I can’t breathe. Three people dead tonight. All orbiting me, and I didn’t even know the planet was on fire.
Pete stands, comes closer, voice soft like he’s reassuring a child. “Tom… this is the part where you stop crying and start thinking. We’re offering you something beautiful. Safety. Wealth. Loyalty. No more people disappointing you. Just us. The three of us.”
In the middle of all this — Emma dead on the floor, James cooling in a pool of blood, Pete smiling like a snake with a wine glass — it hits me like a punch to the throat: Guy is gone. They murdered him. And I never even got to say goodbye. I keep seeing him the way he used to look at me in those stupid hotel rooms — soft-eyed, amused. I loved him. Properly loved him. The kind of love that makes you imagine a future before you remember you’re not built for one. And now he’s just — erased. A loose end cut, because he mentioned something in passing about the man he loved.
My gaze drops to Emma’s body. And then to James.
I walk slowly over to James’s body. Pete keeps his gun focused on me as I turn away from him. I crouch down by the corpse in front of me, of a man I helped kill. A man I thought was a monster, but was just another fool wanting to protect Pete.
Sam moves behind me, resting a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, Tom. This could all work out perfectly. For all of us.”
Not a chance.
A switch flips in me.
Something primal. Something final.
I take one step back, and my hand lands on the knife from the floor — the same one Emma pulled from James’s neck.
I don’t remember lifting it. I just know suddenly it’s in my hand, and my hand is at Sam’s throat, me behind him like he’s a shield.
Pete flicks the gun up to me, but Sam is too close to risk firing.
His eyes widen, but he doesn’t move. He studies me like a puzzle.
Pete’s voice drops, almost delighted. “There he is. The version of you I always knew was hiding.”
My arm is shaking, blade pressed to Sam’s skin. I don’t even know what I’m going to do.
But I know what Iwon’tdo.
I won’t be their next body.
Chapter 64
SAM
Sam’s hands are numb where Tom’s blade presses into his throat, but his mind is impossibly clear—sharper than it has been in years.
He doesn’t panic.
Panic is for people who haven’t learned how to survive the small, brutal lessons of the world. He learned them in rooms that smelled of boiled cabbage and disinfectant, in foster houses that taught you to hold your breath when doors opened and to love in small, guarded increments. He learned them with Pete at his side, the two of them scraping warmth from the edges of life and making it count.
“Come on, Tom,” Sam says. “I saved your life earlier today, remember?” He feels the pressure of the blade against his skin soften for a moment, but quickly returns.
Tom doesn’t respond.
“He was going to kill you. He was about to take your eye out before I swooped in and saved you,” Sam says, calmly.
Pete doesn’t say anything, just stands, pointing the gun. He knows when to take a back seat. He can see, despite appearances, Sam has a way in to Tom, one that can help him off this ledge they’re both perched upon.
“You owe me,” Sam says.
“I don’t owe you anything,” Tom hisses back.
Sam can feel Tom’s breath on the back of his neck. His eyes flick the room like a man doing a rapid-fire inventory of salvation: the heavy ceramic vase on the sideboard that would make a satisfying blunt instrument, the mantel clock he could smash to make a bloody diversion, the coat stand with a bulky overcoat to muffle movement.
Options but none close by.
