“This is the best part.” Bay pointed to the screen, but again, he didn’t look himself.
Sila did though, just in time to see a clear image of himself step into view. He caught Haroon and in a flash of motion sliced the man’s throat, deep enough to cause blood to splatter. The expression on his face could only be considered pure evil. There was no hiding the fact that he’d just enjoyed slicing through Haroon’s carotid artery.
“What do you think?” Bay asked then, pausing the video so Sila’s vicious grin was frozen on screen. “The only reason it was so easy for you to stop them today was because the whole planet thinks you’re a nice guy. It’ll be pretty hard to maintain your innocent persona if this is leaked, don’t you agree?”
Something flipped in his gut and Sila barely held himself together as he stared Bay down. “You’re threatening me.”
“Sila Varun,” he smiled, but it was bitter, “My top student. Nothing gets by you.”
“Professor.”
“Actually,” he waged a finger, “a couple things do. Admittedly. We wereso close, but then Haroon had to go and fuck it up by poisoning you. If you’d only remembered…” He sighed. “I guess there’s no other choice now but for me to come clean.”
“Come clean about what?” Sila wasn’t sure he could describe what he was feeling in that moment.
Heshould befurious and maybe even a little concerned—that was legitimate leverage Bay now had against him—but if he did feel either of those things, those emotions were currently being drowned out by the bubbling dejection crashing against his insides like a raging tempest.
He’d foolishly believed…Well, everything.
“The Seaside Cinema is run and owned by the governor,” Bay informed him. “He works closely with the Imperial Family. More Royals visit to tug their dicks than you’d be able to count on both hands. Do you really think it’d be that easy to bribe one of their workers to let you into a private room?” He clicked his tongue. “No,baby. It isn’t.”
Sila kept his expression blank but on the inside his mind howled, forced to acknowledge that he had a point there.
“You figured you’d stroll in and offer a wad of coin, bat those long lashes of yours, flirt a little, and that would be it, right?” Bay continued.
“You knew I was following you.”
“I wasstalking you,” he reminded. “Of course I figured out when the tables had turned. Although, to be fair, it wasn’t until that night, when you first followed me there after my race? I hoped you’d be back again, that you’d want to know what I got up to, so I paid the employee to give you the info if you ever came asking about it. Since I was the client using the room, he didn’t have to worry about breaking any rules by giving it to you.”
It had been rather easy for Sila to get the keycode to the room Bay always used and hide the cameras. No one had come looking or patrolled the floor whenever he was there, but he’d just assumed that was par for the course at a place like that. That they kept security light so they didn’t run into any of the paying customers who preferred to keep their identities anonymous.
“I mixed the pictures of you and your brother in my closet, hoping you’d stumble on them,” Bay said next. “It was a month into this semester. You never came by though.”
“I bugged your car and your office,” Sila told him. “That was enough to keep tabs on you.”
“When I realized that was all you were doing, I was pretty disappointed. I had to keep my distance, but you didn’t have reason to. I wasn’t sure the bay roses or the text messages were from you, because you always seemed so indifferent to me on campus. It could have been Crate even. It wasn’t until you saved me from him at the restaurant that I was reassured it wasn’t him.”
“I’m the reason he came after you in the first place though.” Sila had drugged him.
“That’s okay. You also took care of him. I still didn’t have enough proof though, because you used that voice modulator. I figured it was someone else, even. It was disappointing.”
“Whether it was me or not, you could have been murdered.”
“Truthfully?” Bay shrugged. “In the beginning, I didn’t really care one way or the other. Then when it turned out it was you…You have no idea. Either you killed me, you fucked me, or you warned me off. If it was the latter, I’d force the issue until you changed your mind and went for the first. Getting to sleep with you felt more like a fantasy than a real possibility.”
“When you came into the woods—”
“I went there to die,” he confirmed. “Imagine my utter shock when you screwed me instead and I woke up still breathing the next morning.”
Sila cocked his head, reassessing everything he thought he’d known about the older man and their interactions. No matter which way he looked at it however, there was no denying one clear fact. “Your endgame changed after that.”
“To be fair, I had no idea it would be that easy for you to fix me. I hadn’t even considered you could. If you’d murdered me, the shock may have been enough to unlock my emotions for my final breaths, but I didn’t think there was a high chance of it. And I had no way of knowing that once I could feel again, I would no longer want to die at all.”
“Why didn’t you just go back to the bridge sooner if you wanted to end your life that badly?” Why drag Sila into his mess? Why make him experience—He let out a low growl, cutting that thought short.
“I’ve been back there dozens of times over the past two years,” he admitted. “Seemed like whenever I stood there, looking down at the water, that was the only time the guilt came back. I felt horrible for even considering taking the life my grandmother had spent so much time and energy raising. No matter how dead inside I already felt, I couldn’t do it.”
“So, you were going to have me do it for you.” Sila clenched his hands into fists. “That’s it then? You were just using me.”
