“You’re not expendable.”
My throat tightens.
Neither is he.
That’s the problem.
That’s always been the problem.
“I can build a deadman cascade,” I say. “If anything happens to me—if I’m taken, silenced, discredited—everything goes public anyway. Everywhere. Simultaneously.”
His eyes lock onto mine.
Sharp.
Searching.
“You planned for dying.”
“No,” I correct quietly. “I planned for not being able to stop them quietly.”
There’s a difference.
A huge one.
He knows it.
That’s why it scares him.
Silence stretches.
The kind that changes things.
Then—
“If you do this without me,” he says, voice low and lethal, “I will burn every person involved to the ground.”
I don’t flinch.
Because I believe him.
Completely.
“I know.”
“That’s not a threat.”
“I know.”
It’s a promise.
And for a second—
just a second—
I let myself imagine what that looks like.
Aaron unleashed.
