Page 83 of Ballrooms & Blackmail

“So stop being a chicken shit.”

“I can’t be responsible for getting her killed, asshole. I won’t. I don’t care if you think it’s stupid, but I fucking won’t.”

Silence follows.

Then Pascal sighs. “You know what your problem is?”

“I’m guessing you’ll tell me.”

He snorts. “You keep acting like the Lyons are what’s standing between you and your future happiness.”

I drop my head back, stare up at the ceiling, stifling a groan.

Because I know exactly where this conversation is going. He’s given me a version of the same lecture a dozen times over the last week. “Let me guess, it’s me doing that rather than the motherfuckers who’ll hurt her the first chance they get.”

“Life isn’t guaranteed. You could lose her in a car accident, in a house fire, in a freak fucking toaster accident. Or,” he goes on, “the Lyons could make it past all of the lines of defense we’ve put in place, they could escape the net we’re tightening, they could make you relive the nightmare of your past.”

“Exactly,” I mutter, stomach churning.

“But the thing is—if the worst does happen—the reason you lose River won’t really matter. She’ll be gone, and you’re the one who’ll have to decide if you denying you both the happiness you might have had in the meantime is worth it.”

Heart pounding, I suck in a breath.

“I know the tradeoff of that internal war. So do Brooks and Jace and Jean-Michel and Attie. Because we’re all fighting for it. Because we’re all putting everything we have into this fight. And we all know that if the worst happens anyway, at least we had this time with the people we love.”

I open my mouth.

Close it.

Because part of me knows he’s right.

Because what the fuck do I say to that?

He knows it too. Because he hangs up without another word, leaving me standing in the kitchen long after the line goes dead, staring at nothing, the horror of my reality closing in on me.

“Meow,” Violet says, bumping my arm.

I draw her close, hold her tight as the apartment settles into silence. Again.

It’s heavy. Empty. Wrong.

I pull out my phone. Open River’s contact. Stare at it for a long moment.

Then I shove my cell aside and get back to work.

Coward.

Yup.

And I can’t—won’t—do a damned thing about it.

Twenty-Six

River

I walk for nearly an hour before anyone finds me.

Not because I’m lost—the grounds surrounding Brooks’s family estate are impossible to get lost in. Heck, they’re so impeccably kept it’s like walking through an old English manor.