Has he replaced me?
“What are you doing?” River asks me, heading to the fridge to pull out a package of chicken.
“Dishes,” I say, gesturing to the dishwasher.
He glances at me, arching a brow. “Decided to help out today?”
I glare at him. “I help out,” I retort.
“Not with the dishes,” he replies.
“Whatever,” I mutter. I watch him season the chicken, trying to figure out what to say. I want to push about the bruise, to find out what he’s doing, but I doubt he’ll talk to me.
“You talk to Blaze yet?” he asks me.
I tense. “No. Why would I?”
“The two of you need to bury the hatchet and work things out before you drive all of us crazy. You do know you’re doing exactly what Pandora wants you to, don’t you?” he asks me as he puts the chicken in the pan.
“Yep.” But I can’t stop thinking about all of the lies, all of the times I’ve been made a fool of over the past several years of my life. Blaze knew that I hadn’t earned a damn thing I’d been given, but he’d let me believe I had.
He’d let me think I’d mattered.
All the while, he’d been planning on pushing me out of the family business as soon as we’d graduated. It doesn’t make any sense. The more I think about it, the more I wonder what angle they could possibly have if they intended to shut me out instead of using me.
It would’ve been one thing if he’d insisted on undying loyalty to his family.
He hadn’t.
Had he really been trying to protect me?
He’d known there was no way I’d have gone along with trafficking women. Would I have turned a blind eye to work for the Bouchards? I wouldn’t have gone to the police, that’s for sure, but I might’vewantedto separate myself from them with that knowledge.
Maybe it’s for the best that he’s pushing me out of the family business.
Thinking about it gives me a headache.
“Ezio stopped by,” I tell him, needing to change the subject.
River scowls. “What did that shitbag have to say?”
I think back to the conversation, to how he’d had to make a comment about me potentially not being in the frat next year. “Nothing. He asked a lot of questions, though.”
His lips purse, but he flips the chicken in the pan before he replies, “He’s pushing, and he’s eventually going to push his way right into figuring out what really happened.”
I sit down at the kitchen table, turning the conversation over in my mind. “Yeah. Pandora should’ve covered her tracks somehow, put some effort into making it look like he actually bailed instead of disappearing without a trace. Fake withdrawals, social media. I don’t know. Something.”
River scoffs at me. “Like Pandora ever thinks anything completely through.”
He’s not entirely wrong. Pandora is more the type to do something in the heat of passion, and that only makes her that much morefascinatingto me.
How the fuck has she managed to get this far under my skin?
“She thought through the whole thing at the party,” I point out. “That took some serious planning. And it’s not like she left the whole body for someone to find.”
River exhales slowly, then he nods. “All right,” he says. “So we need to figure out what to do with Ezio before he connects the dots.”
“I think he’s already connected the dots a little,” I tell him. “It’s not really that hard to follow. Shit went down, Pandora stabbed Declan, everyone knows she’s responsible for the fire, then there was the…”
