I don’t choose the smart thing.
“Pity,” I say softly. “I’m sure you’d love to know what she tastes like too.”
The words hit him cleanly.
His face changes all at once, not in shock exactly, but in the furious recalibration of someone who had suspected something ugly and just got handed confirmation in the filthiest possible language. Whatever restraint he walked in here wearing starts to crack around the edges.
“Jesus Christ,” he scoffs. There’s no pretense left now. “You can’t even hide it.”
I say nothing.
That silence is what pushes him over.
“How long?” he asks. “How long have you been using this placement to take advantage of her?”
The accusation tears through me with surgical precision.
It is not just insulting. It is aimed. He found the one angle sharp enough to cut through anger and go straight for the place in me that was already questioning everything. Suddenly I can hear all the ugliest versions of myself at once. The boy from St. Augustine. The man’s son. The houseguest who came into her life already carrying old damage between them and still let it become want. The thing in me that should have known better and didn’t stop anyway.
For a fraction of a second, I don’t move.
The rage that follows isn’t explosive. It’s colder than that..much worse.
By the time Kadin realizes what he’s done, it has already reached my hands.
Catching the front of his shirt in both fists, I drive him backward so hard the wall shakes behind him. The force slams the breath out of him in one stunned sound. My forearm comes up across his chest before he can recover, pinning him there, crowding him hard enough that whatever easy, upright confidence he came in wearing finally fractures for real.
The room goes silent except for both of us breathing.
Up close, I can see the moment his bravado fails him. Not all at once. Just the small betrayals. The jump in his pulse at the base of his throat. The way his hands come up too late, not to fight me yet, but to gauge whether I mean to hit him or choke him or simply hold him there until the threat sinks in. The fact that he is finally looking at me the way he should have from the beginning.
Keeping him pinned, I lean in until he has no choice but to hear every word clearly.
“You don’t get to say that to me,” I whisper.
He swallows hard, trying to gather himself enough to sneer, but I can feel the uncertainty in him now. He wants to be righteous. He wants to believe he’s the good guy in this room. But good men don’t usually end up held against walls by the throats of their own assumptions.
“You think you know what happened,” I hiss. “You think reading a few records and seeing her flinch gives you some right to stand here and tell me what I am to her.”
His jaw tightens. “I know enough.”
“No,” I say, pressing harder just long enough to make the point land. “You know what you needed to know to make yourself feel clean.”
That hits. I can tell by the way his face flashes with something that looks almost like anger but is really embarrassment caught before it can turn into anything useful.
“She doesn’t need-” he starts.
Cutting him off, I tighten my grip on his shirt.
“You don’t get to talk about what she needs,” I warn. “Not to me.”
I can hear my own pulse now. Feel it in my teeth. In my hands. In the violent restraint it takes not to go farther.
Because I could.
That’s the truth of it. The terrifying one. I could cave his mouth in. Break his nose. Put him on the floor and teach him exactly how little those records prepared him for a boy like me. The knowledge lives in my body as naturally as breathing.
And the fact that I’m aware of it at all makes his accusation sting all over again.
