Page 81 of What You left in Me

She presses her face into her hands, the gesture all human and pathetic and monstrous at once. When she speaks, it’s barely a breath, like she’s confessing to the dark itself.

“I thought I was making the world right,” she says. “I thought I was carving out a life. I was wrong. I didn’t think—I told myself I could change it.”

Waren tips his head, red eyes gleaming mean in the floodlight spill. I can feel the annoyance radiating off of him. He isn’t here for a confession. “Fucking stop it already.”

“I fell in love,” she whispers, as if that absolves anything. “He wasn’t going to leave her. He was never going to. And I…” Her hands drop, pearls knocking softly against her throat. “I cleared the road I wanted to walk.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Waren says, a small, wet chuckle. “And I did the sweeping.”

“I don’t sleep,” she answers, and something in the way she says it makes the night feel colder.

Waren shifts his body, impatience scratching through the pose. “You think I fucking care? Point is debts don’t evaporate. You kept your end tidy, and I kept my mouth shut. That silence has a price, same as anything worth buying.”

Eleanor’s gaze flicks toward the hospital doors, calculation flashing behind fear. “You’ll be paid.” She straightens her posture until it’s something like her old armor again. “You’ll have it by next week.”

“Next week,” he repeats, savoring the words as if they’re a sweet. “You do love a timeline.”

Her voice turns cool and composed in a way that would fool anyone who hasn’t just seen her shake. “Not here. Not tonight. You’ll have it.”

He licks his lips and his hand reaches out toward Eleanor’s face. Suddenly, his eyes are brighter now. “I’ll be expecting it.”

Eleanor flinches away from his touch and doesn’t answer. She takes a step back and nods. Giving Waren one last look that’s filled with disgust and regret, she turns on her heel. The pearlsflash, the heels click, and she steps into the wash of hospital light, swallowed by it as if nothing feral ever touched her.

Waren watches her go, then lets out a soft laugh, pleased with himself. “Next week,” he says to the empty air. “Sure.”

That’s when I decide to move. I start walking toward Waren and for a moment when he notices me, he squints his eyes, trying to register what’s happening.Oh, you have no idea, you bastard.

Waren steps back, guiltily. “You aren’t going to ask me questions here, are you? I’m not your confessional.”

Despite looking nervous, he says it with a smirk and a line that should be a dare. I am furious by degrees that feel too big to carry. He expects me to confront him here, amid concrete and moonlight, to play his little theater. He expects bravado. I don’t want to negotiate the terms of what he knows in small talk.

I shake my head. My head moves like a weapon. “You’re not getting to explain yourself right now.” I say it softly, letting him hear the warning in my restraint. “I’m not going to be the idiot who asks you for a story you can sell to someone else tonight.”

His eyebrows hitch. “Oh? You gonna pay then? Or are you the kind who likes to hunt without giving up the meat?”

Money has always made men of Waren’s sort cooperative. It doesn’t make them honest, but it buys time, and time is leverage. I’m angrier than I am careful, angrier than the patient man I have trained myself to be in the boardroom. Anger wants answers now. But answers are toxic if you open them without a plan. So, I reach for the thing we both understand: currency. I don’t need a damn translator for that.

I pull my phone out; the movement practiced to anonymity. “How much for the receipts? For names? For the ledger?”

He grins like a dog smelling blood. “Start with fifty thousand and we’ll see how honest I feel.”

Fucking bastard. I expected him to fight a little at least. Considering how smart Eleanor acts, she’s fucking stupid for trusting someone like him.

The numbers land like a physical blow.The fucker is asking for too much.I could walk away… walk into the glow of the hospital, to Richard’s room, the antiseptic safety of machines and monitors. But walking away would be theft too: theft of evidence and of the chance to give Ariane the truth she doesn’t deserve to be kept from. Walking away is also letting a man like Waren dictate terms to me. I don’t like feeling dictated to.

“Fine.” I state it like a verdict. “But you’re going to answer when I say. Not when you think you can sell to the next desperate person who comes along.”

He cackles softly, delighted and greedy. “You’re serious. I like you. You think you can buy my conscience.”

“It’s not your conscience I’m buying,” I say. The words come fast. “It’s your cooperation. You give me names, dates, transfers. You tell me how it was done. You tell me who signed what, who moved cash through which shells. Do that and your check clears. Cross me, try to blackmail me, sell it…”

Waren laughs, but there’s a twitch now I haven’t seen before. “You won’t be the one to threaten me, Wagner. People who threaten me usually end up with a very specific problem.”

“You underestimate me,” I say. “You overestimate your safety. I’m not in the mood to play your favorite man-of-the-world tonight.”

He levels that awful stare at me, like he’s measuring whether I’m the kind of man who’ll flinch when a match is thrown. “You don’t come at me with fists. You come at me with checks, or you come at me with someone who breaks bones. I prefer checks. They’re uncomplicated.”

“I’ll pay,” I say. The number I hand him is transferred before my irritation has time to cool. The money buzzes the way currency does now, liquid and immediate. Waren’s phone buzzes, and an ugly and triumphant grin breaks across his face. He tucks my number in his pocket like a talisman.