Page 103 of Between Love & Ruin

“You don’t need to threaten me,” I say as coolly as possible. “I don’t respond well to those. You might be forgetting, Myra, but I am still a Hayes. You know the power that name holds, don’t you?”

I hear heavy breathing on the other end, and while I have always hated boasting about my family name and where I come from, because I know I was lucky to be born in a world of privilege—I still do welcome the power it gives me in desperate times.

Times like now.

“So the next time you try to cross your line, think twice. Because while Dominic might just threaten to throw you out of the company, I am the only one who can get you thrown out of the industry completely.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” She seethes through the other end.

“Try me. Believe me, Myra. If I promised you that I will leave NYC, it’s because I want to. Not because you forced my hand into whatever shitty gamble you think this is.”

I hang up on her then, leaving her seething with rage. I would have never resorted to such a way of talking had she not pressed on my sensitive nerves.

But the only fun part of it was that I meant every last word of it.

If this proof of hers, whatever it is, is actually true, then I didn’t know Dominic to begin with.

I didn’t truly know the man I fell in love with.

And that will always be a fault of mine.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath before opening the document she shared with me. I have never prayed to God before, but every single nerve in my body begs them to prove Myra wrong.

But God has never been on my side, has he?

My eyes wander over the words written in the document, but none of them register.

They just don’t make sense. My heart stops working, and my eyes start stinging, but I can’t take my eyes away from the screen.

There’s CCTV footage attached, and I force myself to watch it, hoping it won’t be true.

But it is.

And suddenly it all clicks into place. Like pieces of a puzzle coming together.

My parents and his. The car accident. His reaction when I told him that my parents died in an accident.

Everything.

The phone slips from my hands when the door to our room opens and he steps inside.

“Sienna, what’s wrong?” He rushes to my side, kneeling down to see my face.

“You knew, didn’t you?” I ask, pushing him away from me because I can’t stand being in his vicinity at the moment.

And that alone kills me.

The color drains from his face, but he forces another lie out of his mouth.

“What? I don’t know what you are talking about.”

I scoff. A part of me wishes he didn’t know about it. That he didn’t hide this from me.

“Your parents and mine died in a car accident. And that’s not a coincidence, right? It happened at the same moment, at the same time, at the same fucking place, didn’t it?”

He takes a step towards me, and I stop him, taking a step back from him.

I cannot handle his touch right now.