Standing in a dark hospital room at one in the morning, my nostrils didn't feel the burn of the dirty-clean air. My eyes didn't sting with the glare of the bluish strip-lighting above the bed. My insides didn't roll with hospital nausea. My whole body was dead and dry inside, like a shell on a beach.
Sofi crashed into a worn armchair set back from the bed, gesturing to the guarding officer to stand behind her before hunching over her pink notebook. Charlotte tiptoed after her, settling on one of a pair of plastic chairs that had been set by the bed, where Will lay as a twisted lump shrouded by sheets. From my position by the door, nothing of him was visible.
Charlotte fumbled under the bedsheets, pulling out an olive-brown hand and pressing it to her cheek with a whimper. The lump in the bed didn't stir at first. Then, another hand slowly curled around the blanket, a morphine drip attached. Was he in terrible pain? Was he permanently injured?
The piano strings that linked our hearts began to pull, almost wrenching me toward his bed. He needed me. I clung to the door handle behind my back, gripping until the metal bit into my fingers. I was seconds away from running to him, wrapping him up in all my love, promising him that he'd be OK. But he wasn't mine anymore. He'd never been mine. It hadn't been real.
Charlotte helped turn Will's body in the bed, soft curls peeking from under the sheets as she settled him higher against the pillows. The piano strings pulled taut, making my heart beat demisemiquavers. I gripped the door handle harder.
"Are you in pain?" Charlotte waited long seconds with no answer from Will, before leaning back in her chair. "When's the doctor going to check for nerve damage?" Perhaps Will was too zoned-out from the morphine to talk to her. "What happened at the apartment?"
Sofi read aloud from her pink book. "Mr Graz's statement said that he was in the apartment's living room, and that someone shot open the front door's lock and entered the apartment. We've identified him as Angus McAllister. He shot at Graz, who was wounded in the pelvis. Arturo Torrente appeared at the door and shot at McAllister. Graz ran to a bedroom while the two attackers fought. McAllister died of blood loss at the scene. Torrente died from his gunshot wounds on arrival at the hospital."
Was that how Cal was to die? Shot unceremoniously by el Nube while in the middle of a job? I'd expected Cal to go on forever, his quiet brand of death dealt to enemies, dissenters and escapees for years to come, honing Sigma each time into a sharper, more precise blade. For all I hated him, that Cal could have let himself be taken so easily rankled. By far the most cautious and thorough of Sigma's managers, there was no way that Cal had blundered into an assassination. He'd almost certainly been killed as part of a dedicated plan. But why had he wanted to hurt Will? And how had el Nube found Cal?
Charlotte murmured on into Will's ear. "I'll pay your bail tomorrow morning. You made just the one statement to the police?" Will didn't stir, probably too doped-up to register Charlotte's questions.
"He did, relating to both the attack on him, and to the smuggling. Officer Oviedo was the charging officer," said Sofi, motioning to the guard next to her. "That was just after eleven. I'll send the transcript to your office if you're interested."
"What are the charges?" Charlotte whispered into the sheets. Again, the lump in the bed was completely still.
Sofi sighed, as if bothered by the extra work of answering for Will. "Smuggling contraband materials, aiding and abetting criminal activity, resisting arrest. Further charges of other illegal activity may come as we corroborate with other individuals currently in police custody."
"Is that true, Will?"
"It's pointless trying to talk to him tonight. Try tomorrow morning when he's off the morphine." Sofi snapped her pink book closed and stood.
My grip on the door handle released by the tiniest amount.
"I'm staying in Maria tonight, and I'll get a lawyer for you tomorrow. We can talk then." Charlotte kissed Will's hand. The piano strings writhed, slicing at my heart.
A quiet reply broke from the mound of sheets on the bed. "I'm so sorry, Charlotte." He sounded broken and far away, but his voice slid over me like velvet, like it always had.
"It's done now," she said finally.
"Can I still see the girls?"
My heart ached for Sabrina then; she was upset enough that I was leaving. Now she was gonna lose me and Will at the same time. He'd betrayed her too.
"It's best that the girls don't know...about this. And I should...stay away. There may be journalists interested. And you're in danger."
I felt it in Charlotte's voice. Disappointment. Humiliation. Forcing her way into Will's life hadn't gotten her the well-rounded family that she'd been craving. Charlotte rose from her chair, turning from the bed.
A hand shot out from beneath the blanket and caught her wrist. "Is Zeph OK?"
My skin shivered when he said my name.
Charlotte stilled at the bed. "I'll find him another guarantor."
"Is he OK?" The fear in Will's voice cut into me.
My muscles twisted against the door, urging me to run to him.
Charlotte looked up at me, her eyes red and begging. "He's here, Will."
I shook my head, my hands raised in surrender, a silent plea to let me leave.
"Zeph, ask him whatever you want. It's your only chance."
I shook my head again. I didn't have the resolve to be near Will when he was so hurt.
"I'll record what you say as evidence to confirm that there is no witness-tampering," said Sofi, fumbling with her phone mic before leaning in toward Will with a hand under her chin, as if ready to watch a movie play out on his face.
I clicked the door open behind me. My muscles bunched, straining to flee into the Maria night.
Will shifted himself upward in the bed, soft curls giving way to a forehead creased with pain, and sad eyes that searched the room for me. He spied me at the door, and our eyes met. He looked away quickly, as if he'd gazed into my heart and found it an empty shell, dead but for the zephyrs that whistled through it.
Charlotte began to beg. "You can't go back to Korea without an explanation. Please, Zeph."
My hand hung at the door, ready to bolt out of the room. I didn't need to know how Will had destroyed everything. I didn't care what he'd done. He'd never been mine. I'd been used for some Sigma project or another, like I always was.
Courage, Zeph. For Raheem.
Perhaps Will had the answers that had eluded Teresa and me for weeks. If Will was high-ranking enough in Sigma, the best I could do was to keep my promise to Miles, and use Will as a means of finding Raheem.
I shuffled, dropped, sat stiff in the chair. Like an insect pinned to the plastic.
Charlotte reached over and squeezed my hand in a death-grip. My voice stuck in my throat, emerging as a dry croak.
"How high up a manager are you?"
Sofi scribbled away as I spoke.
"Do you work at Central?"
His gentle bass-baritone rumble slipped over me, making me weak. "I'm not in Sigma, Zeph."
He was lying. Perhaps he didn't realize that Sofi had already briefed us. There was little point in talking if I was gonna hit a wall of deceit. The scritch-scratch of Sofi's pen went on.
"Is that why...you didn't want us to be together? Because I'd find out that you were in Sigma?"
"I'm not in Sigma." Lies, again.
"Is that why you didn't want us to stay together when I go back to Korea? Because you knew you were going to jail?"
"Yeah. Partly."
Maybe he'd committed so many crimes that it would have only been a matter of time before the police had found him.
"Why did Cal shoot you?"
A pause. Was he searching his mind for a convenient lie?
"I don't know. Maybe because I took you away. Or because Cal thought I started the fire at Seven."
Sofi's pen raced along the pages of her little pink book.
"Did you start the fire?"
"No." His voice was firm. Perhaps it was the truth, but he'd been so good at lying so far.
"Do you know who did?"
"No."
I didn't know what to believe. "How did Cal find you? How did the other guy find Cal?"
"I don't know."
Sofi's pen rested. Why was I asking questions that her team should have be asking? Or did Sofi already know all the answers, and was simply examining Will's lies?
Who was he? How had I never encountered him before at Seven? He must have been a manager at Central, too high up to bother with Seven.
"Were you involved with my ransom?"
"No. I just know what you told me about it."
"What do you do for Sigma? Are you running one of their shell companies?"
"I don't work for Sigma, Zeph." More fucking lies.
Sofi was sat with her book on her lap. She'd heard his shit before.
"Who do you work for?"
Will's face was ashen and his voice trembling. I couldn't tell if it was from the morphine or my interrogation. "Nobody. I was in debt. I couldn't afford my Mom's clinic fees."
I didn't believe it for a second. "If you needed money, why didn't you call Constance Lyons, or Charlotte? Or Gloria? They'd have lent you money."
Will's voice dropped to a whisper. "Couldn't ask them. Got too sick to work. I sold everything apart from Clarabel Lyons's furniture."
His words struck me, hard, as images of the museum-like emptiness of his Maria apartment came back to me. It was true that Will had nothing of value. But I still didn't believe that he'd sold it all. Surely there'd have been other avenues to exhaust before taking money from a gang.
"So, your first thought was asking Sigma for a loan?"
"No. They asked me to do a job. A joint project with El Nube. They wanted the delivery man to be from neither gang, because the risk of arrest was high. I'd get twenty-five thousand dollars. Enough for my Mom's clinic fees for over a year."
I chanced a look at Will. His eyes were closed like he was talking through a wave of morphine, his head tucked against his pillow.
"The job was to collect three consignments of counterfeit documents from a production facility in Sierra Morena, just across the border in Nevada. I don't know whose facility it was, but el Nube was providing access to it in a deal with Sigma. I was to deliver the consignments to Wharf Ten. El Nube's logistics people would then ship it to Sigma's buyer in Mexico, and el Nube would get a cut.
"But the police must have been tracking the delivery, because they ambushed the third shipment on the wharf when I arrived. All the Sigma guys disappeared, leaving Arturo Torrente from el Nube and me, getting shot at. Arturo got pinned by police vehicles, and was gonna be shot. I grabbed him and pulled him into my car. I got shot in my arm protecting him."
"That's why you had tramadol in your bathroom in Maria." I should have fucking known. He'd been lying to me from day one. "That wound on your arm isn't from an electrical injury."
"I'm so sorry, Zeph."
No time for Will's regret. All I needed to know was who had done what with Raheem. "So, what? Sigma paid you?"
"We made it to one of el Nube's hide-outs and Arturo got one of their doctors to fix me up. Arturo told me they were counterfeit 3G passports from an original supplied by Sigma. Arturo eventually delivered the shipment through el Nube's logistics people by another route. I don't know which. Sigma counted the job as completed successfully."
Will's eyes were wide, his gaze locked on the far wall, like he was reliving the terror of the job. That part was at least the truth.
"Once Arturo had reported back about how Sigma had scattered but I'd protected him during the ambush, El Nube's boss wanted compensation from Sigma for my injury. A week later, Arturo and me were invited to meet Jones at La Rosa to negotiate compensation. You were there, playing piano."
"La Rosa?"
"Yeah. I followed Arturo in through the ballroom doors, right past the grand piano. You were focused on your warm-up, but you noticed me. And I noticed you."
A sickening chill rushed over me. I remembered.
"It was you. At your Mom's funeral, the weird déjà vu I had of a man in a suit, walking through glass doors. It was you, coming in through the ballroom doors at La Rosa. It was you. You weren't crying for Mozhgan. You were crying because you thought I'd realized what you were."
"I'm so sorry, Zeph." Will slid lower in the bed.
Will had dragged me out of the fire at Seven because he'd recognized me. He'd seen me before at La Rosa. The truth was so much more heartbreaking, so much more devastating than any lies.
"So, what did Jones do?"
"He was in meetings until late. We were told to enjoy ourselves. So I watched you. You seemed so sad. Afraid. And the way you played, Zeph..." Will's eyes were bright, glistening with unshed tears as he lay against the pillow. Was he faking it? "I asked which orchestra they'd hired you from. When they told me that you were a..."
"So, this is all my fault?"
"No, Zeph. Jones was too busy to see us that night. We were told that he'd meet us the following Friday at the sugar factory. So we waited another week. When Jones saw my wound, he said that because I was in good shape and the job was completed, that there was to be no financial compensation for el Nube. He suggested that I book one of Sigma's women assets as compensation for my injury. I declined, saying that I didn't want anything. That made Arturo mad. I was making him look weak by refusing the compensation he'd just argued for. Then, Noah said...he said...that he had a suggestion."
"Noah was there? At the sugar factory?"
"Yeah. He was leading the project."
I should have fucking guessed. Were there any Sigma projects that Noah wasn't bending to his own ends?
"So? What suggestion did Noah make?"
"I'm so sorry, Zeph." Will squeezed his eyes shut, burrowing lower into the bedsheets. "Noah told Jones that I'd watched you play piano all night at La Rosa. So Jones said that the matter was settled. He called Seven to...to..."
No. Please. Not this.
"To book me as compensation," I whispered. I'd been so fucking blind. "You were my mystery client on the night of the fire."
How hadn't I guessed? How many times had he looked at me over the past two months, eyes glittering with gold, waiting for the compensation he was owed?
"Did you book Raheem before me?" I ground out through gritted teeth.
"No."
"What about Luke?"
"I've never booked any assets," he pleaded, white-knuckled hands clutching at his blankets like a shield.
"Don't fucking lie to me."
"Jones planned it! I didn't ask him to. I swear I wouldn't have made you...please believe me, Zeph. I would've just talked to you."
"Talk to me?"
My incredulous laughter rang around the room. That a client would be satisfied to just talk to an asset was the dumbest thing I'd ever fucking heard.
"People don't talk to assets, Will. If a client doesn't fuck me, it's suspicious and I tell Cal. You watched me all night at La Rosa. You didn't need words to tell Noah and Jones exactly what you wanted as compensation. If Seven hadn't been on fire when you'd arrived, you'd have fucked me."
"No. I'd never...I just wanted to help." Will grabbed the curls at his temple as if pulling horrors out of his head. "Please believe me, Zeph. You were...special to me."
"Stop fucking lying, Will. I wasn't special. You'd seen me across a casino. You didn't even know me."
I stared him down, challenging him to deny it. He averted his eyes, flinching like he'd taken a blow.
Pathetic.
"All these weeks, if I was so fucking special to you, why didn't you tell me that you'd done a job for Sigma? Or that you were my client? When you were in hospital I asked you if there was anything you were hiding from me. I promised I wouldn't be angry. That we'd work things out. You had a chance to talk, but you chose to lie to me."
How could he have kept lying, after everything? Why had it been so important to keep me, when all I'd brought to his house was police interviews and criminal exposure? Unless...
Raheem's mantra about clients screamed in my ears.
Then only men who book assets are either criminals themselves, or only want sex.
I'd been so fucking dumb to think that he could have possibly wanted me. It was never about me. There was only ever one thing he'd wanted. Piano.
That's all I'd been to Will. A fetish.
"You only wanted me because I was a pianist."
Will shook his head, eyes bulging at my new onslaught. "No."
"You refused to let me quit piano. You watch me play every night."
The more I thought about it, the more fucking obvious it was. It had always been about piano.
"You were so happy when I wanted jazz piano lessons. You made Charlotte give you Millicent Lyons's grand piano just so I could play it. And when I started composing you were... ecstatic."
I looked down in horror at my hands. The number of times he'd wanted—needed—my knuckles against his lips, my fingers in his mouth, my palm against his heart. All because my hands played piano.
"You're obsessed with my hands. Always kissing them. Always...whenever we..."
My stomach swirled with bile. Acid burned a trail up my throat.
"All this time, you just wanted to fuck a pianist."
Will wept into his palms. "No."
The sight only incensed me more. Tears of shame that he'd been found out in front of his sister. Good that she finally knew exactly what he was; he'd fucked her over too.
"These past weeks were all for you, so you could live out your fucked-up pianist fantasies about me. I've been feeling so guilty about you taking care of me, but none of this was to help me. It was all for you. You put me in danger, and Charlotte, and Kasra, and the girls too, just for yourself. Sigma could have killed any one of us to get back at you for taking me, or for starting the fire."
Phlegmy sobs shook Will's body. "I'm so sorry, Zeph."
But I wasn't half finished. I stabbed harder, reopening every single angry wound festering in my heart.
"You were always hiding things. I should have guessed when you didn't wanna give your name to Sofi and Teresa. And you wanted to change your surname when you left Maria. And your car was already packed to get the fuck out of Maria the day after we'd busted out of Seven. You even had ToothGrind on your phone and I didn't fucking suspect anything."
Will whimpered on into his hands for long moments, finally looking up, his face twisted with terror. "ToothGrind?"
"Don't fucking deny that you used it for messaging in Sigma."
"That's not what ToothGrind is for," he snivelled. "I'm sorry. It was before I met you. I'm so sorry."
"What's it for?"
But Will had lost himself to more wretched sobbing.
Sofi clicked her tongue. "What do you think it's for, Zeph?"
I'd forgotten that she was there. I'd forgotten Charlotte too, ghostly pale and huddled in her chair, weeping silently.
"It's for men to..." Sofi shrugged, as if she had difficulty understanding the concept. "No names, no phone numbers, no strings..."
ToothGrind.
It was so fucking obvious what it was for. How had I not guessed? All this time I'd thought that Will had lived a monastic life in Maria, caring for Mozhgan and wishing for a zephyr to caress his heart. I was so fucking stupid. Like guys who looked like Will weren't constantly fucking whomever they wanted.
My hands began to shake, teeth chattering in my head. The thought of any other man going near Will had my stomach twisting and puke rising into my throat. "How many times?"
Will had cried all his tears. He lay curled against the pillow, his breathing labored. "I don't know. A lot, over the years."
"How often?"
"I don't know. Once every couple of weeks."
"Since when?"
"Since I moved to Maria when I was sixteen."
"Where?"
"In parking lots, alleyways, in cars."
I'd been there too long. I'd drawn out sordid confessions that I hadn't wanted. But Will lifted himself, as if to tell me more horrors that I didn't wanna hear. He dragged himself upright, wincing in pain as Charlotte rushed to stack pillows behind him.
"That's how he found me."
Stiff as a board, I sat frozen into my seat. "Who?"
"He was the last man I..."
"Who?" I breathed.
"Noah."
"No." I shook my head, eyes squeezed tight. "No, Will. Please. Not him. Please. Tell me you didn't..."
I lurched from the chair and stumbled to the foot of the bed, hands covering my face. I couldn't bear to be anywhere near Will.
"It started just after Christmas. It ended weeks before I met you."
"What did you two do?"
"Please, Zeph."
"Tell me!"
Perched high above all the anger and disgust, like a monstrous gae-dokkaebi, wasn't the fact that he'd trafficked my passport. It wasn't that he was a pervert fetishist client, or that he'd lied about it all. It wasn't even the fact that he'd been fucking random guys in parking lots for most of his life. It was the single vile, horrifying fact that he'd been with Noah. The most rotten of all betrayals.
Will covered his face with trembling palms. "You know what we did."
"How many times?"
"Three."
I began to pace back and forth at the foot of his bed. "Was he a better fuck than me?"
"Zeph, please."
"Did you think about him when you were fucking me?"
"Zeph, I love you."
I laughed so fucking hard at that.
"You never loved me. This wasn't love. I don't even know who you are. Luke was right about you."
"You saw Luke?" Will stared up at me as I paced, his mouth hanging open. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Now you want us to be honest with each other? Like you give a fuck about Luke. You only stopped me from talking to my friends so I wouldn't find out you were in Sigma."
"No, Zeph. I was worried about Sigma finding you." More bullshit.
"That's what I told myself, but Luke saw right through you."
"What...what did he say?"
"That I was dumb to think that you wanted to help me. That I'd have to fuck you as payment for saving me."
"No." Will shook his head, as if he'd do anything to convince himself of it. "You wanted to be with me."
I stopped mid-pace. "You stole me. Just like Noah did. You made me think that you were someone else. Someone I'd want to fuck. You tricked me into fucking you."
Will pulled at his hair. "Stop saying that word!"
"Why? It wasn't some sacred thing between us. You were my client, remember? In your bedroom in Maria when I tried to proposition you, before you had second thoughts, you were totally gonna do it. You lay right back and let me. Like you were expecting it. No, like you were entitled to it. Like you were finally gonna get your compensation fuck from Sigma."
Zeph, stop. You're hurting him.
"No." Will's voice had dropped to a murmur. "I didn't want us to be like that."
"What us? You'd only just met me. There wasn't an us."
Will stilled in the bed, red eyes locked onto mine.
"Of course. Zefir el delnavaz e bahari. Your pathetic fucking fantasy. Thinking that we're destined to fall in love just because of my stupid fake name. You know what? Noah named me, not Cal. My name is special to Noah, not to me, and definitely not to you."
Will clutched at the roots of his hair. "You're my zephyr."
"No, Will. If you really thought that I was your zephyr, you'd have left me with Maria P.D. and gotten the fuck out of my life."
Zeph, that's enough.
"You know what else I didn't tell you? I was the informant for Lars Eriksen. I got him put in jail."
"Lars Eriksen? Why didn't you tell me?"
Charlotte burst in with a sob. "Please, Sofi. Please let them talk alone. For five minutes. Nobody would need to know. Please."
Sofi buried her head into her pink book. "I'm sorry, Charlotte. I can't leave Zeph alone with the detainee." Whatever triumph Sofi had shown earlier in the night was gone; she hadn't expected all this of me.
"I'm done, Sofi." I rummaged in my jeans pocket, pulled out the shell necklace, and dropped it onto the bedsheet. "This isn't mine."
The sight of Will gathering up the little shell and pressing it to his lips made me wanna throw up.
"Zeph, please. I wanted to tell you. So many times. The longer you stayed, the harder it got." Fucking excuses.
"Yeah. That's what happens the longer you spend with people. That's why you preferred fucking nobodies on Toothgrind than actually making an effort with anyone."
"I was caring for Maman," he murmured. "I couldn't be with anybody."
A whirlwind of rage uncoiled inside me at his fucking cowardice. "Don't you fucking dare blame her for this!"
I shot out a fist, smashing it hard into the steel bedframe, the clang ringing in my ears and the exquisite throb of pain lancing up my arm.
Charlotte threw herself across Will's body. Sofi and the guarding officer lunged forward. Will cowered in the bed, trembling hands covering his face.
I stepped back from the bed, arms raised.
"Look at you, Will. You could have loved anyone. But it was more convenient to fuck random men and lie to yourself that you're waiting for some fantasy soulmate who doesn't even exist. That way you never had to risk anything, and you never had to try."
My skinned knuckles had begun to drip blood and lymph in long congealing trails that crisscrossed my hand. Will stared, horror-stuck. Good.
"You're a coward, just like your father. Too cowardly to tell me the truth, to tell your parents that you were unhappy in Maria, and that you didn't wanna go to law school. Too cowardly to meet Charlotte for months, and to face up to your tumor. Too cowardly to ask me to stay."
Will's eyebrows knotted in confusion. "Ask you to stay? With me? In Santa Elena?"
"Yeah." I gripped the bed frame, spots of my blood blotting the sheets. "You never asked me to stay."
When Will finally spoke, his voice rang clear, like he was reading from pages of thoughts written neatly onto his gray matter.
"I always knew that the longer you stayed, the closer you and Sofi would get to putting me in jail. I could never offer you anything worth staying for." He reached down and closed a tight fist around the little shell at his neck. "Even so, I still couldn't help asking you to stay, in my own way. I took you to scatter Maman's ashes. Just you and me. I showed you salamanders. I was learning Korean. I showed you so many times that I wanted...to be anywhere with you. If you'd wanted it too, you'd have noticed.
"I always knew if you stayed it would need to be for way more reasons than...me. You had those reasons. You got a job here, made friends here. You love it here. There's never been anything stopping you from staying with me, if you were gonna. But you weren't."
Perhaps Will knew me better than I knew myself. Perhaps my past week of dramatics, tears and empty declarations had blinded me to the fact that I'd always been rejecting him.
It didn't matter anyways. It was over.
"I'm sorry, Zeph. About everything."
Will curled back into the bedsheets, where he lay terrifyingly still. Numb. Dead inside. Just like me.
Just go, Zeph. It's over.
I turned from the bed and fled the hospital room.