Trust.
Instead, I chose to ignore what was right in front of my eyes. Instead, I chose to betray her. And acknowledging all of this, admitting that I’m a selfish, cowardly piece of shit, I still can’t let her go.
I still refuse to let her go.
“I’ll give you this week,” I concede, nodding although my body damn near shudders with the force of my objection to this. “Don’t make me come for you, Ember.”
She looks me up and down, thefuck youwritten on her face. In permanent marker.
“And don’t threaten me. This isn’t going to end how you think it is,” she warns, moving past me at a slow but deliberate shuffle, holding the bloodstained towel to her hand and cradling both against her chest. “You’ll let my supervisor know I’ll be out of work for the next few days. My fucking hand hurts because a bitch-ass muthafucka took a pair of pliers to my finger.”
Shame coats me in a filthy grime. She reaches the door, and I call her name.
“Our engagement ball is in seven days,” I say to her taut back. “You will be there.”
If possible, her spine goes even straighter. After a pause, she opens the door with her uninjured hand and walks out. No backward glance. No words. No…
Nothing.
I stare at that empty doorway, but it doesn’t make her turn around or reappear. And fear encroaches deep inside me. Fear, revulsion, and grief.
Instead of Ember, Eli and Kareem move into the entrance.
“Hey, is everything good? I just saw Ember leave. I’m assumingshe explained why she was at Marcus’s and what happened?” Kareem frowns, glancing from me to the door.
Eli studies me in his silent way, his expression stoic and… sympathetic.
This room that had seemed so large seems to shrink, pressing in on me. Not answering Kareem, I stalk forward, passing him.
“Prince? You good?” Eli murmurs as I move past him.
“Fine. Get someone in here to clean up.” Ransom’s body is still sprawled out on the floor with Ember’s blood.
I want all traces of tonight gone.
If only erasing it from my head was that fucking easy.
CHAPTER FOURTEENEmber
“I can’t lie. After working in this lab for the past week, it’s going to be real hard returning to that small one at the Castle,” Jaq says, walking into the laboratory at my house.
They’re not lying. Yes, the timeline for leaving Cross had been pushed back, but that didn’t stop me from having my home lab completed. With state-of-the-art equipment and much more space, it’s a scientist’s fantasy. It’s everything the secret lab is except grander, bigger. More workstations, better technology and lighting, more cages. More subjects.
It’s a dream lab. And it’s become my safe harbor this past week away from HoC.
Away from Asad.
The all-too-familiar wave of anger swells within me, and all I have to do is glance down at my forefinger and the bandage on it to remember why I’m so fuckingfurious.
And betrayed.
And hurt.
No, not going down that mental pitted and cracked path today. Especially when I finally have good news. Triumph flares in my chest, a rush of adrenaline quick on its heels.
I smile at Jaq from my perch on a stool at the first station. “We were waiting on you.”
They strip out of their jacket and grab their lab coat off a nearby hook. “Well, I’ve been sleeping here two nights in a row. If I didn’t go home and let Bennie look at my face, you would’vehad to let me claim homestead on one of those nice apartments.” They weren’t lying. We’d all met Bennie, their girlfriend of two years. She was beautiful, fun, and extra as fuck. I had to take her in carefully measured doses. But Jaq worshipped the ground she walked on, so that’s all that matters. “Where’re Perla and Gus-Gus?”
