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But there was no game, at least not one run by Diablo or Aggie. There was just me, on my knees in my crappy bedroom, giving the performance of my life to guys who had known from the start that every second of it was me.

My stomach grinds and roils and I bend forward slightly to relieve the pain. It doesn’t help. I breathe slow through my nose, the way you do when you're trying not to be sick on the floor. That doesn’t help either.

"You sent us that message last night," Theo says. "Asking for help. Telling us you were desperate. I read it and I couldn't do it one more day, play like I had no idea Diablo was Agnes, watch you get naked, and throw money at you. I couldn't sit there and watch you beg us to save you while we lied to your face about who we were. That's why I’m telling you this today. That's why it's me. You deserved to hear it out loud from one of us before it got to you some worse way, some way that would hurt you even more."

"How nice of you. Congratulations." It comes out flat and thin and doesn't sound like me at all. It’s too calm, a stranger's voice using my mouth.

"I need you to hear the rest," he says. "Because you're going to walk out of here hating all three of us, and you'd be right to. But I'm not going to let you leave thinking it meant nothing. Agnes, I fell⁠—"

"Don't." The word scrapes out of me, low, and stops him cold. "Don't you dare say that to me. Not in this room. Not ever.”

His mouth closes.

Theo asking if I was well. The big goddamn hero. He knew.

Theo telling me to lie back and rest. He knew.

Knowing the whole time, it was the girl from the lobby.

That night on the screen when he described a woman nobody ever looks at, a woman who'd made herself small on purpose, was he mocking me? Making fun? Having a laugh at my expense?

I called this a coincidence so I could keep breathing, but it was never a coincidence. It was a man who knew exactly whose chest he was reaching into, because he could, because I'd handed him the key and never noticed.

Elias at the top of the board, that silence I mistook. Beck throwing money at me hand over fist. Every one of them. All of it. Watched. Managed. Bought.

Laughed at.

And then a worse one, because it doesn't stop at the guys. Sloane. They told her. That’s why she’s been up in my business, watching me with that little frown, pitying me. Sloane carrying me the good coffee, asking if I was in over my head. What if she's known the whole time, and I sat there and let her be gentle with me? They've done that too, made me hate the one person in the building who was ever nice to me. This might be the cruelest thing on the whole list.

Heat pushes up hard behind my eyes and I push back against it, because I will lie down on this floor and die before I cry in front of this man.

"Say something," Theo says, low. "Please. Anything."

So I lift my head and make myself look at him. The man I let in closer than I've let anyone in my grown-up life. The one who put coffee in my hand in the daylight and undressed me with his voice and knew, every single second, that Agnes and Diablo were the same woman.

"How long," I ask, and my voice comes out steadier than it has any right to, "were the three of you going to let me go on thinking I'd gotten away with it?"

And I watch Theo Marsh open his mouth and find that he doesn't have an answer.

Watching Theo have no answer for me is the thing that finally lights the match.

Because the shock is burning off now, and what's under it isn't sadness, not yet. What's under it is hot and clean, a relief, because at least I know what to do with it.

"Your confession must feel so good. Now you can go through the rest of your day patting yourself on the back. And you want to know he funny part?" I say, pulling my shoulders back. “Here’s what you guys never figured out. I knew."

Theo goes still. "Knew what?"

"Who you were. All three of you. HouseMoney tips like he's buying a table at a club. That's Beck. NoComment never types because Elias Thorne is the strong, silent one. And you, KindRegards, actually say please. A dead giveaway."

Take that, asshole.

I’m on a roll now. "I've known I was kneeling for my bosses this whole time. So don't stand there feeling clever. You didn't catch some clueless girl. You found out she was running the same game you were. So, was it funny? Tell me."

Theo blinks. "What?"

"Was it funny?" I let go of the chair. I don't need it anymore. The anger's holding me up now, fresh, hot, dangerous anger. "The three of you, up in your offices, in on the joke, watching the little front-desk girl who thinks she's so clever get on her knees every night for your money. Did you laugh about it? Did you compare notes in the morning? 'You should've seen what Agnes did last night'?"

"Agnes. No. God, no⁠—"