Leaning my head back against the door, I close my eyes. "Family comes first," I whisper. "But I wasn't family. I was the sacrifice."
The silence in the room is heavy. It presses against my eardrums, a physical weight that makes it hard to breathe. I'vesaid it all. I've spilled my guts on the floor like a fucking sacrificial offering.
Zoë stays where she is, back against the wall, her face a mask of calm assessment. “And now you know,” I say, my voice rough, scraping against the silence. “Rylan is the one with the blood on his hands. But I’m the one wearing the suit.”
Muscles protesting, I push myself upright. “He knows I have the original report—the blurry piece of shit on my phone. That’s why he’s been riding me. Why he leaked the fake one today. It’s preemptive. He’s making sure that if I try to speak up, I look like a desperate liar trying to clear my name.”
I let out a short, sharp laugh. “It’s working, isn’t it?”
Zoë just watches me.
“He’s blackmailing me,” I say. “He holds the leash. Step out of line—breathe a word about what really happened—and he destroys me. He tells the world I’m a liar who tried to frame his cousin. My father would let him do it. Because Rylan is the asset. I’m just the cost of doing business.”
My shoulder hits the door, arms crossing over my chest. “So there it is,” I say. “A fraud. A liar. The guy who took a deal to save his own skin and let a murderer walk free.”
The door handle catches my eye—brass, shiny, untouched. “You should go,” I say. “You’re smart. You see the geometry of this. I’m radioactive. Stand next to me, the contamination spreads. Let me into your bed, into your head—and you end up collateral damage.”
A nod toward the door. “Go. Before the blast radius gets any bigger.”
I wait for her to move. She doesn’t.
“You’re telling me to leave,” she says.
“I’m telling you the truth,” I say. “For once. I’m toxic. Ask anyone. My father. Rylan. The guys downstairs who think I’m a loose cannon. They’re right.”
Pushing off the door, I step into her space. “Everything I touch gets ruined,” I say. “My own life is proof. Yours isn’t going to be next.”
She tilts her head, her eyes narrowing. “You think I can’t handle a little radiation?”
"It's a fucking meltdown, Zoë," I snap. "This is a felony cover-up involving the sheriff and the mayor and my father's board of directors. You get mixed up in this, you don't get dirty. You get buried."
I hold her gaze, willing her to see the rot. "Walk away," I say. "Please."
The silence stretches again. A long, agonizing beat where the only sound is the thumping bass from the party downstairs, muffled and distant, like a heartbeat from another world.
Zoë looks at the door. Then she looks back at me.
"No," she says.
The word hangs in the air, small and sharp. A refusal. I blink, my brain stuttering like an engine flooded with gas. "What?"
"You heard me," she says. She moves toward me. Zoë stops in the center of the room, right over the phone I tossed on the rug. Her gaze drops to it, then lifts back to me. Her eyes are calculating. Cold. "I don't run from radiation, Gio," she says. "I contain it."
Zoë lowers herself to the floor. Across from me. Zoë sits cross-legged, her skirt pooling around her thighs, looking like a queen holding court in a shit-stained gutter. "That report," she says, pointing at the phone. "The original one. This is data."
"Garbage," I say. "Illegible."
"It's leverage," she corrects. "If the sheriff took a bribe to scrub the file, he left a trail. Money always leaves a trail. Your father thinks he erased the history, but he just moved it."
She picks up the phone, her thumb swiping across the screen. She studies the pixelated name like she's reading a map. "Rylanthinks he's safe because he's the heir," she says, her voice low, thoughtful. "He thinks he's holding the knife. But he's just the hand holding it. Your father is the arm."
Zoë looks up, pinning me with a gaze that strips the skin off my bones. "You've been protecting them," she says. "You took the fall, you kept the secret, you let them use you as a sponge for their filth. You're still playing their game. You're still reacting to their moves."
"I didn't have a—" I start, but she cuts me off. "You have a choice now," she says. "The leak changes the board state. The narrative is out. They can't put the toothpaste back in the tube."
She tosses the phone back to me. I catch it instinctively. "We burn it down," she says.
I stare at her. The room feels like it's tilting. "What?"
