And, no. Nope. Nuh-uh. There was absolutely no fucking way I was willingly climbing down a dark-ass hole in the ground in these heels and this dress. We were clearly being lured to our deaths. Blake was an idiot for not seeing it. He was blinded by hatred, still reeling from his breakup. He was—turning and climbing straight into the hole.
Goddamn it.
He didn’t even look at me as he passed out of sight, too focused on whatever vengeance fantasy was playing out in his head.
The guard motioned me forward, impatient for me to follow my brother. New voices entered the alley, low and excited. Fuck, I couldn’t just stand here.
With a deep breath and an ominous rumble of my stomach, I trudged after Blake, carefully placing the toe of my heel on the top ladder rung. My limbs shook as I edged down, and my regret was both instant and absolute. Because while the manhole opening was wide, the tunnel was much narrower. Brick lined the circular walls, which, like, was that okay? Shouldn’t they have been made of something stronger, like cement? Something that wouldn’t degrade so quickly and potentially lead to bowing or a cave-in or—oh, god, I was going to give myself a panic attack.
“Hey, you gonna move?” someone called from above.
I realized I was frozen in place, my ragged breaths loud in the closed space. “Yeah, sorry,” I yelled up to them, forcing myself back into motion.
A small eternity later, my feet hit the tunnel floor. It, at least, was made of cement, and dry, thank god. These heels wouldn’t hold up against mud or raw sewage (gag).
Overhead, more café lights were strung on a line leading away from the manhole, and I spotted Blake’s back disappearing around a bend farther down the tunnel. I had just enough dignity to keep from shriekingWait!as I scurried after him, trying not to think of what else might be scurrying down here. The walls were wider than the hole I’d just climbed down, but still too close for comfort, and I was acutely aware that if something happened to the lights, we’d be dropped into complete darkness.
“Please listen to reason,” I begged when I caught up to Blake. “Theo has peoplewho work for him. Who’s to stop them from coming after us if he’s in jail?”
Blake snorted, an arrogant look on his face. “They wouldn’t dare.”
“Okay, rich boy,” I said, grabbing his arm, my sudden spike of anger lending me the strength needed to yank him to a stop. “First of all,yes, they would.Secondly, how fucking dare you act so casual about putting your family’s safety at risk?”
“Mom and Dad don’t go anywhere without people all around them, their house has better security than most banks, and their driver is ex–French Foreign Legion.”
“What about me, dipshit?”
“Please,” he spat. “You think I don’t know you’ve been working with Theo? That you’ve beensleepingwith him? Everyone at AJ’s saw the three of you leave the party plastered together. Why would he hurt the person helping him take down our family?”
My face burned with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. God, this must have looked so bad from Blake’s perspective. I should haveknownpeople would gossip, but I’d been so focused on one-upping Theo that the thought hadn’t even entered my head.
“I wasn’t helping him hurt our family,” I said. “I was fixing the mess you created.”
“No! You were making it worse!” he yelled, his voice echoing over the tunnel.
“Sorry, excuse us,” someone said, and my face burned even hotter as I stepped back to let a trio of people pass.
Blake shot me a disgusted look and followed in their wake, and I was so stunned and confused that I just let him go. This behavior wasn’t like him. I knew Blake. He didn’t have a malicious bone in his body. He’d never treated me like this before, even when I was at my worst.
Yeah, butwasit your worst?a small voice wondered.
The thought made me deeply uncomfortable. Because more than once over the last few weeks, I’d wondered if I was regressing into my past self, undoing all my hard work. Had I been so consumed by my hatred of the world I’d grown up in that I’d let it blind me to what was really going on?
I thought by joining forces with Theo and helping him take down the worst people I knew, he’d spare the innocent, but what if I was wrong? What if Blake was right, and my nagging suspicions about Theo’s ulterior motives were warranted? My brother sure seemed to think so, and if he was so convinced that coming to this party would prove that, then maybe I needed to stop underestimating him.
I started walking again, pursuing the other partygoers through a labyrinth of tunnels toward an ever-increasing wall of noise. Laughter, cheering, the frenetic sounds of a jazz band.
I rounded a final corner and stopped dead in my tracks. Becausewow. The wide-open room in front of me looked like a movie set. Glittering chandeliers hung from overhead, a tower of champagne glasses rose from a white-clothed table. Women in flapper dresses danced with men in three-piece suits. People stood clustered around tables stacked with food or games, laughing, drinking, looking like they were having the time of their lives. Movement drew my gaze to the left, and I saw a bank of white curtains hanging from the ceiling, made to look like they were strung over windows, or doors that might lead to a terrace.
Theo did all this?
No wonder people were so desperate to attend his parties.
Someone tapped my shoulder. “Excuse me.”
I turned to let them pass, and froze. The man was tall and thin, with white-blond hair and a scar on his chin from a bad fall when he was a kid. “Keith?”
He smiled and tipped his mask up. “Stella? I thought I might see you here.”
