My heart slams against my ribs.
“Iggy said there’s a fentanyl shipment coming in,” I say. “He said it’s yours.”
Ridge doesn’t answer right away.
He stands there without moving, his focus slipping past me, and for a moment it feels like I’ve lost him to something unfolding behind his eyes. The pause stretches longer than it should, long enough for my chest to tighten and my certainty to start slipping.
“That isn’t true,” I add quickly, the words rushing to fill the silence. “It can’t be. I just need you to say it.”
He finally looks at me, but there’s no reassurance, no immediate outrage. Just a guarded focus that makes my stomach drop.
“Where did you hear this?” he asks.
The question is wrong. Not because of the words themselves, but because of how carefully they’re delivered, how much space he leaves around them. And because he still hasn’t said no.
“I told you,” I say quietly. “Iggy. He said people are scrambling for a piece.”
Ridge exhales through his nose and turns away from me, crossing the room as if he needs distance to think. His hands brace against the back of a chair, shoulders tightening beneath my gaze, his posture closing in on itself without quite collapsing.
“He inserts himself into your life an awful lot,” he says.
“Stop deflecting,” I reply. “Answer me.”
He doesn’t turn around.
“For weeks,” he says, voice low and controlled, “there’s been noise and rumors and bullshit. I don’t need you putting your nose in all of this.”
Something cold settles in my chest.
“So you’re not denying it,” I say.
His head snaps toward me. “That’s not what I said.”
“Then say it,” I press, the words cracking despite my effort to keep them steady. “Say you have nothing to do with it.”
The silence that follows stretches. The implication is loaded in a way that makes my ribs ache as I breathe through it.
I take a step back, folding my arms tight across my chest like they can keep me upright.
I search his face, still hoping for something I can recognize. The man who stood in my kitchen. The man who told me he loved me, who touched me like I mattered and whispered things to me that made me think he was different from this world we were born into.
Nothing gives.
“So this is who you are,” I say quietly. “Not with me. Not when it’s just us. But when it actually counts.”
The words hang between us, heavier than I expect.
His expression doesn’t change. If anything, it closes further.
I swallow hard. “I thought you were better than the worst of it,” I say. “I thought whatever this business is, you weren’t that.”
“That’s not how it works,” he says finally.
He still doesn’t say no. And that’s when the last piece falls into place.
Ridge drags a hand down his face. When he looks atme again, whatever softness was there earlier is gone, replaced by something resolute and distant.
“This is where I draw the line,” he says. “I’m not dragging you into this anymore.”
