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“Kane,” I say.

Nothing.

“Kane. Tell everyone she’s lying.”

He doesn’t move.

My mother moves beside Vivian and loops a comforting arm across her favorite daughter’s shoulders.

“Delilah,” she says softly, “don’t make another scene.”

The words split something open inside me.

Another scene.

As if I control the projector this time.

As if I arranged the chairs.

As if I did this.

I look at Kane. I ask the only question that matters.

“Did you target Connor because you wanted my building?”

Kane looks at me.

He turns his head then. He looks at me.

And his eyes—God, the green of them, that have looked at me across a mirror and a counter and a candlelit bedroom, that looked at me when he told me you’re not my collateral, when he said the debt ends, we don’t⁠—

His eyes offer nothing, and his mouth stays shut.

The silence lasts long enough to become an answer in its own right.

Long enough for Connor to lean back.

Long enough for Vivian to smile.

“Dee? Are you okay?” she asks, in the softest, kindest, most beautifully modulated Concerned Sister voice she has ever performed.

Still, Kane says nothing.

So it’s the truth then. I’ve been a target from the start.

I am the last person to know—again.

My chair scrapes the floor when I stand. I pick up my keys from beside my plate. Nobody tries to stop me.

Not Vivian, because she has what she wanted.

Not Connor, because he’s finally found someone else to pin his guilt on.

Not Kane, who refuses to say a word in his own defense.

I walk through the hallway past the photo wall. Past the place where half my face still hides behind Uncle Bub’s shoulder.

I pick up speed down the steps and run until I reach my car. I jump in, start the engine, and pull away from the curb without looking back.