Chapter 16: Asked

I walked out of the elevator on the lobby floor with my hands empty and Imogen's paper still held out behind me.

My phone was still recording in my pocket.

I did not sign.

I rode back up alone.

Laurence was standing in the penthouse foyer where I had left him, with two fingers still on the door frame.

I took the phone out and pressed the button.

He listened to the whole thing standing up.

When it got to her last line, he put one hand flat on the wall.

*Nine years. She stood next to me for nine years.*

"Say it," I said.

"I want to kill her," Laurence said, in a low voice that was entirely calm.

"And I want to do it correctly, in front of everyone, with every paper she ever touched on the table."

"That's the same thing you said before."

"It is not the same. Before I wanted a case. Now I want her to hear it."

He looked at me.

*She is shaking. She walked into that box alone for me.*

"I'm not shaking," I said.

"Your hands are."

I looked down.

They were.

I put the phone on the hall table and stood in front of him with my heart going hard.

The rule came into my head, the one we had made.

*Say what you think.*

"I don't want to talk anymore," I said. "I want you to touch me. I'm asking. That's the term. I'm asking."

His eyes closed for one second.

"Ciara."

"Not gently."

*God.*

He did not say it aloud.

I heard it, and I heard everything after it, and it was so loud that I laughed.

"You can say that part," I told him.

"I want to carry you to that bedroom and take every thing you're wearing off with my teeth."

"Then do it."

He picked me up.

I put my arms around his neck and my mouth on his throat.

He took me down the hall past the blue room, where the nurse was asleep in her chair with her book on her chest.

He kicked the guest suite door shut and turned the lock.

He set me on the bed and stood over me, breathing, and he did not move.

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