“What are you doing?” I ask, folding my arms over my chest.
“Isn’t it obvious?” She doesn’t even look my way. “Grab his arms and help me move him onto the rug.” She grunts as shepulls, and if I were a gentleman, I might feel bad watching a lady struggle, but I’m not, and I don’t.
Using the rug to move the body sounds like Mob Shit 101, so it’s not that I think it’s a bad idea, but I don’t trust her enough to comply. My feet stay firmly rooted to my spot, unwilling to follow her instructions. She looks back at me with open irritation and rolls her eyes when she finds I haven’t moved.
“So what’s your plan, then? If you don’t want to do mine.” She drops his legs to the ground, her hands finding her hips as she shrugs at me. “We agreed this body needs to go. Have you changed your mind about that? Going to send Sable to jail?”
Everything she says annoys me. Plus, there’s the old resentments for what her and Arabella did to Sable. Even if she wasn’t loyal to Arabella either, it doesn’t suddenly make her a good person. Despite all that, she’s right. We have no time to lose arguing about what to do. Not with a dead body on our hands and Sable stuck in the car with Soren, who is high off his ass. If I weren’t worried about her safety, I would have separated them, but he shouldn’t be entirely useless if something happens. Though I know the girl forcing me to move a body would disagree.
I swallow through my irritation. Anyone threatening Sable sets me off, but she’s got me by the balls. Which I certainly wasn’t expecting when I choked her earlier. If we don’t get rid of this body now, though, then we’ll have to get our parents involved, and that would definitely be worse. I grab the hands like she asked and wait until she huffs once more and grabs the feet. We lift together.
“It’s just weird that you know so much about this,” I point out.
“And you don’t know anything about how to deal with a body or me. So do you want to sit down and hear my life story, or do you want to get this over with?”
We walk the body over to the rug in silence, and once he’s down, I start to roll him inside. She watches me with a look that says I’m doing it right, but she doesn’t trust that to last. When she bends over to grab the tightly rolled rug, I wave her away. I can drag the dead fucker by myself.
“How the hell do you have experience with dead bodies?” I ask as we move from the bedroom to the hall.
She shakes her head, but I keep my eyes pinned on her. She’s strong for her size; I see it in the carved muscles of her arm. Now that the act has been dropped, I’m starting to notice things I never have before.
“Oh, Hadrian. You know absolutely nothing about me.”
She’s not bragging, she’s not smirking, and I fear that besides what she just said, this is the most sincere she has ever been. I narrow my eyes, and she looks down at Carl, unable to endure my stare. There’s something behind that statement that makes me wonder if she regrets who she had to become.
“We can push him down the steps and see where he lands.” She giggles when we reach the stairs. I push aside my sympathetic thoughts about the con artist. She’s fucking insane.
“I’d prefer if I didn’t have to put him back together,” I grunt.
I’m not Lex, so this shit is freaking me out.
Nina just laughs and steps ahead of me, taking the farther side of the rug.
“You wouldn’t have to do anything extra.” She rolls her eyes again.
I drag him down instead, and since I’m pulling by the feet, Carl’s head bangs on every step. She walks behind him, not looking concerned that I hate his guts enough to abuse his body. When we reach the first floor, she walks ahead of me, and I wind up following her to the back door rather than leading the way.
“I’ll grab the stuff.”
What stuff?
The sun sets on the horizon, beautiful orange light casting over us, and I clap my hands together as I look at the man Sable killed. I’m proud of her for protecting herself, but sick over everything that must have happened for her to shove her shoe through his eye. The four families have excellent lawyers, so we don’t need to fear the law. But if they ever find out about this, they will own us for the rest of our lives, and I certainly don’t trust what might happen to Sable in that case.
Nina arrives with two shovels and a few other gardening tools. I definitely wouldn’t have thought of bringing all that. She tosses a small pickax toward me. It swings over itself before lodging in the ground at my feet.
“This terrain is all rock, and the ground is frozen, so start swinging.”
I’m not naïve. The police and our families will find out about this. It might take a day, a month, or a year. The police investigation will point the finger at Sable, and I’ll have to beg my family to protect her. I’ll be entirely at their mercy, and I don’t think they’ll even be willing. Father will do whatever he has to keep our family away from a scandal, but he would rather kill the last Briarwick than deal with a mess she’s made. Will this be enough to keep her safe?
Rather than listening, I stare at the handle. My mind drifts from the current moment, far away to a future where one or both of us are in jail, paying the consequences. My throat folds over itself in a botched attempt to swallow. Everything feels too close and too real. My skin heats, and sweat forms on the back of my neck even though it’s as cold as ice.
Smack.A small but surprisingly firm hand collides with my cheek. I blink, eyes finally focusing on Liliana in front of me—Nina, I correct myself. My cheek stings, but the pain doesn’t mean much.
“What the fuck?” I say.
“Start digging, or I’m going to leave you to deal with this yourself.”
I won’t admit it to her, but I’m in way over my head, and at the moment, her threat actually means something to me. I pick up the handle and pull it out of the ground. She gives me a satisfied smile and takes a step back. I look at her once more, my pride not allowing me to ask.
