His response was sly, and Zaria straightened. “No.”
Another long moment passed. Kane’s eyes never strayed from her face, and she forced her chin up even as her cheeks burned. It felt like a physical inspection. Like he was prodding at her resolve,searching for the lie. The tension between them peaked, reaching a breaking point, and Zaria railed against it, unwilling to capitulate now that her answer hovered between them. It felt heavy, that denial. A weight threatening to snap something vital.
“Ah, Zaria.” Kane relaxed back into the sofa, one side of his mouth lifting almost smugly. “The only liar here, I suspect, is you.”
KANE
When Kane awoke the next morning, he promptly wished he hadn’t.
His body ached fiercely, pain radiating from his torso into each of his limbs. Still, it was miles better than the gut-wrenching, nausea-inducing agony that had come before it. He had only felt pain like that once prior, and his memories of that time were foggy from the copious amounts of laudanum. What hedidrecall was how often he’d taken the drug in the days following. How he’d convinced himself it was just to take the edge off, just to calm his nerves, just to help him sleep. Even when Ward had forbidden him from taking it any longer—claiming it made him slow, foolish, distracted—Kane thought of it near constantly for weeks.
He’d started drinking not long after that. It was passed down from father to son, Ward had told him later, the predilection formind-altering substances. And maybe that was why Kane sometimes felt he didn’t know himself: He was desperate not to.
The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was Zaria, asleep in the nearby armchair with her hair unbound and her body contorted in a way that couldn’t possibly be comfortable. Last Kane could remember, she’d declared she was going to retire to Cecile’s bedroom, and he’d bid her good night, his insides a snarled knot. She didn’t believe he’d changed his mind about double-crossing her, and that was fine. Let her believe what she wanted. It was clearsheharbored regrets, whether she admitted them or not.
She looked far too innocent in unconsciousness. The slight divot between her brows was notably absent, the shape of her full mouth soft. Looking at her now, Kane could almost believe she wasn’t turning his life upside down. He wondered when she’d returned to the sitting room.Whyshe’d returned.
“You’re awake.” Fletcher’s voice caused Zaria to stir, and Kane shifted his gaze to his friend, feeling caught in the act. Fletcher stood in the archway separating the sitting room from the tiny kitchen, his head all but brushing the ceiling. He looked a mess; his clothes wrinkled, his hair disheveled, as if he’d been sprinting through a windstorm. His expression was shadowed with weariness.
Kane could only imagine he looked ten times worse. When he spoke, the sound grated in his throat as if he’d been blowing clouds all night. “Yeah, I’m awake. But at what cost?”
Fletcher approached the sofa, then paused, hovering in the center of the room. He seemed to be weighing his next words, and the absence of familiar ease made Kane splinter in a way that hurt nearly as much as a dart to the torso. “How are you feeling?”
Kane couldn’t help it—he laughed. The action tore at his chest,pain lancing through his ribs, and spurred Zaria to lurch straight up in the armchair. He winced, waiting for his vision to clear. “I feel like shit, Fletch. Thanks for asking.”
“I thought I was going to watch you die.”
“You and me both.”
Fletcher’s gaze traveled over Kane as if to reassure himself that he was not, in fact, dead. “It was almost me.”
Zaria made an indelicate sound of surprise that Kane barely registered. It was true—he’d seen Cleland struggling to aim the gun around Zaria, face red with pain and rage. The man had been aiming for Kane, of course, but he didn’t have a clean shot. The way they’d been positioned, Fletcher was in the bullet’s path, his focus trained on a dying Ferrington at his feet. He hadn’t even been looking at Cleland.
But Kane had. He’d lunged without thinking at precisely the moment Cleland fired. Everything after that was a blur. He remembered relief. An explosion of agony. The stars above him a distant haze he couldn’t quite focus on. He remembered Zaria’s and Fletcher’s faces. Begging them to end his misery and thinking that, if he had to die tonight, he was glad they were there with him.
A foolish sentiment, perhaps. How wretched—howpathetic—that he had nothing and nobody, save these two people he had already lost.
“I’d do it again,” he told Fletcher. “I’d do it every time.”
Fletcher’s throat shifted as he swallowed. “I know. You’re always trying to protect me, whether I want it or not.”
Kane couldn’t decipher his tone. “Fletch, I—”
“Come home. Please, come back to Moore & Sons. I’m losing my mind being there alone.”
The air seemed to evaporate from Kane’s lungs. He’d yearned to hear those words—or something like them—since the night Ward died. It wasn’t forgiveness, but it was pretty damned close. “You haveno idea how badly I want to. But everything I need is at the manor now, and Cleland and his cronies won’t be the only ones wishing I was out of the picture.”
“Fine.” Fletcher sighed. “But you can’t try to protect me anymore, Kane. I’m a grown man who could knock you out with a single punch.”
“You wish.”
It was Fletcher’s turn to snort a laugh, and Zaria leapt to her feet, adjusting the bodice of her dress. “Have you seen yourself today, Durante? Pretty sureIcould knock you out.”
He rolled his eyes. The burning urge to say something meaningful prickled his skin, but he couldn’t quite form the words. Luckily, Fletcher spoke again, bridging the silence. “I got rid of the bodies. Had to make a few trips, which is why I was gone so long.”
“Thanks,” Kane said, casting Zaria a sidelong glance at the wordbodies. He hated that she’d been the one to kill Cleland. It should have been him. He wished it had.
But she didn’t react, once again occupied with sorting through the items and documents littering the floor. “What do we do now?” she murmured. “Vaughan must have known what we were planning, which means he knows I’ve changed allegiances.”
