She Tried to Poison Me, but My Plant Died First! novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Goggles

Locked in her room, Nerina shows Rocco what her goggles recorded, and by morning Mom's emerald necklace is missing.

The capo stood outside my door until nine that night.

I knew because I watched through the peephole.

At nine a different man took over, and at ten somebody knocked twice, hard.

"Open up."

I knew that voice.

I looked through the peephole.

Rocco Varenna stood in the hall in his shirtsleeves with the jacket gone, his tie loose.

The guard had gone.

"Your father wants the goggles," he said. "And the phone. He wants all of it in the safe until you apologize."

"I'm not apologizing."

"Then I'll take them without it."

"You can try."

"Nerina."

It was the first time he'd used my name without sneering.

I pulled the bolt, opened the door a hand's width and kept the chain on.

He looked at the chain.

Then he looked at the chem pen in my other hand, and something tightened around his mouth that was almost a smile.

"You really do sleep in a vest."

"Sleep is for people who haven't been poisoned."

"You haven't been poisoned either."

"That's because the plant went first."

He rubbed his jaw, hating it.

"Let me in. I'm not going to hurt you."

"That's what everybody says right before."

"Right before what?"

"Anything."

He pushed his hands into his pockets and stood back to show me they were empty.

I let the chain down.

He came in and shut the door behind him himself and slid my bolt home without being asked.

That surprised me more than anything he'd said.

My room was a guest room with a canopy bed and a flowered rug, and he took up most of it.

He set a small sealed bottle of water on the dresser.

"Fresh from the car," he said. "Cap was shrink-wrapped. I'm not stupid."

"Did you taste it?"

"I'll taste it right now, if you want me to."

"You can keep the water," I said, and I took it, and I checked the seal twice.

He watched me do that.

Then he held out his hand for the goggles.

I held them against my chest.

"Watch first."

"Nerina."

"One minute. If it's nothing, take them. I'll hand over the phone, too."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he sat down on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees.

"One minute."

I plugged the goggles into the little screen I'd carried in my suitcase and pressed play.

The marble staircase filled the screen from my own eye level.

Fiora came out of her room in the blue robe.

She walked down to me, and she didn't walk fast.

She said her sorry.

She held out her arms.

Then both her hands rose toward my chest and went through empty air.

She grabbed the banister.

She let it go.

She tucked her shoulder and rolled down the stairs, and her scream began half a second after her feet left the stair.

On the screen she hit the floor at my father's feet and lay still.

Her face turned toward the camera for a moment.

It had no pain in it at all.

Rocco watched it all the way through.

"Again," he said.

I played it again.

Then he said it a third time, slower, with his jaw set.

When the clip ended he stayed bent over, staring at the dark screen.

"She was crying before she touched you," he said.

"Yes."

"On the stairs, before she fell. Real tears."

"She can do that."

"Nobody can do that."

"Your fiancee can."

"Former fiancee," he said, flat and fast.

That was the first thing he'd said all day that sounded like his own mind.

He stood up.

He took the plug out of the screen and dropped the goggles in my hand, not roughly.

"Frame by frame, that proves nothing," he said. "It's a video from a girl who keeps score."

I waited.

"Don't show it to your father tomorrow," he said. "Not yet."

"Why not?"

"Because he'll say it's edited, and your mother will cry, and you'll have used your best card on a bad day."

"You're telling me how to play?"

"I'm telling you what I'd do."

"I thought you were on her side."

He stopped with his hand on the bolt.

"I haven't decided what side I'm on."

It was an honest thing to say, which made it worse.

I stared at the back of his neck, at the way his collar sat, and I told myself that it didn't matter.

"Lock this behind me," he said.

He left.

I slid the bolt home and stood with my forehead against the wood and the water bottle cold in my hand.

I slept in two-hour pieces.

At six the next morning I woke to a woman screaming.

It came from somewhere downstairs, high and furious, over and over.

"My emerald! Somebody's taken my mother's emerald!"

It was Mom.

I opened my eyes and reached for my phone.

Rule three, I thought.

Right on time.

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