Page 157 of Requiem
I close my eyes. I can’t stop shaking.
“I couldn’t help him,” Adriana says brokenly through the speakers. “I just sat with him while he cried about being abused by someone who…who wasn’tme.”She says that last part bitterly, like she hates herself.
The shame inside her voice feels almost unbearable to listen to.
“I think that’s when I realized there wasn’t enough left of me to survive this.”
Silence crashes heavily across the courtroom.
Adriana breathes shakily one last time before continuing more softly. “I took Nolan’s flash drive after Alexei killed him. I hid it because somebodyhadto tell the truth eventually.” A pause. “Even if it was too late for me.”
My chest hurts so badly now, I genuinely wonder if I might pass out.
“If Jude survives this…” Her voice trembles again, turning into light sobs. “Please don’t let people turn him into the monster they made him pretend to be.”
And just like that, the recording ends.
Static fills the courtroom once more, and nobody speaks.
Emma is crying openly behind me now, one hand covering her mouth. Beside her, Micah exhales shakily through his own tears. Heather’s head is leaned on his shoulder, eyes red and looking at me with so much love.
Rafe remains perfectly still, and Adela’s eyes are watering.
And I sit there silently unraveling beneath fluorescent courtroom lights while the dead finally tells the truth for me.
Chapter forty-two
EMMA EASTON
When we get out of the shower, I can barely hold myself together. Jude and I haven’t really spoken since court. Since I learned more about what happened to him. We had just washed each other in silence, standing under the hot spray of water. His eyes were vacant the entire time…like he was lost.
I’m scared.
I don’t want to lose him…but what if I do? What if everything inside him comes crashing down, and he can’t survive the fallout? Like Adriana? He’s endured more trauma and pain than anyone I’ve ever known.
I sit near the edge of the bed wearing one of his black shirts and underwear, my knees drawn against my chest while the television flickers silently across the room. Some late-night news station is still running coverage about the trial beneath bright red banners and scrolling headlines.
I can’t look at it anymore.
The second time Adriana’s name appeared across the screen earlier, I muted it. I still can’t stop hearing it.
“Either now trying to escape Alexei…or years from now trying to escape my own mind.”
My stomach twists painfully. The sadness inside me tonight feels endless.
The bathroom door opens softly behind me, and I glance up. Jude steps out a second later, his hair damp and gray sweatpants hanging low on his hips, exhaustion carved so deeply into his face that it almost physically hurts to look at him. He looks tired all the way through his soul. His eyes meet mine briefly before shifting away again. That hurts too. Everything hurts now.
He crosses slowly toward the balcony door instead of the bed, reaching for the cigarettes resting beside his phone before slipping outside into the cold night air. He stopped smoking for a while in Seaside, but it makes sense that he started again in Moscow. I don’t bother telling him to put it out. He needs whatever he can to cope.
I watch him through the glass. He leans heavily against the railing after lighting one, bare shoulders tense, while smoke disappears into the snowy air around him. There’s something different about him tonight. Adriana’s recording reached inside him and reopened every wound he’d barely been managing to keep stitched shut. My chest tightens painfully because hearing what happened to him out loud…
It changed something inside me, too.
Not my love for him, but thegrief. The grief feels so much larger than it ever did before. And the fact that the woman I once hated practically sacrificed herself to save us makes me feel so conflicted. Micah surely would have died had we not been able to get back to the mansion and call for an ambulance.
I hated her for hurting Jude, and he once wanted to kill her. But as I look out at him, I wonder how he feels about her now. She really seemed to care about him in the end. She even brought him back by saying my name when he almost killed himself.
I don’t realize I’m crying until Jude steps back inside a few minutes later and notices. He crosses the room quickly, concern overtaking exhaustion.
