I don’t elaborate.
Because behind the pillow on the armchair next to me, a little black device winks red. Blake’s handiwork. Crisp audio. Perfect clarity. Her confession, preserved.
I stand and take her empty glass. “You should stay the night. It’s late.”
“I can’t,” she says too fast. “James is waiting back at the AirBnB. He flew in for the weekend.”
If she notices the satisfaction that flickers through me, she doesn’t name it.
But I notice everything.
The way her pupils dilated when she said regret. The pause before she admitted James knew, too. That pause matters. It means there’s more.
I’ll find it.
For now, I set my glass down with a soft clink and press a hand to my chest. “You’re so brave,” I say, warm and reverent, like I’m praising a soldier returning from war. “Protecting your family… that’s loyalty. That’s love.”
She cries then—not a mess, just delicate tears rolling quiet down her cheeks, like she’s bleeding from the eyes.
The recorder is working overtime. Every hitch in her breath. Every whispered sin. All of it captured.
Later, I’ll catalog it. Edit it. Archive it.
Harper has the kind of face people want to save, the kind of soul they build campaigns around. Give it time and she’ll become the moral center—the brave little heartbeat everyonerallies behind—while I fade into the background like an old headline.
That’s the real panic. Not death. Obsolescence.
The thought curls in, dry and sharp: if there’s only room for one woman the world decides to keep, I refuse to be the one they quietly replace. The scary part isn’t that I’ve imagined it. It’s how calm everything feels when I do.
She leaves after midnight, hugging me too tightly like I’m her emotional support animal. I pad into the kitchen barefoot, tile warm from the furnace that never quite turns off in this cursed old house.
Blake’s leaning against the doorframe, hair a mess, face half-shadowed, that familiar smirk playing at his mouth.
“You always know exactly where to stick the knife,” he says.
“It’s a gift,” I purr.
He swirls his whiskey. “If she knew who you really are, she’d never sleep again.”
“Soon,” I say lightly, “she won’t.”
He lifts his glass. “To never sleeping.”
“To always watching,” I return.
We drink in silence—the kind you share with someone who knows where the bodies are buried. Who maybe helped dig the holes.
There’s something about Blake. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t ask too many questions. He films the ugliest parts of me with the admiration of a man watching art being born.
“You’ve already won,” he says finally, leaning on the counter. “She trusts you. The world does. The docuseries is fire. Everyone’s ready to anoint you Saint Shae of Second Chances.”
I step closer and run a nail along the rim of his glass. “You don’t just win the game, Blake. You rewrite the rules. You set the board. You make sure every player is yours.”
“You want her under your thumb.”
“I want her in the palm of my hand.” I hold mine out, curl my fingers slowly. “I want to feel the tremble when she realizes she gave me everything I need to ruin her.”
Blake grins. “And then?”
