Aisling must’ve slept right beside me because I could still feel her heat when I woke up. Her scent of ginger and honey and my fucking undoing.

I yawned, stretching on the couch.

“Make coffee,” I growled, but there was no response.

I opened my eyes, looking around.

There was a bowl of steaming chicken noodle soup by my side, a bottle of water—uncapped—and some pills.

Aisling was gone.

The next day, I met with Barbara McAllister on the outskirts of Boston.

She was a hobo-looking woman, not in the hipster, bought-that-holed-shirt-for-three-hundred-bucks way, but in the seriously-need-a-sandwich way. You could tell that underneath the bleached hair, wrinkled face, and badly applied self-tan, she’d once been an attractive woman.

Barbara was the final blow I needed to bring Gerald down to his knees. The missing piece in Operation Destroy Gerald. She held some deep secrets he never wanted anyone to know, and for a healthy sum of money, she was willing to air them out to the world.

“But I need to make sure it’ll be worth my while. I’ll only do it for the right price. Can I borrow a cigarette?” Barbara asked when we’d met in a small coffee shop.

She wore a black mini-dress and a cheap trench coat, and it looked like the ‘right price’ for her would be twenty bucks and a McMeal. I silently offered her my open pack of cigarettes, keeping my expression blank.

I still soldiered through my plan for Gerald Fitzpatrick, but I was no longer gleeful about it. Somewhere along the road, hurting Aisling, which I knew I was bound to do, felt unnecessary. It wasn’t that I was going soft. It was that there was no need to be harsh to a woman as pliable as her.

So fucking pliable that she runs an underground death clinic and seeks you out.

Barbara lit up a cigarette, exhaling with a satisfied smile.

“How do you know I’ll even get a book deal? There isn’t exactly a shortage of women Gerald Fitzpatrick has dipped his dick into.” She eyed me skeptically.

“True, but you are the only one who’d lived in one of his apartments. You weren’t just a fuck, you were a mistress. He flew you places. Bought you expensive jewelry. I bet it’s just the tip of the iceberg.” I smirked at her, setting the bait to make her say more.

She grinned, her teeth unusually white for a smoker, and nodded enthusiastically.

“Oh, did he ever. Samuel, my boy, he adored me. Of course, I did my part, too. There were orgies. Massive orgies. He sometimes took us three at a time. I always thought it was peculiar Ger was so upset when his son, Hunter, did it. After all, he was the king of orgies back in the day.”

My jaw tensed. I didn’t need to hear about my brother-in-law’s sexcapades before he married my baby sister.

“What else?” I asked.

“There were drugs. A whole lot of them at those parties.” Barbara rubbed her chin. It struck me as interesting that although Gerald had put her on the list, too, when I asked about her, he’d lied to me. Some of the details he had given me were different from what I’d found when I conducted my own research. Addresses, where they’d met, her age. Nothing lined up, so I decided to dig deeper. I was glad I did.

“There were also a few abortions.” She cleared her throat. “Gerald did not like to use protection, but he also didn’t want any bastard children. He was actually adamant about that, as you could imagine. I, myself, knew better than to tempt fate. I was always on the pill. Didn’t have the ambition of getting knocked up with a billionaire’s kid. Too dangerous. Looking back, maybe I should’ve. Maybe I’d fare better than I do today.” She looked around the small coffee shop with the peeling wallpaper and dusty surfaces. She lived in a small, deserted town. It was obvious she wasn’t swimming in it.

“But I was privy to everything that happened behind the scenes. He was a monster, Samuel. A real monster. Ever met one?” She sucked on the cigarette I gave her greedily, ignoring the disturbed glances the barista behind the counter shot at her—though she didn’t approach us or tell her to put it out.

“Yeah,” I said easily. “I’ve met monsters before. Multiple times, actually. So, here’s how we are going to do this, Barbara. I’ll bring the lucrative tell-all book deal, you’ll bring the juice. But whatever happens, you must remember one thing—you never met me, never saw me, and never heard of me. Am I clear?”

She nodded, finishing off her cigarette and taking a sip of the stale coffee I’d bought her.

“Absolutely. May I have another cigarette?”

I laughed, standing up and tossing the pack in her lap before disappearing back into the white blizzard.

“Sure, sweetheart, take the whole fucking pack.”

I smelled it before I saw it. The puke.

Then when I noticed the first spot, I realized they were everywhere. Vomit stains.

Yellow and faint, covering the carpets, the floor, the walls.

I dropped my backpack at the door, following their trail up the stairway, where they led. It was unlike the housekeepers to leave any sort of dirt unattended.

Unless they wanted me to see it.

It was a cry for help, I knew. And not just from my mother.

Lord, what did she do now?

I reached the second floor then rounded the hallway, my stride picking up speed. Just as I expected, the puke stains led to the master bedroom, my mother’s room. Athair had left days ago, and even though I tried my best to keep an eye on her, I knew Mother was spiraling.

I stopped outside her door, putting my hand on the doorknob and drawing a deep breath.

“Mother?”

There was no answer. I threw the door open, flashbacks of Ms. B attacking my memories, raw and vivid.

Blood.

Bath.

Wrists.

Despair.

I scanned the room. It was completely empty.

“Mother?” I echoed, confused.

Cautiously, I made my way into the en-suite bathroom, my heart in my throat. I hoped for the best but expected the worst. Mother, rehashing that scene at Ms. B’s apartment, finally making good on her idle threats to take her own life. I knew my mother was a cutter. It actually provided me a screwed-up sense of security because people who cut were less likely to perform “successful” suicide attempts.

Jane Fitzpatrick wasn’t even entirely a cutter. Sometimes she bruised herself a little, well and far away from the wrists, to draw attention. But she almost exclusively did this for my father’s and my viewing. Hunter and Cillian had no idea. They weren’t pawns in her emotional blackmail scheme.

I found her lying on the floor by the vanity, facedown.

“Mother!” I cried out, rushing to the bathroom, swinging the door open.

I fell down on both knees, turning her over by the shoulder. She was passed out cold in a pond of her own vomit. Half-dissolved pills were swimming in the vomit like little stars, their content, powdery and thick. Like stardust.

Jesus.

I grabbed her hair, shoving my fingers into her mouth, forcing her to gag and throw up more. She came to life instantly, at first protesting weakly about my hurting her as I held her head, but then she started puking more.

More pills. More everything.

“You need to get your stomach pumped,” I groaned, calling an ambulance with my free hand as I continued trying to make her throw up. “What have you done?”