Chapter 6 - The Bedside Confession
Tristan pulled the vinyl visitor’s chair to the edge of my bed, smoothing the creases of his slacks with a deliberate, leisurely grace. He looked around the sterile room, his gaze lingering momentarily on the medical monitors before settling back onto my face.
"You look terrible, darling," he murmured, his voice dripping with synthetic tenderness. "Dr. Mensah and that aggressive detective have filled your head with unspeakable fantasies. A biological assault? An intentional poisoning? Do you have any idea how unhinged you sound to our friends? To the board?"
I lay still, my hands resting atop the white thermal blanket, feeling the tiny square of the micro-transmitter taped securely beneath the hollow of my collarbone.
"You canceled the rides, Tristan," I said, my voice trembling with calculated frailty. I let my chin quiver, leaning into the role of the broken, terrified wife. "I was screaming in pain. You stood in the hallway and watched me crawl."
Tristan leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped between them. He tilted his head, studying me like an entomologist examining a pinned beetle.
"I canceled the rides because you were out of your mind with fever, Reese. You were going to cause a public scene that would have destroyed my standing during the most sensitive fiscal week of my career. If the venture syndicate thought my personal life was unraveling, they would have pulled the bridge loan."
"Is that why you gave me the cream?" I asked, my breathing shallow, mimicking exhaustion. "To protect your standing?"
A slow, chilling smile touched the corners of his mouth. It was the smile he only wore behind closed doors, late at night, when the rest of the world was shut out and his true nature came out to play.
"The cream was an innovation," he said softly, leaning in until his breath ghosted across my cheek. "Do you know how difficult it is to engineer a localized tissue-dissolving agent that mimics necrotizing fasciitis so perfectly that even a board-certified trauma surgeon would mistake it for an environmental bacterium? It took my chief microbiologist nine months in our Zurich lab."
In the adjoining room, through the hidden microphone, I knew Detective Bouchard’s team was recording every single syllable. My heart was pounding like a war drum, but I kept my face blank, my eyes wide with manufactured terror.
"Why me, Tristan?" I whispered. "I gave you everything. I supported you when your first company collapsed. I signed the collateral guarantee for this condo."
"And that was your greatest contribution, Reese," he replied, his tone conversational, almost pleasant. "You were wonderful collateral. But collateral is only useful until the debt exceeds the asset value. *Nexis* is dead. The board doesn't know it yet, but the federal regulators are freezing our accounts on Friday for securities fraud."
He stood up, stepping around the side of the bed, his shadow falling over my bandaged leg like a shroud.
"I don't have time for a messy, multi-year bankruptcy where the courts strip away everything I've built. I don't have time for a divorce where you take half of what's left. But an offshore insurance settlement? Twelve million dollars, untaxable, deposited directly into a private trust in Grand Cayman following the tragic, untimely death of my beloved wife from a rare, flesh-eating pathogen she contracted while gardening?"
He chuckled—a low, rattling sound devoid of human warmth.
"It was poetry, Reese. Pure poetry. You were supposed to die quietly in our bed while I was supposedly out running morning errands. You were supposed to slip into septic coma by 4:00 AM. If you hadn't crawled down those service stairs like a stubborn dog, you would be resting peacefully right now, and I would be planning your memorial service at Fourth Presbyterian."
"The police have the glass shard from the basement," I whispered, baiting the hook.
Tristan waved his hand dismissively, brushing away the threat as if it were a speck of dust. "A microscopic fragment of glass in a public corridor? Good luck proving I put it there. The courier who cleaned that locker is already on a flight to Costa Rica. The jar from the bathroom is currently sitting at the bottom of the Chicago River, encased in fifty pounds of fast-drying industrial concrete."
He reached out, his manicured fingers gently, possessively brushing a strand of hair from my damp forehead. The touch made my skin crawl with pure revulsion.
"You survived the night, Reese. I'll give you credit for that. You have an extraordinary constitution. But look at you. You're a cripple. Half your leg is in an incinerator downstairs. You have no money, your family lives two thousand miles away, and tomorrow morning, a Cook County judge is signing an order transferring you to my private care facility in Rockford."
His grip on my hair tightened slightly, his eyes narrowing into cold, predatory slits.
"You think this hospital can protect you? Once you are under my legal guardianship, all it takes is one small, unmonitored injection into your central line. A little potassium chloride. A sudden, tragic post-surgical cardiac arrest. And the best part? Everyone will assume your poor, ravaged body simply gave out under the strain of the sepsis."
He leaned down until his lips almost brushed my ear.
"You should have stayed in bed when I told you to, Reese."
I looked directly into his eyes, the manufactured fear vanishing from my face in an instant, replaced by a cold, absolute triumph.
"You're right about one thing, Tristan," I said clearly, looking past his shoulder toward the door. "I should have left you three years ago."
Tristan blinked, confused by the sudden change in my tone.
May you like
Behind him, the heavy wooden door was kicked off its magnetic latch with an explosive crash.
***
