Page 76 of You Can't Hurt Me

A slow malevolent smile creeps across his face.

“He longed to be a father?” I falter.

“Yeah, right. The perfect daddy.” He looks at me, lets out a thin high laugh that jolts me. “It was all about his work. That’s all he cared about. A chance to study Eva’s baby, the genetic effects of her condition, all wired up in his pain lab. A rare opportunity to test whether the CIP gene is hereditary, another major breakthrough in his research. Gold dust for him.” Before I have time to process this, there is a shiver of movement behind us.

“You’re a terrible liar, Tony.”

I jump at his voice—Nate, here at last.

Tony swivels round to face him. “I wondered when you’d drop by.”

I try to walk toward Nate but Tony stops me. For the briefest moment, it is only the three of us, a dark triad facing each other down. I am frozen, my mind fixed on the blade concealed in Tony’s hand behind his back.

“You were with her when she died, weren’t you?” He glares at Tony. “It was your cocaine, you brought it round with you. Maybe it was already cut with fentanyl or more likely you—”

“Shut the fuck up, Nate,” Tony spits.

“Nate, be careful. He has—”

Tony turns from Nate toward me, eyes glazed, and I fall silent, terrified. I’ve never seen him in a state like this before.

“Anna, I need you to know, that’s not what happened. I swear the cocaine was hers, not mine. She was high when I got there, in one of her moods.”

For so long Tony has been an unreliable witness, a keeper of memories that I never really recognized, yet there is something in his tone that rings true, an urgency. Something family just knows.

“Tony. I believe you. Tell me...”

“I was furious with her. She told me she was pregnant and yet, there she was, using in front of me. Watching her do that, ruining this chance we had of a new life...it destroyed me.”

I watch him closely, something in his features looks bone-weary, broken. “She racked out another two lines and I couldn’t stop myself. I screamed at her, couldn’t she see she was destroying everything? Then she broke it to me, she didn’t want the baby anyway, and the relationship was over. It was time to move on. It was the right decision—to stay with Nate. Just like that she decided, after everything she told me about him.”

I make a sympathetic noise and throw Nate a desperate look, silently pleading with him to stay out of it, knowing that one word from him will break this moment.

“I could feel this pressure building in me, like an iron fist in my gut, watching her head tipped back, laughing, high. It’s as if that whole therapy thing was an act, a persona. This was the real Eva, selfish, off her head. I couldn’t bear it, being there, her humiliating me.”

“So what happened?” I push.

“I watched her, seething.Poor Tony, she kept saying, over and over.” His voice cracks. “That was the worst. Her pity. I thought she was laughing, this weird way she kept repeating my name, her voice catching. Then I realized she was gasping for breath, choking. Her head was still tipped back, she seemed scared...confused. I knew she couldn’t be in pain but she was holding her chest. She reached out for her phone, told me she had to call 999—”

“And you were really scared, weren’t you?” I say, softly, reasonably. “You wouldn’t have wanted her to call 999, that would have been too dangerous.”

“There was no other option, nothing they could do by then anyway. She was too far gone.”

“So you took her phone and...you left her?”

Tony closes his eyes.

There’s a glint in his hand as he turns. It’s only then I see the blade isn’t one he picked up in the kitchen earlier.

It’s smaller, almost like a glass cutter.

The one that went missing from Eva’s studio.

It was Tony. Before he bolted, he defiled Eva’s sculptures in one final vile act, anger, vengeance, grief. Maybe even to make it look like Eva’s doing?

“You’re a monster,” interjects Nate, unable to control himself any longer.

“Fuck you, Nate,” Tony says. His tone flips from vulnerable to vicious in a beat.

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