I'm deep into ocean-floor sleep when I hear it.

My phone, squawking from the floor.

I feel it hum under my grappling fingers.

Anxiety spikes through me

Incoming call: Orson 💖, the screen reads, and a snapshot of us, from Ultra Miami- just before the drugs and Luciana, kissing in front of the stadium, sated and exultant, brimming full of love.

I think I'm dreaming but I pick up the call anyway.

"Amory,'' the whisper comes, raspy and full of terror, "Amory, I- I did something."

"Orson? What's going on?" Words sticky in my sleeping mouth.

"I don't know what- what happened. I blacked out and then before I knew it..."

A hard ball fell into my stomach. Devon must have done it. All my cards had been dealt.

"Orson," I say, rolling over, trying to blink myself awake. "Where are you? What's going on?"

"Something happened, Amory. I did something terrible."

Orson's voice is so peculiar, thin and wasted. My gut twists but I need to play this card. It's the only way I could cover my tracks and gain some playing ground.

I walk across the room and move my laptop mouse to wake my laptop. I quickly log into the secret surveillance cameras and bugs I tape across Orson's house and my chest alleviates, trying to stifle my deep gasp at the sight I see.

Orson in his living room, hunched over a body, crying. The body is bare, arms stretched out, like one of those laminated saint pictures we always brought from the catechism. Saint Sebastian, his head always thrown back, body both luminous and tortured.

The body is Elijah M. Calloway. I make sure to press record.

"Orson, baby, Orson, where are you? Orson, where are you?" I sound concerned and worried like I practised a few hours before in the mirror.

I stifle all signs of convoluted joy- the ultimate revenge and safety net forged together into a double-edged sword. My eyes are pressed to the forlorn form of Elijah Calloway dead at the hands of his own son and my stomach hums with the glow of glory.

I've completed it. I've completed my vendetta against the Calloway family and I've saved myself.

A pause, a creaking sound from his throat. "Please come, Amory. Can you please come here?"

"I'll be right there, baby."

-

Orson lets me in through the basement so no one can see me. The sharp smell on him when he opens the parking lot door for me, is so thick it hovers in the air around him. I recoil at the blood stains on his fingers. His face is bright, his legs shaking.

I wonder if this is a deja vu for him, a repeat of him going to Carmen after what happened to Carlotta in the Hamptons. But from his face, he looks scared and terror-stricken. Even in this writhing snake pit of treachery and mind games, this is new territory for him.

"What happened?"

Orson is wordless as I let him guide me through the parking lot of his apartment block.

In the elevator, the numbers glow and the funniest feeling starts up inside me. It's like before a game. Chestvaulting, bounding on my toes, everything ricocheting in my head, my body so tight and ready I feel like a coiled spring: I've gotten here, so far that Orson Calloway trusts me to be the gatekeeper to the deep well of his secrets.

Orson's apartment is dark, one-floor lamp coning halogen up in the far corner. A hooded fish tank effervesces on a table by the wall, the clouded water seeming almost to smoke, a fluorescent cauldron with no fish I can see.

"Orson, what happened?" I ask him again, low and cool, never losing my ramrod posture, never raising my voice above my near-whisper.

"Take off your shoes," he whispers to me, his mouth pinched. His eyes are pleading and I obey without hesitation. My Celine sneakers thud on the floor softly. 

He pad onwards to the cavernous living room of the penthouse, all glass mirrors and chrome, but in the dark of the city lights, the cold modern space of the Calloway hearth seems like a backdrop to a merciless thriller. My eyes dart immediately to the back of the large cream sofa sprawling across the room like a spreading stain and I feel transported to a scene from a horror movie.

Maybe it's the gloomy dark, the phosphorescent from the globbing aquarium.

But mostly it's the way Orson's eyes seem to vibrate when he looks at me, pupils like nail heads.

"What's over there?" I say, angling my head toward the sofa. "Orson's what over there?"

"I found out," he says, eyes staring dead ahead, then they flick at me and he runs a hand through his dark thick hair. "I found out."

"Found out what?" I sound unnecessarily sharp for someone who already knows what exactly he found out but I have to sound believable and authentic.

Orson let his eyes drift over to the sofa, and I let mine too. I inch towards the sofas, bare feet flinching from the cold marble.

I can hear Orson breathing behind me, in deep rasping gulps. Watching.

My footsteps are muffled by carpet soon enough and the sofa looms before me, crooking around the centre of the room.

As I creep closer, ten-then-five-feet away from the living room area, the sofa back seems larger, taller than the football goalpost.

Deep breath.

Deep breath.

Me, now only a few steps from the back of the snaking sofa, peeking around the sofa's sharp corner, around its scaly leather arm. I see something on the floor.

"This- this man approached me...he- he had all this information about my mother and how she died," Orson is saying, answering more unasked questions. "At first I didn't believe him...but he had all this...proof."

Yes, all the proof and evidence I've gathered in a nice little file and gave it to Devon who I ordered to show it to you, Orson.

First, I see the glint of dark black hair twinning in the weave of the rug.

Then, stepping forward, I see more.

There he is.

There's Elijah Calloway, on the floor, dead.

"I found out he killed my mother," Orson whimpers, like a little boy waking up from a nightmare, "I didn't mean to get out of control...I confronted him and before I knew it...".

I just keep looking. At Elijah on the floor, arms spread eagle on the expensive Persian rug, like Jesus being crucified on the cross.

In those saint pictures, their bodies are always torn, split, and lacerated. But their faces are so lovely, so tranquil.

Elijah's face does not look righteous and exalted.

My eyes fix on the thing that's Elijah's head but is now a red flower, its tendrils sprawling to all corners and, like a poppy, an inky whorl at the centre.

In those saint pictures, their eyes lovingly lashed, are always looking up.

And, for all the ruin of Elijah Calloway's cruel handsome face, his eyes, they are gazing up too.

But it seems to me not to the Kingdom of God but to the glittering chandelier above.

Behind his head, the rug is dark and wet.

I can't stop looking at him, at the bright streak on his face.

"Why did you bring me here?" I finally found my voice to speak. The words just tumble out, constricted and lost. "Orson, why am I here?"

"Because...I...." Orson stares at the mess he made on the floor, "I...I don't know who to call."

"Why did you-" I shake my head, I hear a moan come up from within me, one of terror and frustration, "How did you do this?"

"He killed her," Orson's tears gather at the brim of his eyes, "He killed her because...because of me."

He pulls up a crumpled photograph from his pocket and tosses it to me. My stomach clenches. It's a black and white CCTV grainy photograph of Deidre Calloway on the sidewalk, lying dead against the hood of a car. A hit and run.

Her hair is a gossamer cloud of gold upon the steel bonnet, her body twisted across the scene unnaturally. It's a haunting image that's parallel to Georgina's death and I can't help but notice the similarities.

I remind myself I'm still in front of Orson. My face constricts- ever so naturally like I don't know this. I control myself to appearing shocked and confused but inside I am rejoicing. Now, this is my saving grace.

"Orson, tell me what happened."

"...I found out the truth about my mother," he begins to explain, hand over his face, "He ordered for her to be killed. And I confronted him and...."

"And?"

"We got into a fight," he tells me, his eyes trailing a few yards away from the blood stains and onto a black gun peeking out from under his father's left leg. "Then he tried to point a gun at me, to get me to back down and...I just pushed him and he fell and he hit his head on the edge of the glass table."

"Did anyone see you?" I ask him sharply, my voice fast now. "Is anyone here? Where's Maral?"

His head promptly shakes, his fist is bloodied red, and I stare at the knuckles looking back at me. I examine him; messy crumpled white shirt ripped slightly at the collar but no traces of blood on him except on his hands. Signs of a fight.

"Ma-maral is in Paris," he says to me, "Everyone is off for the night..."

"Good."

I look down at my body and see I'm wearing my flannel pyjamas. "Rip a piece of cloth," I ordered him, my tone suggesting urgency. His shaking hands take a piece and tear it off, revealing my abdomen.

"Why-"

"Fingerprints," I whisper to him as I wrap the cloth around my hands, "We're staging a scene."

He looks at me, unblinking, shocked. "You're-"

"I'm helping you, babe," I say to him. "It's okay. I get it, Orson. I get it."

He's still staring at me, gawking in disbelief. A normal girlfriend would've called the cops but of course, I'm not a normal girlfriend. He looks at me deeply and I let him search my face, looking for signs of trouble. I, standing in his empty penthouse, looking over at his father's dead body, ready to help him.

I don't wait for him to stop staring to start working- pushing the glass table hard onto the floor so it shatters and splints the carpet with shards of glass. I order him to flip all the end tables on their sides, books sliding across the floors like a card trick. I kick down furniture, leaving the heavy antique ottoman belly-up. I leave cabinets open, expensive art taken, and sculptures defaced. Home invasion of one of the most influential men in the world.

I am a villain in a story with no heroes.

"Any valuables that we can grab?" I ask him quietly, "Like in a safe or something?"

His eyebrows scrunch together in mild confusion until half a second later, he understood what I meant. We are staging a home invasion.

He guides me to his parent's bedroom and that's when we decided to go ham on the destruction. I grab all of Maral's valuable jewellery, chucking them in a nondescript plastic bag I've found in the kitchen while Orson enters his father's password into the safe and clears all the cash and two gold bars from it.

"Leave it wide open," I instruct him as he's about to close the safe's door.

"We're gonna need some new clothes," I point to what we're wearing- Orson's in a white button-down tucked into a pair of trousers and I'm in my pyjamas pretty much.

We dash into Orson's room quietly, where I pick out the most ordinary nondescript clothes I could think of. It's ridiculously hard- Orson's closet is all designer velvet suits and impeccably tailored trousers. Nonetheless, I did my best.

I manage to find a pair of jeans for Orson, which happens to be designer but I think it can pass as cheap with a few rips I created on the knee, an unbranded Acne Studios sweater that makes him look like a normal 18-year-old teenager from a public high school and a Yankees cap while I rifle through Carmen's closet for a disguise.

Through all of Carmen's extravagant clothes, I rustle up a pair of black logoless Supreme sweats and sneakers. I shove my blonde hair behind a hoodie as I look into the mirror and shove a pair of basic Celine sunglasses on.

"What did you use to get here?"

"I flagged down a cab," I explained to him, which is untrue. I've had Jack's driver on speed dial on my burner phone to pick me up and drop me off a block away but it's safer than booking an Uber. It's near impossible to delete a ride off the Uber app due to legal reasons so here's a pro tip, if you ever wanna catch a guy or a girl being shady, just check their Uber history. It'll expose where they catch a ride to.

"We're going to need to take a subway," I tell him and for a moment, I feel a tinge of amusement in the midst of all this chaos because the ludicrous thought of a golden Manhattan boy doing something as mundane and bourgeois as taking the subway is so insane to me.

Orson and I shield ourselves in our overwhelming clothes as we discreetly dash out of the apartment through the basement parking lot. I start to breathe normally when we stepped onto the sidewalk, the thrum of my heart petering out. Orson's hand grabs mine, finding me in the ocean of people flooding in the streets. There is never a second New York City is quiet, even on a lonesome Sunday night.

I point to the signs indicating an entrance to a subway rail line and tug at Orson to follow me down the flow of people. We go down the grimy steps, entwined between groups of tourists and college students, and fade into the background noise of the city. 

And just like that, we vanish into thin air, traces of ourselves erased from the scene of the crime. 

-

SORRY FOR being MIA but things have been crazy with my new job, uni work and pretty much...like everything??

how genius is amory's last play? she pushed orson to find out the dirty truth about his mother's death and kill his own father to establish blackmail against orson AND revenge against delia while also covering her own ass. because even if he finds out the truth about her identity and shit, she has elijah's death hanging over orson's head. 

talk about killing tHREE BIRDS with one stone am I right???

WE stan psycho bitches on this account apparently

anyway, thank y'all for the lovely comments!