The tears spill over. I wipe them away angrily. “You’re just trying to hurt me.”
“I’m trying to wake you up. Before it’s too late.”
I stare at Mikayla. It feels like my ribcage is collapsing in on itself. My hands are trembling so violently I have to clench them into fists just to keep them from betraying me completely.
“He loves me,” I say again, but this time, it sounds even less convincing than before.
Mikayla just watches me with those dark eyes.
My mind drifts back to Stefan’s cold-blooded notes about me. The Assets and Liabilities list. I think about the contracts and the clauses, the shooting range, the night at the gala when my world crashed into his and exploded on impact.
“He told you he loves you,” Mikayla says quietly as my thoughts churn and churn. “But did he show you? Or did he just say the pretty lies you needed to hear?”
“You don’t know him like I do,” I whisper.
“You’re right—I don’t know the version of him that he shows you. I know the real one. The one who breaks people. Are you one of those people, Olivia?”
This is poison in my ears.Theseare the pretty lies, right? Right? Right?!
But what if they aren’t? What if I’ve been fooling myself this entire time? What if Stefan never loved me at all?
I press a hand to my stomach where our daughter is growing. What kind of world am I bringing her into? What kind of father will she have?
Mikayla sees the horror growing on my face and nods slowly. “You’re starting to understand.” She walks to the small window near the ceiling. The bars cast pinstriped shadows across her face. “I want out of this cell, Olivia. Can you help me?”
I shut my eyes. The walls feel like they’re closing in. Everything feels wrong. The recording, Mikayla’s words, the cold concrete, the locked door.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
“You can.”
“No. I won’t betray Stefan like that.”
Mikayla takes a step closer. “He’s already betrayed you. That recording proves it.”
“That recording proves nothing. You could have faked it.”
“We both know I didn’t.”
I open my eyes and look at her. She’s desperate. Broken. Scared.
Just.
Like.
Me.
“If I help you,” I say slowly, “what happens then? You disappear? You leave us alone?”
“Yes.”
“And Natalia? Will she leave us alone, too?”
Mikayla hesitates. “I don’t know.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“It’s all I have.”
