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If only that were true.
Xavier slides his green gaze to me, a smirk twitching his lips. “Right. I forgot she’s totally innocent.”
My neck heats, and I hope my glare relays the pain he’ll be in he if brings up my self-defense show in the hotel. “He’s your friend. He made a mistake.”
“If we hadn’t figured out what he’d done, Q, you’d be dead or taken,” Zayden says, his tone clear—this isn’t a discussion. “I don’t care who he is. He put you in danger, and he doesn’t get to walk away.”
My heart is torn between honor at his fierce defense and wanting to scream at him, at all of them. Murder isn’t the answer. It can’t be. Even when that was drip -fed to me, forced into my psyche, my entire being told me it was wrong.
“Zayden—”
“He bruised you. He made you fear for your life,” Zayden states, his expression stony. “He dies, Silence. No other punishment will ever be enough for putting the woman I love through that.”
Chapter 9
Zayden
While Silence guides a grumpy Xavier to one of the guest rooms, Yale and I drag a kicking Grant into the basement. Once he’s secured to a chair and the doors are closed, I take the hood off his head.
He winces at the light, taking in his surroundings before realizing that screaming is pointless. The basement is soundproof, and he knows that, because he helped me fit the panels.
“Remember what you said to me when we finished renovating this?” I ask as I take a chair from the far side of the room and place it a few feet in front of my former friend.
He licks blood and sweat off his lip. “I said I feel sorry for anyone who wakes up in this basement.”
I sit. “Irony at its finest.”
“Think it’s just bad luck,” Grant grumbles. “Can you at least let Monica know I’m okay?”
“Already have. I’ve told her that work cropped up, and you’ve had to leave the country for a few weeks, and it’s best she spends Christmas with her mom.”
Grant drops his head, jaw tight, lips trembling. “And then? What will you tell her when I don’t fucking come back, Z?”
My face might be expressionless and my mind made up, but that doesn’t mean a part of me isn’t stung by this. Betrayal is thick and bitter, tough to swallow, harder to digest.
“I’ll make that decision later.”
He blinks, a tear streaking his cheek. “She’ll worry.”
“The last kind thing I’ll do for you is look after her.”
He stares at me, eyes shining. “I wanted to start a life with her, Z. Get out of all this. Just let me go. I’ll take Monica away, and you’ll never hear from me again, I fucking swear.”
“You gave up your right to be a husband when money became more important than her.”
He lets out a sob mingled with a laugh. “God, you’re such a fucking hypocrite, Z. You’re just as bad as me, if not worse.”
“How did you come to that conclusion?”
“Because you don’t need to do any of this!” he screams, tears streaming fully now, voice thick with desperation. “You’re rich now—you all are. You do it for the fucking kicks! You have Silence, a woman most guys would give anything to have, and the moment she found out the truth you could’ve left, or at least stepped back. You could’ve washed your hands of all of it. But you didn’t. You swept dead fucking bodies under the rug because you’re addicted to the thrill.”
Yale shifts in the corner of the room, dress shoes scratching against the cement floor, but says nothing. I know what he’s thinking, though, because he’s said these exact words to me. Silence almost left me, left all of us, when she discovered the truth about what we do. Yale was ready to give it up in a second, zero hesitation, but I said she’d come around. She’d understand.
And she did. It took time, but she found room for it, and we moved on.
Tonight changes everything, though. She’s been thrust into the chaos of our lives with no warning. Grant and I are equally to blame for those bruises on her face.
I shove that thought aside with force.
