Page 137 of Cruel Lies

And I stop dead.

The mirror is back.

The big one, over the sink. It's back. Hung up. Perfectly level. Exactly where it used to be. Like it never left.

I stand there in the doorway and look at my own reflection for the first time in weeks. Kinda wish I hadn't, because I look terrible. Puffy face, mascara tracked down my cheeks in gray rivers, hair a rat's nest on one side from sleeping on the counter.

I get a sneaking suspicion that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Honestly, I don't even have to check the rest of the house—my gut is never wrong here. But I do anyway, because I want to be sure. I walk the hall, and yes, the hallway mirror is back. The one by the front door is back. Down in the guest bathroom: back. The little magnetic one is once again on the fridge, stuck right where it always was.

He returned them. Every single one. Sometime in the night, while I was passed out at my own kitchen island, someone snuck into my house and put the mirrors back.

Which means someone was in my house. Again.

Without permission.

Again.

Half of me wants to call the police. The other half wants to commit violence.

I'm burning up with a hot, ugly wave of rage, because I know exactly what this is supposed to be: some grand, sweeping, romantic gesture.You should get to choose what you have and how you see yourself.I can practically hear him saying it in that reverent purr, the one that I once believed was for me and me alone.

That voice was a lie.

The mirrors are a lie, too.

Every kind, thoughtful, perfect thing he ever did was nothing but a hideous lie.

I go back into the bathroom and glare at the mirror. As I do, I think about the man who took it, who stood in my bathroom in the dark and decided I didn't get to have a mirror, and then decided I did.

Both times it was about him. Whathewanted. Whathesaw fit to do.

Well, guess what, Ronan Akov?

I don't want anything you've touched.

There's a heavy ceramic soap dispenser on the counter. I pick it up. I don't even think about it. I just hurl.

On impact, the mirror shatters. It falls off the hooks in a bright, loud crash, jagged pieces raining into the sink and onto the floor. My reflection breaks into a hundred wrong angles and then falls apart entirely.

I stand there breathing hard.

But dammit, that feltgood.

"There," I gasp to nobody at all. "Now,Ichose."

I don't clean it up. The pieces can sit there. I step around the glass, careful not to slice my bare feet to ribbons, and take stock of what's left on the wall. Just a few wimpy shards clinging to the frame.

Fine by me.

I scrape my hair back into a knot on top of my head, then splash cold water on my face from the tap, not looking at the broken glass littering the sink. Then I go back downstairs.

By the time I arrive, the coffee's ready. I pour a mug, sit back down at the island, and open my laptop.

There's work to be done.

There's something Ronan Akov doesn't know.