Chapter Two (Nora)

Chapter Two (Nora)

When I woke up, I was lying in a bed at the Cole family's private hospital.

My knees, my calves, my palms. Shards of glass were buried in my flesh everywhere. The slightest movement felt like a thousand needles drilling into my bones at once.

The doctor studied the X-rays, his frown deepening. "The glass is in too deep. It has to come out right away. I'll go get the anesthetic."

He was gone ten minutes. When he came back, his hands were empty and his face was grim.

"The pharmacy says Mr. Cole called this afternoon. Every bit of anesthetic in the hospital has been sent up to the top floor, on standby for Miss Lane."

The top floor was the VIP ward.

Lacey was staying there, because she said the scene at the party had left her body aching all over.

The doctor looked at me, his voice tight. "Miss Sinclair, you won't be able to bear it without anesthesia."

"Take it out," I said.

When the first cut opened my knee, I bit down on a towel and the tears came pouring out.

Before the second cut could fall, someone kicked the door open.

Two tall men in black suits walked in. Caleb's bodyguards.

"Miss Sinclair, Mr. Hayes would like you to come upstairs."

The doctor panicked. "The patient is in the middle of a procedure!"

The bodyguards ignored him. One on each side, they hauled me off the bed by my arms. The fresh incision tore wider, and blood dripped from my ankles all the way down the hallway.

In the room on the top floor, Caleb sat by the bed, peeling an apple for Lacey.

Lacey was propped against the pillows, rosy-cheeked, without so much as a scratch on her.

"Nora." Caleb looked up at me, his voice still that warm, gentle voice that made the whole world scream. "Lacey says she can't get comfortable. The room's too white. All this white makes her anxious."

He gestured at the four bare white walls.

"I wrote her a new song. Your handwriting's the prettiest. Write the lyrics on the walls for me. Cover up all this white."

I stared at him, almost sure I'd misheard.

"Caleb, my legs..."

"I know." He glanced at my knees, still dripping blood, without a flicker of emotion. "It's your legs that are hurt, not your hands. Write fast. Lacey can't wait."

I stood there, cold all over.

I had known Caleb for twenty years.

When we were ten, we lived in the same apartment building in Queens. He was the skinny boy downstairs who was always singing on the fire escape. When his drunk father threw him out of the house, he would crouch outside my window and sing one song after another until dawn.

Three years ago, he was diagnosed with throat cancer and lost half his vocal cords. He sat on the edge of the hospital roof and wrote on a whiteboard for me: I have nothing left.

It was ten years of my life that bought his voice back.

I lied and told him it was a specialist I'd brought in from Switzerland. He held me and cried until he couldn't speak. Later, on the Grammy stage, he told the whole world:

"This award is for the only light in my life."

"I won't." I heard my own voice shaking. "Caleb, I was just dragged off an operating table. My legs are bleeding. Can't you see that?!"

He was silent for a few seconds. He sighed.

Then he lifted his chin toward his bodyguard.

A hand seized my left arm and wrenched it hard the wrong way.

The sound of the bone snapping was as clean as a breaking branch.

I screamed. My vision went black in waves.

Caleb leaned down, took my trembling right hand, and slipped a marker between my fingers. His voice was soft, as if he were lulling me to sleep.

"Your right hand still works. Write, Nora."

I wrote.

Stroke by stroke, letter by letter. With every line, the pain in my broken arm turned the world white. Blood ran down from my knees and pooled on the floor.

The song was called "My Light."

Every line was about something I had once done for him.

Only the "you" had been changed to Lacey.

When I finished the last word, I dropped the marker and looked at him.

"Caleb, I hate you."

Something wavered in his eyes, then quickly went still.

"Good girl," he said. "I'll have the doctor set your arm."

The next time I opened my eyes, it was because someone had thrown a basin of ice water over me.

[Countdown: fifty-one hours.]

Adrian and Caleb stood over me, their faces ashen.

Adrian raised his hand and slapped me across the face.

"Lacey's test results came back." Caleb's voice was shaking. "There was thallium in her oatmeal. And you were the one who had the kitchen send that oatmeal up."

"I didn't—"

"Your fingerprints are on the bowl!" Adrian cut me off. "Nora, I really underestimated you."

In less than an hour, police from Lower Manhattan had taken me away.

Adrian's legal team was ruthlessly efficient. My bail was denied on the grounds that the suspect had "demonstrated clear intent to harm and posed a flight risk."

They locked me in the coldest single cell in the detention center.

My broken arm wasn't put in a cast, just strapped to a crude wooden splint. They took my coat and left me in a thin prison uniform. No painkillers. Not a single one.

I curled up in the corner and counted down the system's clock, enduring one hour after another.

Late on the second night, the cell door opened.

It was Caleb.

My heart gave a helpless little leap.

But he only looked at me, then said coldly to the men behind him:

"Take her. Don't waste time."

They brought me back to the hospital and wheeled me into an operating room.

A dozen doctors were gathered around another operating table. Lacey lay on it, pale, tubes running from her arms.

"The thallium damaged her kidneys." Adrian pinned me down by the shoulders. "In all of New York, you're the only perfect match."

I fought with everything I had, but my broken arm had no strength left.

Before the anesthetic needle pierced my skin, I saw Caleb standing outside the glass window with his back to me.

He couldn't even bring himself to watch.

When I woke, there was a long incision along my side.

A nurse was drawing my blood. One bag. Two. Three.

The attending physician burst in, his voice cracking. "Mr. Cole, we can't take any more! She just had a kidney removed. Any more and she'll die!"

"Draw extra." Adrian's voice came through the door. "What if Lacey hemorrhages after surgery?"

I lay there as my consciousness sank, little by little.

My body was so cold. As cold as that winter in Queens when Caleb and I huddled together on the fire escape and he wrapped his only scarf around my neck and said:

"Nora, when I'm a big star someday, you'll be the first one I sing for."

[Countdown: five hours.]

At dawn, they wheeled me out of the hospital room.

The detention center said there wasn't enough evidence. I could be released for now.

I braced myself against the wall and shuffled out the hospital doors, one step at a time. The winter wind cut straight through the thin hospital gown, and I couldn't stop shivering.

Five more hours.

Just five more hours, and it would all be over.

I had barely reached the bottom of the steps when a hand clamped over my nose and mouth from behind.

A sharp chemical smell flooded my nostrils. I struggled twice, and the world began to spin.

Before I went down, I saw a familiar face.

Julian.

My brother.