They Called Me a Fraud, So I Walked Into the Don's House novel · Chapter 12 of 24
Chapter 12: The Only Lie
Lenora's POV
He knelt on my carpet with the case open on his knee and my notes in his hand.
He did not look up.
"Say it," Alessio said.
"I made it."
My voice sounded small in the dark room.
"L-1 is mine. I built it three years ago as the first version of the therapy. It killed marrow in mice after four weeks, so I threw it out and started again."
"And Schultz kept it."
"He kept everything. He must have copied the file the week I wrote it up."
"Then he put it in my supplement."
"At eight times the dose I'd ever tested." I made myself keep going. "Each night, a little more of it. That's what's in your blood."
He turned a page.
"You knew."
"I knew by the third week of reading your numbers. The curve matched my mice exactly."
"You knew when you came to the gate."
"Yes."
"You stood in my study and told me you couldn't name it yet."
"I couldn't name it without telling you I'd made it."
"That's a lie, Lenora." He still did not raise his voice, and I almost wished he would. "'Yet' is a lie."
"It's the only one I told you."
"The only one." He laughed once, short and cold. "I asked you in the kitchen why you came. You told me it was Schultz. You told me he had taken everything."
"That was true."
"And it was also the first thing you put between me and the truth."
He stood up.
He was taller than I remembered, and his face had gone hard.
"My rule," he said, "was one rule. I told you in the study. Rocco told you at the gate. You answered every other question I had and not the one that mattered."
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