She drifted to the sofa and sat, but then immediately stood. Then she circled the small living room, body practically vibrating with her emotion.
“They took me into an interrogation room, like one of those on TV, and they asked me all about him, our parents, his friends, how he made money. I don’t remember everything they said, but they eventually told me that they’d found him in a hotel room. He’d been unconscious, presumably from a blow to the head, that he hadn’t woken up, and he was at the hospital now. I refused to answer any more of their questions until they took me to him. I regret that,” she said, finally stopping to stare at me.
“Why?” I whispered.
“I thought that not knowing was bad, and it was, make no mistake. But seeing him, hearing the doctors tell me that he’d probably make it, or his body would, anyway, but they couldn’t say about his mind, couldn’t promise me that he’d ever wake up again, it was horrible. Worse than horrible.”
The tears flowed freely now, and she made no attempt to stop them.
“And so there he was, stuck between life and death. My brother’s body, but not his soul. It was cruel, still is.”
The little heart that I had left broke when I looked at her, my precious Lily alone in the world and carrying a burden that would have broken many far older than her.
As much as it hurt to see her this way, as tragic as her story was, it didn’t answer the question, and instinct told me that there was yet more.
“That’s what you wanted to tell me?”
“Part of it,” she replied.
“So tell me the rest, especially why you think it was Christoph Senior on the phone.”
She breathed deep, wiped the tears from her face, and began again.
“So that was it. He was in the hospital for a while, and then he went to long-term care, and I tried to figure it out as best I could. That was a very difficult time. Very…” She trailed off.
“Christoph Senior,” I said.
“It was about a year after…after they’d found him. I was visiting Braden in that horrible place. And the TV was blaring like it always was. I didn’t pay attention until I heard that voice. It was like someone had shocked me. Everything fell away, and I turned, saw him, the man I only later realized was Christoph Senior. He was leaving a police station, and reporters had shoved what seemed like hundreds of microphones in his face, the media crowding around him. It was just a moment, just a low, whispered, ‘No comment.’ But I recognized that voice anyway. Knew he was the one who had answered that phone.”
I remembered that time well. It had been the only time Christoph Senior had been close to capture. He had gotten ambitious, a little sloppy, and had been caught up in an ATF raid. He shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and it had taken resources, time, and the liberal application of pain to make that go away, all of which I had been a part of. I’d been surprised by the oversight and afterward had worked hard to ensure that Christoph Senior and Clan Constantin never faced such a risk again.
But the event had been little more than a blip on the radar, something that I had cataloged with all the other necessities of helping run the organization, nothing of note.
None of the many things I’d done were; I barely remembered them. If I’d known what the things I did meant to people like her, meant to her, if I had known what she would come to mean to me, would I have done anything differently?
I wanted to believe I would have, wanted to believe I was the kind of man who would have changed, one who still could.
But I wasn’t, wouldn’t ever be. Which was the reason I never should have started any of this, the reason why I should walk away.
I couldn’t do that either, though.
When I glanced back at Lily, her tears had dried, and her eyes now burned with a fury that I couldn’t ignore.
I reached for her again, ignored the burst of anger when she flinched at my touch. I gripped her elbows, held her until she stopped trying to break away.
“You’re mistaken, Lily. Christoph didn’t do that,” I said finally.
Her eyes flashed. “Of course you’d say that.”
“Have I ever lied to you?” I asked, thinking of the conversations that had passed, the truths I had shared with her.
“You’ll defend him until your last breath,” she said.
I kept my eyes on hers. Repeated my question. “Have I ever lied to you?”
She stared at me, but then shook her head grudgingly.
“Then trust me on this. He didn’t,” I said softly.
She narrowed her eyes, her gaze now filled with suspicion and disbelief. “How are you so sure? You don’t know everything he does. Or did.”