“I don’t understand,” I say, quieter now.
Anderson turns slightly toward Paris, his expression smug. “Do you want to do the honours?” he asks lightly.
Paris nods, then turns back to me.
She meets my eyes, and there’s no hatred in hers. No real satisfaction either. Just something sad. Something hollow.
“I messed with h-his brakes,” she says, flatly. “Your f-father’s. The car.”
I just stare at her, blinking, waiting for something else. Something that makes sense.
But that’s it. That’s the sentence.
My knees nearly give out. “Why?”
Paris exhales slowly, looking past me now, toward the stone wall behind my shoulder. Her voice is barely above a whisper.
“He w-was ruining everything,” she says. “My family. The Steeles. Irina. Our partnership. She wouldn’t s-stop crying. She couldn’t s-sleep.” Her voice breaks, just a fraction. “He was everywhere. In the house. In our heads.”
“So you killed him,” I say, numb. “You killed my dad.”
Paris doesn’t flinch.
“I d-did it for them,” she says. “For all of them. They said they couldn’t, so I did.”
My breath is shaking now. “They? Who’s they?”
She doesn’t answer directly. Just tilts her head a little and says, “Everyone. Myfamily.”
I want to scream. I want to understand. But nothing she’s saying is making sense.
“And y-you were getting too close to the truth,” she adds, almost as an afterthought.
My breath catches. “What?”
“The messages,” Paris says, her tone turning casual. “Those were me. At first.”
I blink, slow. The world tilts. The cold air feels thinner now, like it’s being pulled from the edges of my lungs.
“You were giving her too many pieces,” she tells Anderson then, her voice tinged with something like reprimand.
Anderson laughs, a low, amused sound. “She was clever. I was curious.”
Paris narrows her eyes. “And careless.”
He just shrugs.
Paris finally looks at me again, and there’s something in her expression I can’t name, but feel in my heart like an old friend.
“So that means…” My voice breaks, and I have to force the words out. “That means you’re the reason Wren died.”
Paris flinches.
It’s not much, barely a breath of movement, but it’s the first real crack in her expression. The first time she looks like someone young again, not this version of her I don’t recognize. She drops her gaze for half a second, lashes flickering low, and I see it. The shame.
“She wasn’t supposed to be there,” she says quietly.
“So that makes it better?”
