“Honest,” she repeats, low and furious, rising with every word. “Honest?! You kidnapped me.Druggedme. Dragged me God-knows-where. You have me sitting here like—like apet—and you expect me to believe anything you say?!”
“I expect you to listen,” I say evenly, “because I am the only person in this city who will ever tell you what really happened to him.”
She flinches. That one hits, and it hurts me just as much as it does her.
Her breathing starts coming faster. She’s angry, yes, but this isn’t just rage anymore. This is grief with edges. This is her body realizing it’s bracing for an answer she cannot unhear.
I lower my voice. Slow it. Not to soothe. To cut clean.
“Owen didn’t die because he ‘knew too much,’ Ember,” I say. “He died because he sold the kind of information that gets crews executed. He died because money mattered more than loyalty in a moment where I couldnotafford betrayal. He died because the people he sold to were never going to let him live long enough to enjoy what he’d earned. He made himself a liability to everyone. To us. To them. Toyou.”
Her mouth opens, closes. She shakes her head. “No. No, you’re twisting it. Someone set him up.”
“Maybe,” I allow.
That freezes her.
Her eyes snap to mine. “What?”
“Maybe someonedidfeed him an angle,” I say. “Maybe someone told him it was clean. Maybe someone told him it was low-level intel, nothing explosive, nothing that would get anyone killed. Maybe someone carved him into a middleman so they never had to get their own hands dirty.”
Her voice drops to a whisper. “Who?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
That’s true. It irritates me that it’s true.
“I know who he met,” I continue. “I know where the payments went. I know what got leaked. I know where my men bled. I know when Owen disappeared. I know when his body turned up. I know which of mine found him first.”
Her eyes narrow. “Whichofyours?”
I hold her gaze. “Not relevant.”
I’m not dropping a name. She doesn’t get that. Not yet. I will not hand her a thread she can tie to a throat. They are loyal to me. I keep what’s loyal.
But I watch her latch onto the gap like a blade.
“So someoneyousent out,” she says slowly, voice sharpening again, “some loyalhoundof yours put a bullet in my brother, dropped him like trash, and all you’ve got to say is, ‘he made himself a liability’?”
“He made himself a liability,” I say evenly, “and then he ran.”
“Ran?”
“Disappeared,” I clarify. “Went to ground. Stopped answering. Stopped showing up. You don’t get to vanish from me, Ember. Not after you sell me out. He knew that. He tried anyway.”
“That sounds like survival instinct, not guilt,” she spits.
“It sounds likefear,” I argue. “And fear is guilt’s shadow.”
Her face twists, mouth pinching in annoyance. “God, you areinsufferable.”
“And you,” I say, letting my gaze drag briefly—deliberately—over the length of her bare legs, the hem of her shirt, back to her mouth, “areverylucky I find that interesting.”
Her breath stutters, pupils blown wide, not just with anger now, and the scent of it hits my bloodstream like a match to oil. She’s furious with me. She hates me. She’s also responding to me. She doesn’t want to. She can’t help it. It’s all there, painted across her body in real time.
My disobedience.
I lean forward, elbows resting on my knees now, voice softening into something that tends to make grown men forget they like breathing.
