Page 128 of The Quiet Witness

“It’s a dual nature, Kate, it’s one and the other. I can’t pick and choose.”

The words kept spilling out of her, she hadn’t even registered his reply. “You’re the one playing the piano, pulling me apart and healing me at the same time. The one who makes me feel seen when no one else did. Which one is true?”

“They both are.”

She needed to understand. “Is it an alter ego?”

“It’s who I am.”

“Fine.” She bit out. “It’s fine, I know I’ll never get the whole truth from you.” She raised her hands in surrender. “I’m done trying to understand you.”

She dropped them back by her side, turning to race up the stairs but the silence of her room, the rush of blood in her ears would make her crazy, so she stalked past him. Ignoring his look of surprise as she dove into the kitchen cabinets, reaching for a cloth and the dish soap.

I need something to do. Need something to do before I race off into the wilderness.

“I’ll clean it up.” He murmured behind her.

“No.” She grabbed onto the dishcloth, fingers stiffening around the fabric. “I will do it.” She dunked the cloth beneath the rush of the tap, splattering cold water all over herself. Not even feeling it, she turned it off with a harsh flick of her hand.

He just stood there in the middle of the living room where she’d left him, looking like a child lost in the supermarket. Ignoring the painful stab in her heart she turned to the counter, dunking soap over it, she brushed and brushed the red away until it was sparkling white again. Moving over to his chair, she halted, eyes falling to a little piece of paper, a smudge of blood coated the half of it. Bending down to her haunches she picked it up and turned it over in her hand.

A picture. With a man on it, wait… that face.

It nearly slipped between her fingers, those eyes, piercing black. An image that had been present in her mind more often than not.

You only take paid jobs?

Red lettering shone through the picture, she flipped it over, reading those three blood red written words. Paid in full.

Time slowed down.

Please, someone tell me I’m dreaming.

Lucien, he had done as she had blurted out in that moment of fury, hadn’t he? It wasn’t just any man’s life liquid that coated Lucien in blood. In a way he had gone out to exact her mission, her revenge.

“It’s my doing, isn’t it?” She held the picture tightly in her grip. Her hands bloodied, just as much as his.

Gone was her innocence.

Lucien shook his head in refusal. “The second he touched the boy, it was decided.”

Even now he was trying to protect her from the truth of what she’d done.

“You were checking for witnesses to your presence. Not my meltdown.”

It wasn’t framed as a question, no, she stated it because she knew. That she had been the one to sent him on this kill.

Lucien remained quiet, letting the silence carry the weight of his answer.

Then it hit her, like a train barreling into her. Slipping, he had told her he’d been slipping. Which meant… “Why did you slip?”

Lucien had gone out to kill, yes. But the blood…

It’s not all mine.

The blood-covered trunk. People, plural, a couple known for their dark tendencies.

Poison, it’s a woman’s weapon. I don’t like the mess. You’ll understand soon enough.