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“They’re blueberry,” he offers, waggling the box enticingly
I chuckle, unable to help myself. “Sure. That sounds great.”
He pops them in the toaster and then hands me a plate, putting butter and syrup on the table as well.
Eating breakfast helps settle my nerves, so I focus on the food, resting my elbows on the table as I devour two waffles in quick succession. Ransom sits down to eat with me, but before he can finish his food, his phone rings.
He glances down at the screen, recognition flashing across his face.
“I’ve gotta take this,” he tells me, rising and heading for the door. “Help yourself to more waffles if you want.”
I do, popping two more into the toaster and waiting for them to heat up before carrying them to my plate. Footsteps ring out on the cement floor as I sit back down on one of the chairs at the table, and I glance up, expecting to see Ransom.
It’s not him, though. It’s Victor.
He pauses in the doorway, hesitating, and I almost think that if I hadn’t seen him, he might just back up silently and leave. But when our gazes meet, he strides into the kitchen, heading for the cabinet.
The way he came to my apartment and took care of me seems like a long time ago, and it’s hard to believe it was just yesterday. But then, it was also just yesterday that he killed a man in front of me like he was a trained assassin or something.
For a few minutes, neither of us speak, even though we’re clearly both aware of each other. He goes through the motions of making his coffee, carefully measuring out the grounds and leveling them off with precision, and I keep my attention on the last of my waffles.
“Did Ransom tell you you’ll be staying with us?”
His voice breaks the silence, and I look up.
“Yes,” I reply, smearing a bit of syrup around with my fork. I hesitate, then add, “Will… will I be able to keep going to school?”
“No.” He shakes his head, his expression inscrutable. “That’s too much of a risk.”
His answer doesn’t surprise me, but I still deflate a little when I hear it spoken out loud. All this time, I’ve been trying to build toward a better future, trying to make sure I wouldn’t end up stuck in the same vicious cycle as my mom, and now it feels like it’s all slipping from my grasp.
I press my lips together, trying not to let my feelings show too much, even though I feel a little like I want to cry. I don’t want Victor to see my vulnerability.
But if the look he gives me is any indication, he picks up on enough of it. I can’t quite tell what he’s thinking, and his expression hardly changes, but his blue eyes seem to soften a little as he gazes at me.
“School isn’t the only way to learn. I didn’t go to high school or college,” he tells me. “Malice and Ransom didn’t go to college either, and we’re all plenty smart.”
It’s hard to be totally reassured by that, since I don’t exactly have ambitions of opening a chop shop or becoming a hacker. But still, this is the nicest and most…humanVictor has ever been around me, and the fact that he’s trying to make me feel better does help a little.
“Thanks,” I murmur.
He doesn’t respond, just sets the coffee to brewing and snaps back into business mode.
“I scrubbed the trail of security footage that leads to your apartment,” he tells me. “In case anyone decides to check on your old boss’s whereabouts last night. He’s not married, and he has no kids, so I’m not sure anyone will miss him. But it’s likely that the employees of Sapphire will notice his absence and report it, so I wanted to make sure any evidence that he went to your place is gone. I also modified some traffic cam footage so that there’s evidence of his car passing through an intersection far away from your apartment not long before he died.”
“Wow,” I say, impressed. “That’s a lot.”
He shrugs a shoulder. “I’m good at what I do.”
“That’s how you were able to put all those cameras in my apartment without me knowing,” I murmur, and it’s not really a question. More a statement of fact.
He nods. “Yes. We needed to be able to watch you.”
That’s also more a statement of fact than anything else. He’s not making any apologies for doing it, just telling me why it happened. They needed to keep an eye on me, so he found a way to make that possible.
But it makes embarrassment and anxiety burn under my skin, thinking about how long those cameras might have been there and what Vic might have seen while he was watching me through them. I didn’t ask yesterday about whether he was watching the feed the night Malice brought me home, but now I feel like Ineedto know.
“Did you see… things?” I whisper.
