Chapter 2

When I officially "woke up" for the third time, the doctor was there. He had a practiced, somber expression as he explained my condition. Severe spinal trauma. Nerve damage. He used a lot of medical terms, but they all meant the same thing. I would never walk again. I was paralyzed from the waist down.

The news should have destroyed me. But I felt strangely distant, as if he were talking about someone else. My body was just a prison now. A prison from which I would plan my war. The physical paralysis was a cruel irony, but it was also a perfect cover. A broken man, lost in his grief, is not a threat.

Sarah rushed to my side the moment the doctor left, her performance flawless. She wept, her tears looking so real. She stroked my hair and whispered promises of care, of how we would get through this together.

"I' ll take care of you, Liam. Always."

Her touch felt like acid on my skin. Her voice was a grating noise in my ears. I had to force myself not to flinch. I had to play my part. I looked at her with what I hoped were dead, grief-stricken eyes. I let my jaw hang slack. I let a single tear roll down my own cheek, a tear for the man I was and the son I had lost. But inside, I was calculating.

"Leo..." I choked out, making my voice weak and raspy.

It was the perfect line. It made her see me as nothing more than a grieving father, confirming her belief that I was broken and oblivious. Her expression softened with a flicker of what looked like pity, but I knew it was relief. The perfect victim.

The days in the hospital were a special kind of hell. I was trapped in bed, forced to endure her constant, cloying presence. She would read to me, feed me, talk to me about funeral arrangements for the boy she had murdered. Each word she spoke, each gentle touch, was an act of profound violence. I felt a constant, simmering nausea. I had to focus on the cold fury inside me just to keep from screaming the truth in her face.

One afternoon, she left to take a call. The room was finally quiet. I closed my eyes, and for a heart-stopping second, I saw him. Leo. He was standing by the window, wearing the little Captain America costume he loved so much. He wasn't looking at me. He was just there, a small, vibrant splash of color in the sterile white room. Then I blinked, and he was gone. It wasn't a ghost. It was a memory, a hallucination born of grief and rage. But it was also a reminder. This is for him. This is for Leo.

Later that evening, as Sarah was packing up her things to go home for a few hours, something fell out of her purse. It clattered on the tile floor.

It was a small, metal keychain. A miniature replica of Thor's hammer, Mjolnir.

My breath caught in my throat.

It was Leo' s favorite. I had bought it for him at last year' s convention. He never went anywhere without it. He insisted on clipping it to the zipper of his jacket, the one he was wearing on the day of the accident.

It should have been in an evidence bag at a police station. Or lost in the wreckage. There was no earthly reason for it to be in Sarah' s purse.

Unless she had been there. At the scene. Picking through the debris of my life, salvaging a memento from her successful transaction.

She quickly bent down to snatch it, her back to me. When she turned around, her face was a mask of placid concern.

"Just my keys," she said with a small, dismissive smile.

But I had seen it. I had seen the proof. The lies were no longer just words I had overheard. They were a physical object I could see, a cold piece of metal that confirmed everything. The nausea turned into a block of ice in my stomach. My path was set.