A low humming throb makes itself known along my forehead. This is all too much for one day, never mind a lifetime. If I wasn’t so suspicious of every single person, if she didn’t have the track record she does, I’d maybe believe her.
Only a smidge.
But I need to know if there’sanytruth in what she said, even if the lie is the last thing that ends me. “How do I know you’re telling the truth about Saint? That this isn’t just one of your ten personalities you like to slip into when the outcome benefits you?”
She steels her spine. “Barry’s dead. His threats don’t hang over me anymore.”
“But the Montgomerys’ do,” Dawson adds, stepping towards her.
She draws a familiar glare at him, one that’s cast itself upon my own face once or twice. “They believe I’m still loyal to them after I spoke to Indie in the cell.”
I laugh. “So you’re trying to tell me that was also a performance for their benefit?”
“Yes.”
Fuck.
I don’t know what to believe right now.
If Louisa’s speech to me in the basement was just an act, what’s to say this whole conversation isn’t as well.
“They don’t know I’m here, and when I saw you on the roof last night…I couldn’t bear to let this go on any longer.”
My cheeks heat, the hairs along my neck rising.
“You were here?!” Rex snarls as he steps into her.
“Conrad and Barry had me watching this place at all times; they thought if I was ever discovered that Indie would take my side. That I could manipulate her and get her to give them Regina and Saint.”
She turns her attention to me. “That was their intention until you revealed it was you they needed all along. So…I called Saint, and we made a deal. I promised I would get him back to you, but he told me to hold off contacting any of you until he killed the Montgomerys, except I didn’t plan on him being taken like that. I’d managed to convince the Judge to spare you if Saint came to the manor. Conrad, on the other hand, won’t let it go.”
My eyes narrow at her mention of a deal with Saint.
I don’t know what kind of person the Montgomerys think I am, but I’m not the hesitant, naive girl they managed to drag to a party and drug.
I’m a killer when I want to be, and now that I’ve had the taste of just how unhinged I can be, I won’t hold it back. “I don’t regret anything I did, certainly not killing your husband,” I mumble. Not my actions, anyway. Maybe just the fact my best friend was hunted for the last couple of weeks because of it all.
That’s the only regret I have; I should have ran straight to the doors of the manor and told them it was me.
Louisa’s lips twitch at the corners. “And you shouldn’t. I just wish the part I played in this didn’t change who you were.”
This is getting too deep for me. She’s not worming herself back in. She lost her place in my heart; I’ll never reopen it for her.
Instead of dwelling further down a path I’d rather not, because my head feels like a volatile minefield, I shift to the whole reason why we’re here. “I want proof that Saint is alive and that yourdealisn’t a load of bullshit.”
Her hand dips in her pocket without hesitating, and the guys standing off the side of the road erupt at the same time, raising their guns at her.
She pulls out her phone without a blink of an eye, her thumb working as she gets what she needs. Her blue eyes slowly glide up to mine. “Are you sure you want to see this?” she asks, breaking our eye contact to look back down at the phone.
There’s shame written all over her face.
“Show. Me.”
She pulls in a breath, and when the phone slips into my hand, playing a recording from last night, every single nerve ending catches fire.
And suddenly, I don’t want to give up anymore.
I want to rip the world apart.
