Page 72 of Ruin
She slides down the wall, gun still in her hands but no longer aimed at me. "That's impossible. You didn't even know me?—"
"I kneweverythingabout you. Where you went to school, who you dated, what you dreamed about becoming. I had people watching you, reporting back, making sure you stayed on the right path."
"What path?"
"The one that led you to me."
She stares at me like I'm speaking a foreign language. "You're fucking lying."
"Harvard Law School. You applied to six schools, got accepted to five. Harvard was your second choice behind Columbia. But Columbia's financial aid offer mysteriously fell through at the last minute, didn't it? Problems with their endowment fund, they said."
Her face goes white.
"Your internship at the DA's office this past summer. You were supposed to work for Legal Aid, helping indigent clients. But they had sudden budget cuts. Funny how these things happen."
"Stop."
"Even David. Sweet, boring, safe David who treated you like you were made of glass. You met him at that coffee shop near campus, remember? He was reading the same book you were—some dense legal theory text that no normal person would touch. What are the odds?"
"Stop it."
"I orchestrated every major decision in your life. Guided you toward becoming someone who could understand my world, someone who craved darkness instead of running from it."
She's shaking her head now, tears streaming down her face. "No. No, that's not possible."
"The victim advocacy center where you worked—did you ever wonder why they assigned you only to cases involving organized crime? Why every client you counseled had been hurt by people in my world?"
"Because that's what I was good at?—"
"Because that's whatIneeded you to be good at. Because I needed you to understand that the law fails people. That the system you believed in is corrupt and useless. That sometimes you need monsters to fight monsters."
"You're lying." But her voice is betraying her.
"Your apartment. Did you choose it, or did your realtor suggest it? Three blocks from Purgatory, close enough that you'd start noticing the place, wondering about it."
She's sobbing now, but the gun is still in her hands. Still dangerous.
"Even your research into your parents' case. The files you kept, the evidence you preserved—I made sure you had access to just enough information to keep the mystery alive. To keep you hungry for answers."
"Why?" The word comes out broken. "Why would you do that to me?"
"Because I needed someone who could stand beside me. Someone strong enough to handle the truth, smart enough to be useful, broken enough to understand why darkness is sometimes necessary."
"You made me into your perfect victim."
"I made you into my perfect partner, little wolf."
She looks up at that, eyes blazing with fury. "Partner? You think turning me into your unwitting accomplice makes us partners?"
"I think you're the only person who's ever truly understood me. The only one who's seen what I really am and accepted it anyway."
"I didn't know what you really were!"
"You knew enough. You saw me order deaths, watched me destroy people who crossed me, witnessed the violence that keeps this empire running. And you got wet from it."
She flinches like I've slapped her.
"That's the part you can't forgive, isn't it? Not that I killed your parents—you could probably rationalize that eventually, given enough time. It's that you loved me for being what I am. That some part of you always knew, and that part craved exactly the kind of power I represented."
