“I’m not with Stephen, either,” I said. “He didn’t come with me.”
“Holy shit, Lainey. Morelli was looking for you.” He paused. “Coming for you and Stephen…so where’s Stephen? Where the fuck is Stephen, Laine? He wouldn’t have let you go that easy.”
“I dunno…” I said, but my voice let me down. Tristan knew that. He knew me well enough to read my tone, even through my lies.
I felt his senses sharpen. “You do know. Where is Stephen?”
I heard a sob in my words, and I hated it. I hated slipping my mask down, always, even to my very best friend. “I can’t tell you…I don’t know…”
“Bullshit!” he snapped. “This is all total bullshit. Morelli was looking for you. Stephen was there with you…” He paused, and I closed my eyes, praying that this whole world of a mess was nothing but a nightmare. “What happened?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t find my voice.
“You’d better start talking,” he said. “I’m coming over there. I’m coming over to you right now, so help me, God. I don’t give a fuck if Lucian Morelli is there or not, I’m coming over.”
“Please…no!” I screamed, but he was already gone.
I tried calling back, but he wouldn’t answer me. I cursed as I dashed about the apartment, shedding my ruined clothes and scrubbing myself down in my own shower. I dumped my clutch in my wash basket, and tugged on some PJs, looking ghostly as all shit in the bathroom mirror. I paced, waiting, hoping. I paced, praying. I paced, begging my heart to lose this infatuation with a demon and come to my damn senses for once in my goddamn life.
Tristan was alone when he arrived at my front door. His face was swollen and darkening on one side, his steps sore as he pushed past me with his phone held up high.
“I’ve got security on the line!” he yelled into the empty suite. “I swear it, motherfucker! I have security on the line and waiting! They’ll come for you!”
“He’s not here!” I insisted, and finally, with one final charge around the place, Tristan believed me.
He threw me down onto the couch, hard. I cried out as I landed, still trembling. “Talk to me,” he said, and his eyes were wild. “For once in your life, Elaine, just talk to me.”
I put my face in my hands. “I can’t. Believe me, Tristan, you don’t want to know.”
“Oh yeah?” He crouched down in front of me. “I think you’ll find I do. I think you’ll find I want to know just what the fuck that bastard did to you. And to Stephen. Did he kick his ass?”
I didn’t shake my head, but I didn’t answer him either.
“Fuck,” he said, getting to his feet and kicking out at the couch. “Fucking hell, just fuck.”
“Stay out of it,” I told him, and my voice sounded like the sad little girl I’d come to know so well through the years. “Really, Tristan, stay out of it. You need to.”
“I can’t,” he snapped. “Even if I wanted to, I can’t! Blue is trying to find Stephen right now, and he knows what Morelli did to us and where he was going. The whole party knows, even if they don’t know who he is yet. They’ll find out, Elaine! Your whole family is gonna know it soon enough! You won’t be able to keep that shit away from them!”
I could feel my heartbeat in my ears, the sickness swimming around my belly, and the beer, and the spirits, and the fizz didn’t matter; my head was stone-cold sober and plunging into the pits of despair. He was right. Of course he was. My family would be finding out about this. They had to.
And so would his. So would Lucian Morelli’s.
We were both fucked, both of us beyond redemption in a world made of sinners.
“I’ll find a way out of it,” I said to myself more than Tristan. “I’ll hide it, say something different, I’ll find a way.”
He was shaking his head as I spoke. “A way out of them finding out that you were at a backstreet party with Lucian Morelli knocking people out cold? Good luck with that.”
“I’ll find a way,” I insisted, but I could feel the sobs bubbling back up. “He’ll find a way.”
Tristan’s eyes were cold as ice when they met with mine. “Is Stephen…alive?”
I let out another sob.
“Christ, Lainey. He’s a monster.”
I wiped my eyes, and he could read it in my stare right back at him.
“Holy fuck,” he snarled. “You’ve gone and done it, haven’t you? You’ve fallen for the asshole monster. You’ve fallen for one of the damn Morellis. The worst one.”
I could only answer with another sob and another wipe of my eyes, because even I couldn’t lie that strongly, not anymore. I couldn’t deny I’d fallen for Lucian Morelli. Not to the man who knew me better than anyone else ever had.
Tristan carried on pushing, striding around with his hands in his hair.
“He killed Stephen Cannon, didn’t he? Just tell me!”
So I did. I did tell him. I looked him square in the eye, and I gritted my teeth and I told him. “Yes, Tristan, he killed Stephen Cannon. He stabbed him in the gut and watched him bleed to death on the floor, and I wanted that. I wanted it, too.”
His jaw dropped, and he paled, and he staggered away from me. “You wanted him to? Why the fuck would you want him to?”
I forced the words. “He was trying to rape me. He was hurting me, and I was begging him to stop, but he wouldn’t listen, and Lucian saved me. Lucian Morelli saved me.”
Tristan was shaking his head. “No. It can’t be. No, Elaine. Don’t you dare lie to me.”
I kept my stare hard on his. “I’m not lying. Stephen Cannon was trying to rape me, and the monster saved me from him.”
My best friend cursed and put his head in his hands, and then he cursed to himself, over and over, because he knew it as well as I did. The whole damn situation was shit.
“My family can’t find out about this, Tristan,” I said. “If there’s any way in the whole damn world it’s possible, they can’t find out about this. You have to help me.”
“Holy fuck,” he yelled, but he didn’t say no. He couldn’t say no.
“Please! Please, Tristan! I have to find a way out of this. They can’t know Lucian Morelli saved me from Stephen by butchering him in a city dive while I watched.” I couldn’t tell him he fucked me in the ass. Even I couldn’t share that truth.
“People will know! Not unless he kills the whole damn party.”
He was right, but there was no way I could give up, not without trying. I’d be signing my own death warrant if I did.
But that wasn’t why I was doing it. That wasn’t why I was trying.
I wasn’t trying to find a way out of this mess to counter my own death warrant. My death warrant was already signed over to the Power brothers. I was expecting it.
I was doing it to counter Lucian Morelli’s.
Tristan was churning things over just like I was; I could see the cogs whirring in his brain.
“Blue knows,” he said after a few minutes. “Blue was there when Morelli came looking for you.”