But it’s clear there’s absolutely no chance of me and Kane continuing our conversation—or anything else—by the way she keeps looking over her shoulder at us on her slow-walk to the bridge.
I sigh.
“Maybe there’s a secret third Dunleavy sister,” Kane murmurs as we start to follow, in a warm, amused voice that makes me want to wrap my fist in his shirt and haul him into one of the cabins with me.
“Shocking season finale twist,” I add, trying to keep my voice steady. Like this is all normal, so normal. And not everything I’ve ever wanted but barely let myself consider.
Kane wanted to kiss me. He would have kissed me. Adrenaline rockets through my bloodstream.
As soon as I see Ny’s face, though, lined with tension and pale, my giddiness dissipates like air from a popped balloon. Whatever he’s found, it’s nothing simple. Or pleasant.
He motions Kane and me over, watching to make sure Lourdes returns to her station. That is… not good.
“It looks like the cameras were set to automatically upload any new footage,” Nysus says in a quiet voice. “When I got to the end of the finished episodes, there were these other random files and the last couple…” He hesitates. “Here. You should just watch.” He pushes the tablet into my hands, along with the headphones he’s been using.
Dread building in my gut, I press one side of the headphones to my ear and start the footage. Kane watches over my shoulder.
It’s hard to tell what I’m seeing at first. The camera is jostling around so much, revealing bright flashes of color and brief glimpses of carpeting and polished wood-panel walls.
Someone is running down the hall on the Platinum Level.
“Are you recording?” a breathless male voice asks, close by but not on camera.
“That’s the producer, I think,” Nysus says. “Ty Rubin.”
“Of course I’m fucking recording. I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job,” another male voice responds sharply. He sounds slightly closer. The camera operator, probably.
“Shhh,” the other man says, the noise more like a hiss. “Just shut up. We need to get this.”
Whoa. Just a little tension there.
The camera steadies as they slow down, coming up on a slightly open door to one of the suites. Female voices are raised in argument, one plaintive and loud, the other attempting placation through what sounds like clenched teeth.
“You ruin everything!” the first one shouts.
“Opal, honey, you’re not listening,” the trying-to-soothe woman says.
The camera nudges through the open door, revealing OpalDunleavy, her arms folded across her chest, glaring at an older woman with an obvious familial resemblance, minus the purple hair.
I look to Nysus.
“Vi Dunleavy,” he says. “Dunleavy matriarch.”
Is that what they called her on the show? I want to roll my eyes, but the sight of Opal standing there, furious in her pristine white bathrobe, the same white bathrobe she’s still wearing now, only sans knife, makes my skin crawl. This must be close to the end, close to… whatever happened.
Opal looks exhausted, brittle, with purplish circles under her eyes that aren’t quite concealed with makeup, and absolutely rigid with anger. Her mother, too, looks as though she’s not quite well. Her hair is ruffled into short spikes, and her eye makeup is smeared in streaks on the side closest to the camera, as if she was woken from a nap and didn’t have time to repair it. It makes her look off-balance, both physically and mentally.
Neither woman seems to notice the camera, but perhaps that’s deliberate, for the show.
“If you break a restraining order, darling, then you’ll lose any sympathy from your audience,” her mother continues.
“You don’t know anything,” Opal sneers. “This is on brand for me. AndIam the brand.”
Vi Dunleavy smiles tightly, wrinkles appearing for the first time on either side of her mouth. “Sweetheart, I think you’re underestimating the appeal of the whole family. Your sister and I—”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Opal lifts her hands to press them against her ears. “You just keep talking, so much noise, buzzing in my head!” She sways slightly, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth still open from shouting.
The other woman moves so fast I barely catch the movement before her hand is cracking across Opal’s face. “Listen to me, you little whore,” she snarls, spittle flying from her perfectly lined lips. “You are not going to ruin everything I’ve worked so hard for.”
