“What really happened?” I ask, my voice quieter now, but no less urgent. “No more half-truths. I need all of it.”
Whitney doesn’t answer right away. Her gaze flickers past me, landing on Maverick, and something passes between them—silent, immediate, understood. When she looks back at me, there’s a shift in her expression that makes my stomach tighten.
“Your brother,” she says softly. “That’s what happened.”
The words land wrong.
I turn to Maverick, dread already pooling low and heavy in my stomach. “What did you do?”
He lets out a short, humorless breath, rubbing the back of his neck like he’s trying to ease something that won’t loosen. “What didn’t I do?” he says, the attempt at levity falling flat in the space between us.
I stare at him, at the steadiness of him, the same steadiness I used to rely on without question. Loyal to a fault. Protective in ways that often felt suffocating. And suddenly all I can think about is how much I told him, how often I called him in the middle of the night, unraveling everything I thought I knew about Phillip, about Whitney, about the life I had stepped into without fully understanding it.
“Is this my fault?” I ask, the question slipping out before I can stop it. “Did I tell you too much? Did you take what I said and decide to fix it yourself?”
His expression softens, something almost pained flickeringthere. “McCullough… God.” He exhales slowly. “There’s so much you don’t know.”
The words hollow something out in me.
Maverick studies me for a long moment, then gives a small, grim shake of his head. “You don’t remember, do you?”
A chill moves through me. “Remember what?”
“It’s probably better that you don’t,” he says. “Safer.”
“No.” The word comes sharper this time, steadier. “No more of that. I can’t do this blind anymore. I can’t keep standing here while everyone else decides what I’m allowed to know.”
Something in my voice lands, because he doesn’t push back again.
“When Whitney told me what happened on the yacht,” he says slowly, “about the policy, about the money Phillip owed, about the way everything was lining up… I knew it wasn’t going to end there. Men like him don’t stop once they’ve decided something needs to be erased.”
My pulse begins to climb again. “So what did you do?”
He looks away briefly, as if choosing his words with more care than usual. “You don’t want to know how the club handles things like that,” he says. “It’s not clean. It’s not quick. And it’s not something I was willing to let happen, even if Phillip deserved every second of it.” His gaze returns to mine, steady and unflinching. “I stepped in before it got that far. I made the call myself.”
The implication settles in slowly, like something seeping into the cracks.
My brother decided how Phillip would die.
The room tilts slightly.
“But… why wouldn’t you tell me?” I ask, the question quieter now, threaded with something more fragile than anger.
Whitney answers before he can.
Her hands twist slightly at the edge of her sleeve, a small,restless motion that betrays the tension beneath her composure. “I didn’t mean for you to find out like this,” she says, her voice low. “But I can’t keep it from you anymore. You deserve the truth.”
I swallow hard. “The truth about what?”
She takes a breath, the kind that feels like preparation rather than relief. “Phillip didn’t marry me because he loved me,” she says. “He married me because he wanted revenge.”
The word lands between us, sharp and heavy.
“For what?” I ask, though something deep in my chest is already tightening in recognition. “What are you talking about?”
Whitney looks up at me, and for the first time since she stepped out of the shadows, I see something close to fear in her eyes.
“The boy at the debutante ball,” she says quietly. “The one who tried to rape you.”
