Before she left, Joy glanced at me through the small window.
That glance held an undisguised, vicious grin and pure malice.
After she walked away, Maxwell stood with his brow furrowed tight, glancing again and again toward the dark room where I lay barely clinging to life.
I didn't know how long he waited before his patience snapped. Joy still hadn't returned. He erupted, “Where is she?! Go find out why the dog handler isn't here yet!”
Looking at me through the dark room window, drenched in blood, something like pain flickered across Maxwell's eyes.
Before long, Joy came running back in a breathless panic, tears already spilling down her cheeks. “The dog handler……the dog handler already left. He took the keys with him……”
The color drained from Maxwell's face.
He nearly lost his footing, his voice turning to ice. “Why would he leave?”
“Was it you? What did you do?!”
Joy's voice quavered with wounded innocence. “Maxwell, you don't trust me? Something this serious, how could I possibly interfere?”
She wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes with a stubborn little gesture.
Maxwell studied her for a long moment. And, laughably, he believed her.
He sent someone to track down the dog handler while pressing himself against the window to look at me. “Doris, just hold on a little longer. The key is coming. Just hang in there.”
Watching the ache written across his features, Joy spoke up. “It'll still be a while before the dog handler can get here. If this goes on much longer, Mrs. Farley will lose the will to survive……”
“The only thing we can do now is provoke her survival instinct, make her fight to hold on……”
Maxwell looked at Joy, then back at me, barely struggling anymore. “How do we provoke her?”
From an angle Maxwell couldn't see, Joy's lips curled. She stepped closer to the dark room. “Mrs. Farley, do you know why not a single person at the company dared to announce you when you visited last time?”
“Because I was in there.”
“When you pushed the door open, I was crouched under the desk.”
“That's why he seemed so distracted when he was chatting with you.”
“My favorite thing to wear is that red negligee from your closet. Every time I put it on, Maxwell can barely keep his hands off me. He calls me shameless, but he can't get enough.”
“And that nursery you decorated with your own hands? That's where Maxwell and I conceived our first child.”
“The window seat was too hard, so I used that little cotton jacket you stitched to cushion it. So that mystery stain on it,” she let out a soft laugh, “I think you know what that was.”
She asked me, “Does it hurt?”
Yes.
I wanted to kill them both.
That little cotton jacket, stitched over countless sleepless nights. I never even got to dress my baby in it.
Never even got to see his face, to tell him how much I loved him.
And now he was gone from me forever.
Tears blurred my vision. I dragged myself up from the pool of blood, fueled by nothing but hatred, and screamed with everything I had left. “Kill you! I'll have my brother kill every last one of you!”
The sound was raw, inhuman, like a vengeful ghost shrieking for blood.
Pain flashed through Maxwell's eyes. “Doris, don't say things you don't mean. Just hold on a little longer.”
The tearing at my body and the massive blood loss had already dragged my consciousness to the edge. I kept repeating it, barely aware of my own voice: ‘Kill you all.’
Maxwell pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose, his tone caught between pity and exasperation.
“Easy now. Stop talking. No one in the capital can touch me.”
The instant the words left his mouth, a single “bang” split the air and a bullet tore straight toward him.
A mist of blood erupted.
Over the sharp ringing that followed, a cold voice cut through from the doorway.
“That so?”
