Chapter 12a: The secret


Chloe sucked the air around her as Lex's glass broke. She really was starting to get worried about him. And for herself too. An angered Lex wasn't the type of man she ever liked to deal with. He could be very scary. Like a monster. And she didn't have the pretension to be able to calm him or find he right words. It wasn't as if they were friends after all...

"Lex..." Chloe didn't even have time to add anything. She wasn't even sure she would have found the right words. Not longer after she had say his name, Chloe's eyes slowly widened as Lex got closer, still looking furious. Scary. And at the same time, she could feel his pain hidden behind all this anger. It was sad to see that he had come to think of him the way he had swore he would never be. A monster.

She wanted to argue. Tell him to fight for himself. To forget about Lana. Hell, it irritated her even more to think that he had put all his hopes in this woman. In someone that was meant to ditch him at some point. Because it never had been Lex and Lana. It always had been Clark and Lana. And she felt sorry that Lex had been fooled but she also thought that of all the things he had done, dating Lana was probably one of the most stupid thing. For the most clever man she had ever met, that had been foolish. But, what had been done, had been done.

"You think this is over now, between Lana and me?"

Chloe's heartbeat started to increase as the closure did too. His touch did something to her that she yet had been able to find out the reason of it. His voice was cold, daring, menacing.

"Lex.. Stop.." She reopened her eyes not long after she had closed them at the sound of Lex's whisper in her ear, processing everything he had threw her within the last few minutes. Why was he trying to scare her? Why was he doing everything in his power to push her away? Just for that, she wanted to stay and upset him even more. But, she couldn't force him to accept her help. Maybe she should have given him some space. Maybe she should actually. But hearing him giving threats - and god knows he wasn't known to just pretend to give threats, but actually execute them - Chloe wasn't much convinced of leaving him and his mind alone, processing again and again this morning and all the options he could take to make Lana suffer.

After Lex's momentary breakdown of anger, Chloe looked away of Lex and rubbed her arm with her hand, not sure what to think of all this. He had try to push her away, yet she didn't want to abandon him. More than ever, she wanted to prove him wrong. She just didn't know how yet.

"You are right Lex. I'm not a savior. Maybe I take so much time helping people that I sometimes forget about myself. But while this may be an obstacle to my short term pursue of happiness, in the end, when I see the faces of those I helped. Their own happiness... Their very own one that they thought for a moment that they could never have again and now they do, partly because of me... Well, that gives me hope. It brings me closer to my own goals." Chloe paused and walked back closer to Lex, facing him in the eyes.

"I believe in people and I know you used to do too. Now, you may deny it right now and I can understand that after you've been betrayed so many times in your life, by people you cared about a lot, maybe you think it's easier to slip into vengeance, but somewhere in you, the Lex I used to know is still there." And as she was talking, Chloe's eyes seemed to be searching behind those blue eyes, where was the guy she had met years ago.

"What doesn't kill us makes us stronger Lex... You should know this better than anyone. But this doesn't mean you have to become a heartless monster... It should be making you a better man... no the other way around..." Chloe finally looked away and soon turned her head and soon the rest of her body, facing the doors.

"You'll know how to reach me if you change your mind." Before she could get to the doors, Chloe looked back at Lex. "You have to know that if you intend to hurt Lana, I'll be there to stop you... But… I'll also be there for you if you ever need to..."

**

Lex scowled when Chloe reiterated, once again, her faith in him. What did he have to do to convince her that he wasn't a man to be trusted but one to be feared? Irritated with her stubbornness, he almost chuckled when she commented that she wouldn't help him bring Lana down. How little she knew that she already had begun to do so.

She was just about to leave when he realized that he had the opportunity to make one other piece of the puzzle fit into place. "Wait," he said suddenly, stopping her in her tracks. When she looked at him again, he offered her a sardonic smile. "You might as well take some of Lana's things with you when you go. I don't exactly relish the idea of her showing up at the Mansion with a gun again."

Walking briskly toward her, he grabbed her hand and gave it a slight tug to encourage her to follow him as he made his way towards the stairs to the Master Suite. When he was confident she was following, he dropped her hand and concentrated at the task at hand, ignoring the guilt tugging at the back of his mind that he was using the woman behind him - the woman who seemed to profess she thought he was capable of being better than that. Shows how much she knows, he thought wryly and refused to give in to the urge to stop this game before it went too far.

He had told Chloe not to trust him. If she didn't listen, he wasn't to blame. She was only going to get what he'd warned her was coming. And he was pointedly going to ignore any thoughts that there was even a little chance that she was actually the one who was right about him. After all, she was a friend of both Clark's and Lana's, and he'd learned from both of them that, regardless of what they said about trusting him, the truth was that their trust only went so far. If he dared to trust her, it would only be a matter of time before Chloe followed suit and turned on him as soon as it suited her purposes. No, his way was far better. Certainly, he'd be alone, but he'd no longer have to fool himself into thinking he'd ever been otherwise.

Leading the way into the bedroom, Lex walked over to the closet and pulled out Lana's set of matched luggage. "You don't have to take everything, of course," he said, sounding bored. "But the more you take now, the less I'll be tempted to destroy later." He offered her a little smile at that, though he wasn't sure he was joking.

"I'll start to pack some of the clothes from the closet." He pointed to a piece of furniture with gouge marks in it from his antics the night before, "That armoire was hers, so you can take anything that's inside." He paused. "It will probably be locked, but I suppose Lana kept a key around here someplace." Actually, he knew she did, since he'd accessed that armoire the day before in order to leave something incriminating inside - a file. But he trusted Chloe would be resourceful enough to find the key hidden in Lana's usual place. He pointed to another dresser. "That dresser is mine, so unless you've always been curious about whether I'm a boxers or briefs kind of man, you should steer clear. Also, the books by the bed are Lana's, and you should feel free to take any photographs you see lying around...if you can find any she would want to have." Since most if not all of them were photos of Lana and Lex back in their "happier" days - or at least the days when she'd been a better actress at pretending she'd cared about him - he doubted she'd want any. That was fine; any that Chloe left behind would almost undoubtedly be burned. He couldn't even stand to look at the damn things.

Swallowing back the swell of rage and hatred, Lex turned from Chloe so she couldn't see his face. "I suppose we should get started," he said curtly, but before he could walk back into the closet, a maid knocked on the door.

**

Chloe didn't have much time to react at Lex when he grabbed her to get upstairs. She hadn't really expected to take Lana's stuff. Not now at least. And it wasn't as if Lana would want to speak to her anytime soon anyway. But he was right on one thing: it was better if Chloe left with those than Lana coming back being even more erratic.

Soon, she found herself in the master room, which felt a little odd at first. She didn't recall ever coming there. The colors of the bed sheets made her think Lana might had decided to take control on the 'style' of the room. She gave a glance at the room, scanning it a first time. On first sight, everything seemed normal.

Her eyes came back on Lex. While he didn't seem to feel better, at least he had decided to not let her leave yet. Of course, it was for Lana's stuff, but still, she hoped that there was a reason beyond that. That maybe he believed somehow what she had said and it was one way to express it. At least, if she was going to leave the Mansion soon, she hoped it would be on good terms. *But why oh why was she insisting on that? She didn't now herself...*

"Sure..." Chloe knew he would be more than tempted to destroy Lana's stuff. Even if her friend hadn't been quite a worthy friend recently, she couldn't let anything get destroyed and having Lana be homeless. She didn't deserve that much.

**

"Mr. Luthor? There's a telephone call for you. He said it was urgent," she said.

Nodding, he walked back to the door. "Excuse me, Chloe. I'll be back in a few minutes."

"Sure... I'll start packing her stuff..."

When he stepped out into the hall, he was quietly informed that the call was from the scientist analyzing the water. Perfect. Lex walked briskly down the hall to answer the phone in a private room, though he had to be sure not to take too long. He knew Chloe well enough to know not to leave her to her own devices for too long while in his home. Undoubtedly, given enough time, she'd uncover all his secrets. With any luck, however, his absence this time would give her enough opportunity to uncover just the one.

It was almost too easy.

**

As soon as Lex was downstairs, Chloe closed the door and turned around to face the room again. She had to think quickly. Where could the key of the closet be? What if she had it on her? Chloe walked towards a small box of jewelry of Lana and opened it. *Of course it was there* Lana had thrown the key there as if it wasn't important. So what was the point of locking it?

Soon, Chloe unlocked the armoire. In it, she found random stuff. Some clothes, pictures *with Clark and Chloe, back from high school days*, some papers, a file... A file? Chloe looked at the door. She hadn't heard anyone coming. So she opened the file and discovered something she hadn't expect.

It was all about Clark. It seemed Lana had been working on Clark's case for quite a while. There was a mention of what had happen in the barn when Clark had been erratic and try to kill Lex. Chloe knew that he had been on Red K, but here it was mentioning about the piece of metal Lex had put in Clark, that hadn't even touched him in reality. Lana seemed to have also mentioned details like what was Clark doing of his days, what was his relation with Chloe and Lois and Lionel... Was Lana spying on him?! Chloe couldn't believe what she was reading. And there was this one thing at the end on one page...

**Clark's secret = The key??**

The key? What did it meant? Chloe was now worried that Lex may had read this. And that Clark could be in danger. Who knew how Lana would react if Clark rejected her once more. If she knows about his weakness, he could be in danger. She would have to warn him.

After few minutes, Chloe closed the file and put it in her bag. She didn't know if Lex had read it, but she couldn't take the chance to talk to him about it. For Clark's sake.

Still no sign of anyone, Chloe was tempted to go see in Lex's closet. Not that his boxers were really that interesting, but maybe he was hiding something too. She probably would have gone there in her younger days, when she was still a novice, but she was aware now that Lex probably was hiding anything he had to hide in safer places. There was also the fact that there might be a camera in this very room, who knew? If so, she only hoped she'd have time to replace the real file with something else so Lex wouldn't find out what it was about, pretending he didn't now already. And the last argument she had in her mind was that she wasn't going to get his trust by sneaking into his stuff. No, she had to control herself.

Chloe started to pack Lana's stuff, looking carefully for anything else, wondering what more could come. *Lana... Who are you...*

**

Lex walked back into the bedroom, pleased with the information he had just gained. There was definite progress being made on the water bottle, as the preliminary analysis had uncovered traces of unusual rock residues. Very interesting, and it was something he was going to have to pursue.

His mind was so focused on other matters that he didn't note the expression on Chloe's face when he first walked into the room, but as he began to return his attention to the matter at hand, he paused. She had the most curious expression on her face. Had she discovered the information he'd left for her to find? And, if so, what did she think of it?

He didn't want to show his hand, so he merely walked over to the closet and began pulling out clothes to throw in a suitcase. After a moment, however, he said lightly, "When we're finished here, I'll have a member of my staff take these bags down to your car for you, so you don't have to carry them."

Hiding his smile, he wondered how long Chloe would be able to keep her findings to herself. He was frankly surprised she wasn't already on the phone, truth be told.

**

"Ok…" While Chloe wanted to focus on Lex, her mind was on the file, which was rather disturbing. It could have been one thing if Lana hadn't seemed so erratic earlier. And there was the pregnancy... Something obviously was wrong with Lana. What if she had a breakdown? Maybe she just needed psychological help. Could there be any other explanations?

After closing one box, Chloe searched for anything else to put in a new box, trying to make as if nothing had change, but something felt awkward. After insisting on staying, she couldn't leave just right now without any good reason. That would raise suspicion. And no one better than Lex could rise suspicions on a minor detail.

"Almost done here..." She looked back at Lex, who wasn't facing her. "Need help?"

After another silent moment, Chloe stopped what she was doing and walked closer to Lex. She didn't walked in front of him, neither did she touched him so he could turn around, but something was on her mind and she had to ask, even if he'd lie, which he would be likely to do.

"Lex... Let me ask you something... What are you going to do when I'll be gone?" She asked, a bit of worrisome in her voice, more than she'd intended to.

"I certainly doubt that you will just sit here and get drunk burning stuff for your own pleasure. You might do that as well and I can understand that part, but tell me you are not going to hurt her..." The minute she had started to give a plea, without realizing it, Chloe had take Lex's hands into hers, looking right into his eyes, still with this slight worried look.

"Just tell me..."