My hands squeezed into fists and released. “Good.” It was a flat, furious word, a damning verdict.
She drew a sharp breath that jerked her away from me like she’d been hit. “Good? Nothing about this is good, Marcus.”
“She did this,” I said through my teeth. “She did this to you, and she deserves what she had coming.”
For a handful of heartbeats, she watched me in confusion, still as a sculpture. And something dawned on her, something that etched betrayal into her very soul.
“Was it you?” she breathed. “I didn’t believe her when she said it was you who made the call, but who else could it have been? Only five people knew. Three of them were just arrested. One is me. Which only leaves you. Did you do it? Did you do this?”
Cold disbelief settled over me, both quieting my senses and sharpening them. “Excuse me?”
“The media was there—someone told them too. Someone knew. Someone told the police, and someone told the press. And I don’t know who it could have been but you.”
“You … you think that I would do this? That I’d betray you? That I’d go against your wishes?”
“You didn’t think I’d make the call, so you did it yourself.” Everything about her stiffened, her body winding tighter than the tissue that fell to the ground as she stood. “It was you.”
“Maisie,” I started as I rose, reaching for her in the hopes that I could soothe her, “please, come here. Take a breath—”
She jerked away before I could touch her. “Don’t fucking tell me to calm down, Marcus. She said you were a liar, that you’d do this. I didn’t want to believe it. But this solves all your problems, doesn’t it?” A humorless laugh choked into a sob. “All this time, you were trying to convince me to tattle on her, but did you want to protect me or yourself?”
It was my turn to pull back from the sting. “Now, wait a goddamn minute, Maisie—”
“No, I will not wait.” The smallness she’d carried fell away like a shell as she expanded, bursting into flame like a phoenix. “If I wouldn’t do it myself, and if my ultimatum had even the slightest chance to fail, you could head it off with a single phone call. Your family, your business would be saved.” She drew a fiery breath. “I cannot believe you would do this. I cannot believe you would manipulate me like she would. Even if you did this for me, it wasn’t your call to make. Protecting me wasn’t your job, and neither was sending my mother to prison.”
As I stood there facing her, something shattered, raining down on me like glittering glass. The girl in front of me with wild eyes and bared teeth was not the girl I knew.
The girl I’d thought I knew. The girl I’d thought I loved.
In that moment, the mirror broke, and I realized I didn’t know her at all. She was a stranger, unrecognizable in her anger and accusation.
She’d already decided I was guilty.
And so I built a wall, brick by brick, word by word.
My hand fell to my side. I stepped back.
“That’s not how this works,” I said, cold and detached. “These cases take years to build—federal agents don’t take over a building on a tip. Any number of people could have informed on her, and there’s no way for you to know how far that knowledge stretched. But none of that matters. Because if this is what you think of me, you don’t know me at all. You certainly don’t love me.”
She shook her head, grappling with herself. “That’s not fair, Marcus.”
“And this is?” I snapped.
“Who else could it have been?”
“Anyone. Her assistant. Her accountant. Someone else who knew. But you convinced yourself it was me when I’ve done nothing but prove my trust. I don’t know how to love someone and believe without question they’re capable of this level of mistrust.”
“I suppose there’s not,” she answered shakily. “Because even now, you haven’t even denied it.”
The pain of the blow slashed a cut in my heart so deep, I knew it would never be mended. “I shouldn’t have to.” We watched each other across a chasm of space. “I never thought you were like your mother. Not until right here, right now.”
Her rage cracked, shooting her face open. Her skin paled, her anger withering and fading, erasing every trace of her mother until only Maisie remained.
But the damage had been done.
I gave her my back, carrying myself on unfeeling legs to the kitchen where I’d left my drink.
She didn’t follow. “Marcus—” The word cracked.
I didn’t let her finish whatever thought she had. “I think you should go,” I said to my scotch before draining it, unable to face her.
There was only stillness behind me for a long moment, and as she hesitated, the air shifted from accusation to understanding, then regret.
I listened to the sound of her walking away. Opening the door. Closing it again.
For the last time.
26
Embers
MAISIE
What have I done?
Through a sheet of tears, I navigated to the curb and into a cab.
My mind was chaos, a screaming maelstrom of truth and lies and doubt.
In the heat of his anger with my mother—had it only been a few precious minutes ago?—something in me had broken, tearing a tether, loosing a leash of shocking, white-hot fury. I’d become a churning storm, an unthinking and blind monster, and if I’d looked that monster in the eye, I’d have recognized her for the one who had raised me, who had bred and coaxed the creature in me to life.
Who had released it with accusations of Marcus’s infidelity.
Pieces clicked together, flying into each other too fast, with too much force.
Every painful moment of opposition between my mother and I rose and fell in wave after wave of proof. Example after example of falsities and exploitations.
I’d been so stupid, so naive, just like she’d said.
I was a fool, unprepared to run a company. Unable to make the decisions she made, unable to face her choices, choices with consequences I’d shrink from in fear or disgust or both. I dug through the coals in my heart, looking for the one that had started the inferno. The image of my mother, teeth bared and eyes feral, when she discovered I’d told Marcus.
And the seed she’d planted burst open exactly when she wanted.
In that moment, in my grief and bellowing torment, there was no trust. I’d exploded with zealous certainty that he was the informer. Somehow, in my desperation to make sense of it all, to find someone to bear the hot brunt of my pain, I had convinced myself without question that it was him and only him.
Blind. I had been blinded, possessed by the ghost of my mother, come to ruin me from beyond the veil.
I pressed a hand over my lips, unable to hold back the wretchedness, the desolate tears, the anguished sobs as they seized me and didn’t let go.
I hadn’t waited for his answer before condemning him. And it wasn’t until he’d turned his back on me that I realized just how deeply wrong I was.
How had I gotten here?
How had I, in my devastation, betrayed the one person I knew in my heart I could trust?