She drags a hand through her hair, breath stuttering. “Maybe someone stole it. Maybe someone copied it. I don’t know. I don’t even know howyou—”
“How I know?” I cut in.
She looks like she wants to deny everything again, to retreat into lies she doesn’t have the energy to maintain. Then her mouth trembles, just once, before she clamps down hard. “I never wanted this,” she says, and the words are ragged. “Do you think I enjoy knowing someone died? Do you think I’m proud of what I’ve done?”
The anger in me surges, ugly and hot. Not because she’s lying—because she isn’t. Because I can see the truth in the way her throat works around the words, in the way her eyes shine without letting the tears fall.
“Then why do it?” I demand. “Why risk everything?”
Her silence stretches, thick and dangerous.
Without thinking, I reach for her. My fingers catch a stray curl and tuck it back; a small, intimate motion that lands like a punch the second I do it.
She stills. Looks up at me.
Gone is the feisty kitten from the party, claws out and mouth sharp. This version of her is stripped to nerve endings and fear, and it makes something in me tighten.
I pull my hand back like I’ve touched fire.
My gaze drops, needing somewhere else to look, and that’s when I see it—the glossy brochure on the counter, half-hidden under her keys.
Langport Academy.
I pick it up before I can stop myself, the photo of smiling students too bright for the room.
“Langport?” My voice comes out lower than I intend.
She snatches it from my hand, eyes blazing. “That’s none of your business.”
“Everything became my business when your drug showed up in my territory,” I say, gentler than the words deserve, sharper than she does.
Her shoulders sag, the fight draining out of her like she can’t afford it anymore. “You don’t understand,” she whispers. “It’s the only way I can give her a future. The only way to stop being another disappointment in her life.”
“Ella,” I say, and her flinch tells me I’ve hit the center.
It twists something in my chest—raw, unfamiliar. I don’t want to feel anything about it, and yet I do.
“And what happens to her,” I ask, “if you get caught? Or worse?”
Her mouth tightens. “I don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice.” My voice turns cold, because if I let it soften, I’ll do something stupid. “You’re just making the wrong one.”
The fire returns to her eyes, furious and wounded. “Don’t you dare lecture me about choices,” she spits. “You have no idea what it’s like to live like this. To have nothing. To scrape, claw, and still come up short.”
I take a step closer, the room suddenly too small. “I know more than you think,” I say, and my voice drops, dangerous. “And I know that if you keep going, you won’t just lose the money. You’ll lose her.”
Her breath catches. For a moment, it feels like the tension between us might snap in either direction—violence or something worse.
Then she looks away, fingers white-knuckled around the brochure.
“Get out,” she whispers. “Just… get out.”
Every instinct in me screams to stay. To fix it. To fix her. To pull her out of the spiral before it swallows her whole.
But I’m not a savior. I don’t do rescue. I do control.
So I turn and leave, the door clicking shut behind me, and the sound follows me down the hall like a warning.
