A/N: Welcome to the jungle of truths.

Thank you for joining us on this murder mystery train. Please come again. ;)

I love you all.

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Hallelujah Chic

October 31, 2014

Each of us will face a moment of reckoning.

Jacob Henry Black met his fate one snowy day at the end of October. When the ghosts went out to play, his joined their chorus and floated away to oblivion. He released me from his fists and iron grip. He allowed my body a reprieve from pain.

I allowed him no such thing.

The final report from the detectives deemed his death murder at the hands of Royce King. Death was an easy escape for Jacob, Dad told me. Everyone echoed these words after the truth of his abuse became public record.

Edward held my hand and encouraged me softly when Katie Couric interviewed me and began asking me questions about my relationship with Jake. Ten years after his death, and people were still interested in the twisted would-be Senator's murder. This was my chance to admit the abuse, to confess the pain he put me through.

Twenty-five years after first being diagnosed with cancer, Jake's mom finally succumbed to the mutated and deadly cells. The children and I attended her funeral in the spring, and they said goodbye to their grandmother. I'd always loved the woman; no matter how terrible her son was, she loved me in a way my own mother never had.

After she died—the wife of a former New York Congressman, the mother of a murdered politician—I couldn't hold back any longer. I'd given her most of Jake's money after his death. It afforded her the best cancer treatment money could buy, and now it was willed back to my kids. But with her gone, I could finally come forward with what I'd endured without causing her more pain.

Lexie sits beside me, pretending to study for the final exams of her senior year. Walker told me he didn't want to see this; doesn't want to know about his biological father. He has no memories of him, and Edward is the only dad he's ever known. I don't blame my little boy. Edward drove Walker and Masen over to Charlie's for a night of trick-or-treating.

My husband and Reny arrive home at the same time. She drove up from Stanford to be with me tonight. it's about to play, and while I was there for the interview, present and accounted for, I'm interested to see how Ms. Couric portrays me after the final cut.

Dramatic music and the story of how a little girl and little boy became best friends, then lovers, is being told. My face and his are on the screen. Everything is surreal. Katie doesn't say where I'm living with my family, but if she wanted to find out, she could.

The abuse is made public, the bruises and pain and his secret life.

I take a sip of my pipping-hot coffee and look out the window upon a rainy Washington night. A lifetime has passed.

But I remember it all.

Ten years after his blood splattered the ivory Givenchy suit I bought for the campaign trail. A decade since my gold Chanel booties were marred with his rusty life. A lifetime since he dirtied my cyan area rug, and I still haven't forgiven him for that one. I loved that rug. I wish I'd thought to change my clothes and put down some plastic first.

I'll never forget the day I met Rosalie Andrews in a quiet coffee shop on Park Avenue. She was skinny as a rail—looked like she'd been strung out for days—this was the first things I noticed; the second was that she had bruises she didn't even bother to cover up. I recognized those bruises. They looked so much like mine.

When she contacted me a week before I took Reny to see Edward that first time, I didn't believe her. I wanted to, if only to have a firm reason to leave, but I didn't. Jake wasn't what she was saying.

Then I began to look for the signs of the heavy secret in my husband: the way he hated looking at me, the tension in his body language when in meetings with his campaign staff … but specifically his campaign manager. Rosalie told me what to pay attention to.

She also told me the truth in a way only the two of us could understand. A life spent with someone raping and torturing your soul is not a life. She knew, because her fiance, Royce King had been sleeping with my husband for two years. He never hurt her until he met Jake, but the abuse bloomed in indigo bruises on her skin so quickly, she spent all her time and money searching for an answer.

When she found it, she came straight to me. And I denied it. I denied the woman broken as much as myself. But I couldn't deny her for long.

I called her at two the morning of the … incident. I told her she was right and I was taking my kids and leaving. She came over that morning, gifting me a gun to take along when I escaped, and how could I refuse her that sense of protecting me after countering her pain those months? And maybe she was protecting, maybe she wasn't, but Rosalie provided all the pieces for the perfect crime.

And she called Jacob. She listened to what should've been my final call to her, and whispered in the ear he would feel pierced by a bullet only hours later. She brought him there, knowing I would do it. She reminded me of how cold it was that snowy day, and tugged the cashmere gloves over my fingers and onto my hands. There'd be none of my fingerprints on the gun; no gunshot residue on my palms.

He showed up screaming and yelling, ready to throw punches, but I was prepared for it.

Jake told me over and over I couldn't do it—wouldn't do it. I made him kneel on the hardwood, hoping his knees would hurt as much as mine did when he raped me in the same spot and created Walker. He told me again as he sank to his knees, that I didn't have the guts to do it. He looked me in the eye and I almost lost my nerve. But then he grinned at me. The bastard dared lift his lips and taunt. Me. The woman with the gun in her hand. It was the last thing he'd ever say in this life.

And then I did it.

Rosalie cleaned it up and staged the scene perfectly. She even had the fall guy ready. At his apartment, she held the gun in Royce's mouth, wrapped his fingers around it, and helped him squeeze the trigger as he cried for mercy. The woman was a danger by profession; a walking, talking, tornado of change in my life who swept over my world.

I wouldn't have shot Jake … except that's all I wanted to do. I wouldn't have framed Royce … except it was perfect, and his suicide fit the crime so well. I wouldn't have lied … except now I'm free to live a life with Edward and my kids and none of this needs be another thought in my mind.

Except it is.

The only thing I learned from Jake's version of love was how to destroy. I learned that pain and guilt are powerful instigators and terrifying enemies. I learned that a woman scorned could be the most deadly of allies.

I look at Edward, with tears in his eyes and his jaw set as words of my painful marriage are spoken, and I know he's happy I'm free. My girls are happy. I am happy. Though I'll never fully be safe.

Each of us will face a moment of reckoning. Now I have to make amends for all the lost time … and make sure to never open my mouth about the truth, because two of us in this world know too much. And two is one too many.

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A/N: Thank you so, so, so fucking much for reading Heroin Chic. It has been an amazing journey.

The guessing and questions have been such a pleasure to read. I haven't had this much fun in so long.

I have an "alternate ending" to post as well.

And there may be a Rosalie spinoff coming, as well as many more stories.

Join the Cult on Facebook. QuinnLark (fan)Fiction Cult group.

From the bottom of my bitchy, black heart, thank you.

Madi.