“This is your fault.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I know and I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry.” Ransome steps over to me. His figure looms over mine, tall and furious. “Sorry for what? Sorry that you betrayedme from day one? That you fought me even though I showed you the weight of the situation? Sorry that your siblings, people I tried to help, couldn’t obey orders and stay out of shit?” He is screaming at this point, and I just let him. “Sorry that you couldn’t obey orders either? You think I wanted to lock you up in my penthouse just for fun? Fuck, Amara. I did it because you’re stubborn and unpredictable and it was the only way to keep you from doing something stupid. And yet, you still managed. You doused all of us in gasoline and lit the fucking match. Are you happy now? Did you get what you wanted?”
His eyes shift down to the blood on the floor. His expression fills with even more rage.
“I didn’t mean to let anything happen,” I cry. “I never wanted any part of this. You could have kept me in the dark. You didn’t have to show me this side of your world. But once I knew, I was in. And then what was I supposed to do? You’re the one that went to my house. You talked to my brother. You took us to that concert where he met Tristan. You?—”
Ransome reaches out and grabs me by the throat. “Donotput this on me. Don’t you fucking dare. I have done nothing but try to protect you, and for what? To have my best friend killed? After losing my brother?! I should have let the kid die just so you’d know how it feels!”
His hand is around my neck, but his words are what choke me. Because he’s right. If Maverick dies today, that’s on me.
After a moment that feels like he is considering finishing me off, his hand drops. His phone buzzes in his pocket—Baron, most likely—and he pulls it out.
But as he scrolls through a text, he stops. His mouth twists and he looks over at me.
“What is it?” I dare to ask.
Wordlessly, he shows me a string of photos. They’re from social media. Me at the speakeasy with Electra. Shots of men talking to me, flirting with me. If the photos had caught the seconds that followed, they would show me blowing the guys off.
But the last couple photos are of me and Tristan in the hallway by the bathroom. He is standing close, close enough to kiss me. And in one of the photos, it looks like he’s about to.
“Ransome. It’s not… we didn’t… I wouldn’t?—”
“Shut up!” he booms, his voice bouncing off every surface of the empty room. His presence fills the entire warehouse. “Just shut the fuck up!”
“I know what it looks like!” I snap back, because he’s not seeing it for what it is. Only what it looks like. It looks bad, but it wasn’t. “I would never?—”
“Lie to me? Manipulate me?” he cuts in.
Then, without giving me time to reply, he scrolls to the last attachment. A video.
He hits play.
It’s fuzzy. Dark. A little bit like bodycam footage. At first, I can’t make out where it was taken.
Then the details start to pop.
It’s the penthouse kitchen. I’m in the frame, but the angle is weird, like somebody much taller than me was wearing this and filmed me without telling me.
There are two voices on tape. One is mine, and the other?—
Tristan.
“I mean… I don’t really know you.”
“True. Most people don’t. And I find that… irritating.”
“I can understand that. I’ve spent a lot of my life fighting to be on top and never truly feeling like I could get there.”
“You don’t think I can get there?”
“I just know it’s hard. Especially when other people are always in your way.”
My voice sounds so wrong here. Soft and low and velvety. Seductive, even. Not to mention the look on my face. I was fawning hard, but that’s not what it looks like here.
It looks like something else.
