“Yeah. I mean I think it was mostly a fluke. I just happened to trip her up by running around batshit insane.” I leaned down over his desk and expected him to lean back and kiss me, but he just stared at me pensively. “Are you okay? You seem … off.”
“I was just talking to Milli about the possibility of a mole,” he responded, somewhat distant. “Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”
“Um… Okay.” I settled backwards into one of the chairs and folded my hands into my lap. “What questions?”
“Do you remember back when I first had you kidnapped?” he started. “Why weren’t you more afraid?”
“What?” I said. “I was terrified. The whole car ride over I screamed until my voice was hoarse. You shoved me in a closet and only gave me bread and water. You made measkfor something nicer.” He winced and I could tell he didn’t like hearing about our origins in that manner. “Even when you moved me up to a nicer room, I found out that you’d been watching me through a camera. For the first month I was with you, hearing you knock on that door made me jump through the ceiling.”
“Really?” he said. “You didn’t look it.”
“Yeah, because I learned a really long time ago not to bare my neck,” I said. “I knew that the more afraid I looked, the more you and the people around me would feast off of it. I didn’t want to seem scared, so I hid it. Not unlike the way I had to seem like I wasn’t scared when my brothers dressed me like Barbie: stripper edition and paraded me in front of their gross, political circles.”
He took this in for a moment and then asked, “Did it ever seem odd to you that the aerial team that came to take you back from me knew which room was yours? Did you ever ask anyone how they knew?”
“No offense, but between being yanked a hundred feet into the air, being locked in a different room at my brothers’ estate, and then escaping only to learn that they wanted to kill me, and then having to sprint from them as they were shooting at me, I didn’t really have time to consider the logistics of it.” I shook my head. “What do these questions have to do with…” And my heart cracked and shattered into a million tiny pieces. “Oh my god,” I whimpered. “You think I’m the traitor.”
54
GIO
The second the realization crossed Avion’s face and I saw how shattered she was, I regretted everything. “No, Av--”
She stood up from the chair, her mouth held open in shock and the longer she stood there, tears started to fill her eyes. “Hetold you this stuff, didn’t he? He told you to question everything I’ve done since I got here?”
I stood up too, not necessarily wanting to throw Milli under the bus. “I’m sorry, I’m exhausted and I have no idea what’s going on around here.” I walked around towards her and tried to reach out for her, but she smacked my hand away. “Avion.”
“Don’t,” she sniffled. “Don’t touch me if you think I’m a traitor.”
“I don’t. I don’t think that.” I felt like the biggest idiot in the world for even suggesting it. “I shouldn't have asked you that stuff. I’m just covering all my bases.”
“After everything I showed you and told you?” she said. “My father’s alive. I showed you that specifically so that you would believe I had you and your best interests at heart. You said you trusted me!”
“I do!”
“Did Milli make you question me? Yes or no?”
“It’s… complicated.”
She shook her head as tears fell down her cheeks, breaking my heart. “No. It’s not.” She turned around and walked towards my office door, stopping only to look back at me and say, “If you don’t trust me, then I’ll give you one less thing to worry about.”
“Avion!”
She stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind her. “Yep. That was a mistake. Definitely a mistake.” I took a deep breath to calm my colliding emotions, then I went after her.
She’d skipped the elevator and had instead run up the stairs to get up to her room. I ran after her, following the sound of her footsteps and eventual slam of her apartment door. I heard the deadbolt on the other side of the door latch and knew she’d locked me out. I did have a key, one she’d given me to go in whenever I wanted, but this felt like one of those times when I specifically shouldn’t do that.
“Avion?” I knocked on the door a few times. “I’m not going to let myself in because I want to respect your space, but please let me in so I can apologize and explain myself. I trust you. I…” I stopped myself short of saying those three words that I had never said to anyone before. Those three words that I didn’t think I’d ever say. “I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re a traitor.”
The door unlocked and opened to Avion’s irritated face. “You questioned me like you thought I was.”
I grabbed her hand and dragged her into the apartment, shutting and locking the door behind us. “I did, and that was wrong. Avion, I havenoidea what I’m doing right now. Someone close to me has betrayed me and I don’t know who it is. I can tell you, I knew it wasn’t you. Those questions I asked. Subconsciously I think I was asking them so you could prove me right. Everything you said made sense and I was already thinking to myself, ‘See? It’s not her.’ It just… I felt like I had to. If it’s not you, then it means it’s one of my parents or one of my best friends and I just don’t know how to deal with that information.”
“Yeah. That makes sense,” but she was still crying like she was heartbroken.
I put my hands on either side of her face and lifted it to mine. “You told me that you don’t want to leave.”
“I don’t,” she whimpered, “but I don’t want someone else to use me to confuse you. If me being here is going to distract you from seeing the truth, then your dad was right, it’s better if I’m not here.”
