining every date with an incident that had occurred.
Pages and pages with evidence of Tristan’s crimes stared back at me. There’d never been a curse. Instead, Tristan had hurt countless people in unfathomable ways, anyone to come between his obsession for me.
And now, only two people remained in his way. The two people I loved more than myself—Mary and Ragu.
Could Tristan possibly hurt… No, I shook my head only to be countered by a whisper in my ear.
Tris will kill them in a heartbeat. That’s what he meant when he said, “I’ll find a way.”
I turned around. The room was empty, but I was positive to have heard a voice clear as day. There was another whisper.
He won’t stop until they are all out of his way.
Is someone there? I turned again.
You are cursed, Sara.
You ruin everything, and you’ve ruined Mary’s life with your bad luck.
Your father is ashamed of you.
Tristan will never become the man he is meant to be if you keep on breathing.
That voice kept getting louder and louder, and I held two hands over my ears, unable to take it any longer. It called to me from the balcony, tempting me like melody, until I found myself standing at the edge. And now that I was standing here, it didn’t seem so bad of an idea to just end it all.
I had never been suicidal. Even now, as I stood on the ledge of this beautiful veranda, my thoughts weren’t of desolation. Instead, they were crystal clear.
