Page 56 of Karma
Reaching for the water to wet her dry mouth, a side effect of the good drugs she’s on to dull her pain enough to function, she winces at the movement. Colt hands it to her instead, and she tries to get comfortable again. Even with the drugs, she’s still in a lot of pain.
“He told me he’d gone to the house when Margaret was sick. He hitchhiked to find you because he didn’t understand what was going on, and he wasn’t happy you started a new family.”
If her father is affected, he gives nothing away in his expression, and it irks her. She can’t understand how he doesn’t feel any type of guilt over abandoning a child. No matter how crazy he may have been, he was still a kid. A kid who probably thought VP hung the moon.
She shakes her head in disgust and disappointment. “He says he talked to you, Zane. That’s how he learned your mom was sick. There’s a spot by the shop he said he’d wait, watching, and you’d find him and update him about her.”
Zane’s jaw drops. “I always thought… He wasn’t my imaginary friend, was he? He said his name was Nero, which I thought was cool.”
“It is. His middle name is Phillip,” Lex says. “Or was. Is he dead?”
“Not even close,” Venom says, his jaw set. “Psycho’s babysitting the motherfucker, and we’re going to come up with a plan.”
“You know Nero?” VP asks.
Zane blinks and nods. “I haven’t thought about him in forever, but yeah, I do. I always thought I made him up because we looked so much alike. I’d pretend it was me from the future coming to talk to myself. Like a way to know everything would be okay.”
Sniffling, Lex remembers the tire iron and her broken nose. She hates not being able to breathe through her nose. “He told me that the treatments your mom was on worked. Instead of hanging out, waiting to talk to you, he stood in that spot to learn everyone’s routine. Says he swapped out her medication for poison, and it may not have been the cancer that killed her. Well, maybe, because she was taking poison instead of medicine.”
The pain on Zane’s face breaks her heart a little bit. No matter how much she wants nothing to do with him, she can only see a little boy losing his mom. It still affects him.
VP has a look of despair, and it frustrates Lex. He only cares about Zane and Margaret, but he honestly couldn’t care less about abandoning a child because Phillip wasn’t who he wanted. And if he’d been more of a man, maybe none of this would have happened.
“Do you think it’s true?” Colt asks.
Shrugging a shoulder, she sniffles again. “I don’t know why he’d tell me a lie if he planned to kill me.”
“He wouldn’t have a reason to lie,” Venom says. “Especially because he was going to kill himself, too. I found his manifest of what he had planned.”
“Oh, yay. Let’s not ever tell Lex what was supposed to happen, okay?” she says with a small smile. “Oh, he also told me that he was the one who almost killed me when I was fifteen. The firefight with the Devils was just the perfect cover for him, and sending me to Arizona with Mom saved my life.”
This catches VP’s attention. “He tried to shoot you?”
“Well, he stabbed me through the seat of a car after beating me senseless and getting aroused by it. But you findthatshocking?”
“What?” Colt asks. “He… what?”
Waving a hand in the air, she sighs. “He’s a sick fuck. Um, Undertaker, I thought I heard a motorcycle from the trunk. Was that you?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see the car for a while,” Undertaker admits.
“It might’ve been mine,” Zane says. “I got these weird, creepy notes about the house I lived in with Mom, and I’m pretty sure I saw the car you were in at one point early on, but I stopped to take a piss. Then I saw Undertaker race by like he was on fire, and I followed him.”
“Lucas called you, didn’t he?” she asks Undertaker.
He grimaces. “Yeah, but then I fucking dropped the phone and ran it over before I could call anyone. Sorry, man.”
“Wait, Zane, what notes? Or was that what he meant about clues?” Lex asks.
Her brain feels like it’s wading through water, which she doesn’t love. Another side effect of the meds.
“Yeah, I got these weird, cryptic letters about the house where my mom died. It’s where I’ll find the answers I seek or some shit. I figured I’d go check it out.”
“Lex, did he break your nose before you got in the trunk? Because I saw the blood when you jumped out swinging,” Undertaker says.
Holding up her hand, Lex narrows her eyes. “Wait, you saw all of that, and it took you that long to knock his ass off me?”
“I was too far away, and the trees didn’t cover as much as I would’ve liked. I had to be stealthy. If he saw me, he might have panicked and killed you. Or me. I didn’t know Zane was near, so I wanted to make sure you made it.”
