Page 53 of Roma Queen
The Midnight Fair returned
“And? He wanted me to find Pasha?”
Yes
“But, for fuck’s sake, why, Garrett? Why would he want me to meet Pasha and fall for him? Why would he want Pasha to be king?”
Lazlo likes to pull strings.
Garrett considers what he just wrote, then frowns. He erases the last two words and scrawls something in their place, so that it now reads:
Lazlo likes to puppet people.
Then wipes the board again and quickly writes something else.
Lazlo likes symmetry.
A Rivin King hurt Lazlo before. He killed him. Pasha hurt Lazlo three years ago. Lazlo wants him to be king before he kills him. Neat. Tidy. Symmetry.
God, this is insane.Lazlois insane. The walls feel like they are closing in on me, pressing in from all sides, trapping me in this small, airless space, making it difficult to think straight. “Coreynever hurt Lazlo. He was a boy. A child. Why would Lazlo have killed him?”
Garrett’s face crumples. I’ve never seen a man so close to tears. He turns his head, looking out of the window, and a weird kind of vacancy overcomes him. His body’s here, in the living room, but at this very moment his mind is somewhere else altogether. When he returns to himself, settling back into the couch, he picks up the pen and writes.
Revenge. Yuri Petrov murdered my parents in New York.
He blurs his handwriting, sweeping the sleeve of his jacket across the board before I get a chance to read his words for a second time.
Lazlo took Corey for me. He hurt him for me. An eye for an eye.
His last sentence burns itself into me, branding me with horror. “An eye for an eye? A Russian mobster murders two adults, so Lazlo carves up twochildren. He killed Jamie, Corey’s brother, too, right?”
Garrett’s eyes are filled with steel and suffering. He blinks, dipping his head ever so slightly—the barest hint of an acknowledgement.
“And you okayed that? You were on board with that? Knowing that little boy had only been alive forfive fucking years?And he was aninnocent?”
His throat bobs. He looks down at his hands, though he doesn’t move them to respond to me. He won’t even look me in the eye now.
“Garrett, how can you have stood by and allowed all of this to happen? I thought you were a good man. I thought you weremyfriend.”
He looks up, lifting his chin, and there are two wet streaks running down his cheeks. He seems as surprised as I am by that fact.
‘Friends are weakness. There’s no such thing as agoodman.”
Well, he can’t be any plainer than that. This has all been an act. A make-believe story that I’ve constructed in my own head. For one second, a burst of hot anger flashes through me, making me feel so fucking stupid for ever believing Garrett was my ally. The anger disperses just as quickly as it came, though. I’mnotstupid. I’ve just been lied to. Garrett tricked me into thinking I could count on him. In the end, this is all on him.
He’s a liar.
A cheat.
He’s complicit in the kidnapping and murder of a little boy, and god only knows how many other hideous crimes Lazlo’s committed over the years. Just because Lazlo took him from that convent orphanage back in nineteen eighty-three, doesn’t mean he had to help Lazlo inflict so much pain and misery in people’s lives.
I clench my jaw, determined to get one more piece of information out of him, no matter how hard it is for me to ask. I need to know, not because the information will change anything—Corey will still be dead, after all—but because I can’t live with the mystery anymore. “Lazlo wants Pasha to suffer because he nearly killed him three years ago. I don’t agree with that, but…Iunderstandit. What didIever do, though, Garrett? Why the hell has Lazlo come afterme?”
Garrett’s chest rises and keeps on rising. He draws one, long, huge breath into his lungs, and then he exhales down his nose, the sound of the air rushing over his vocal chords making me jump. I’ve never heard him make a sound before. He lances me through with distant, accusatory eyes.
Then he writes.
Because you look like The Empress.
