X nods. “Yeah… we didn’t tell Jade this. But my dad’s guy? He’s technically still on retainer.”
Tristan scoffs. “Your dad’s guy is slow. Mine is a shark. He’ll shred these girls alive in court.”
“Oh please,” X shoots back. “Your guy tanked his last settlement.”
“Only because the other lawyer cried!” Tristan says.
“He cried because he was losing?—”
I snap my fingers, loud.
“Does it matter whose attorney is hotter?” I growl. “Pick one. Pick both. I don’t care.”
They shut up instantly.
Then X’s grin spreads slow.
“So after school,” he says, “we meet up, get the evidence, hand it over to Tristan’s attorney—fine—and start the wheels turning.”
“And we do it quiet,” Tristan adds. “Silent. Surgical. They won’t know what’s coming until they’re already drowning.”
A slow, dark satisfaction settles in my chest.
Good.
For once, money isn’t going to bury the truth.
We’re going to use it to expose it.
“I want them ruined,” I say.
My voice is low.
Steady.
Dead serious.
X nods.
Tristan nods.
This isn’t about school drama anymore.
This is war.
I tell the guys I’ll meet up with them later.
Tristan’s got some girls’ basketball workout to run before varsity. X pretends he believes me when I say I’m “running errands in town before dinner.”
They both know I’m lying.
I don’t care.
Because there’s one place I have to go.
Jade’s house.
I park halfway up the street like some lovesick creep, engine off, watching the place from a distance. The porch is still dark. The windows still empty. That stupid wreath her aunt put up last week is lopsided now, blown sideways by the wind.
