Page 452

“I could ask you the same thing,” Miles replied to his sister. “But now that we're all here...” He looked at us all, one by one. “How about we all join forces?” “

I didn't know what Miles was talking about. Quentin's facial expressions were what occupied the last of my brain cells. The essential. Everything.

“I can't believe it,” Emely blurted out. “Don't tell me this is one of your ridiculous plans!”

Quentin looked at Miles in irritation.

“Why don't you ever trust me?” Miles replied.

“Why should I trust you?”

“Don't worry, Emely,” Larissa began. “Miles has no bad intentions. And there must be good reasons for him to trust Erik.”

Every time she said Erik, my heart threatened to leap out of my chest.

Quentin looked at Larissa, as if paralyzed.

“My name is Quentin.”

Every word sounded sharp. A sharpness that bounced off Larissa but completely split me in two.

Panic broke out inside me, sending more ice up my hands and into my sleeves.

We should never have come here.

Larissa raised both hands from her crossed arms.

“Sorry, Mr. Secretive.”

Quentin's gaze was devastating, and Bayla punched Larissa's shoulder diagonally behind me.

“Quentin,” Larissa quickly corrected herself.

“Quentin is a scientist,” Miles said, pouring whiskey into a glass on the dresser. “He could be useful.”

“Miles,” Quentin interrupted him tonelessly, his fixed gaze locked on me. “Give me a moment.”

Silence.

I expected nothing more than for my heart to finally stop and for his razor-sharp eyes to completely bring me to my knees, when he suddenly ran a hand through his hair and strode across the ground floor to the large window behind the couch group, his gaze fixed on the floor.

“How could I have fallen for a damn Blair…” I heard him say tonelessly.

My heart contracted like a frozen sponge whose material was now doomed. A sharp pain that nothing had prepared me for.

I felt the girls' eyes on me, Larissa's hand on my shoulder.

“She's one of the good ones,” Miles sighed.

“I can't believe you knew!” Quentin blurted out, turning to Miles, approaching him hastily, and snatching the empty whiskey glass from his hand before throwing it into the fireplace.

The glass shattered, and the embers, which must still have been hot, hissed.

Everyone in the room flinched.

“That you lied to me!”

“It wasn't my job to tell you the truth,” Miles said, looking at me.