But my emotions are too tangled now, too bruised from last night and this morning and the sight of him standing among criminals in tailored black while I spent the day imagining him dead.
“You didn’t call me,” I say.
His face tightens. “There was no time.”
“There is always time to say I’m alive.”
“I thought calling would endanger you.”
I laugh, sharp and humorless. “There it is again.”
“Evie.”
“No. Don’t Evie me in your crime suit.”
“This is not?—”
“Were you working with them?”
His silence lasts half a second too long.
My stomach turns.
“Not before Lenrog died,” he says carefully.
“Before.”
“I was trying to prevent worse violence.”
“By joining the syndicate?”
“No.”
“By standing beside syndicate members in a suit they bought you?”
His eyes flash. “I am trying to keep Ron from taking control of an entire criminal network while Halo burns.”
“And I’m trying to understand when you became the man who doesn’t come home.”
The words land between us like broken glass.
He flinches.
Good.
No.
I do not know anymore.
“I was coming to you,” he says.
“Were you?”
“Yes.”
“After what? A meeting? A briefing? A wardrobe fitting?”
“Stop.”
