“You’re okay,” she gasped.
I shook my head at her in warning before pulling her into my arms. “Of course I am.”
“Everything has been so fucked up,” she blurted. “I’m getting paranoid.”
Good save.
“Tom, please tell me you’re alright?”
I’d done everything I could to prepare for this moment, even reciting lines. But I couldn’t have prepared for seeing her for the first time since she was lifeless on the cold, concrete floor.
The memory choked me. “Y-You nearly died.”
My entire body shook as I clung to her.
I never expected to be able to hold her again—hear her voice or her laughter.
“I’m okay, Basil,” she hushed, squeezing me just as tight. “I swear.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I said, pulling her toward the house as I scanned her from head to toe. “What was the latest verdict from the doctor?”
Why I was rushing toward what had to happen next, I had no idea. My only reasoning was that if Tommy’s heart had to be broken, it was up to me to do it and I should do it without delay.
“I’m right as rain now. Took ten days or so to feel human again. They said an hour or two more and I wouldn’t be alive.”
I closed my eyes as we entered the office.
“I’m so sorry that I wasn’t here, Tom. Really.” Shutting the door, I switched on the noise-cancelling.
She rushed me. “What the fuck did he do to you?”
“What?” Theodore?
“That fucker. He held you prisoner? Did you do another exchange?”
She meant Kyros.
I exhaled slowly. “Not a—” I gurgled with the effects of the restrictions on my mind. Crap, I hadn’t had to worry about the compulsion while in Kyros’s company.
I focused on the thought of a mouse in a trap.
“Not prisoner,” I managed.
Taking her hand, I led Tommy to the chaise. “Sit, please.”
She sat but bounced straight back up, face stricken. “It’s Theo, isn’t it? Your private investigators found something.”
There weren’t any private investigators. I’d asked Fred to string her along until I got back.
I’d considered my lines carefully before coming and really hoped to get through this without the compulsion cutting me off. Kyros would have already been alerted by my slip before.
This was it.
I had to believe our friendship could survive the coming moments. But unless I owned up to this now, I could kiss Tommy goodbye forever.
Pulling my hair back, I leaned so she could see the jagged red scars on my neck. It was a mess of a thing. Looked like I was cut with a broken bottle. I had no idea how Kyros was able to save me.
Her mouth rounded and her shocked eyes flew to mine. “You were hurt. That’s why you couldn’t come. I knew it. That bastard!”
“It wasn’t Kyros,” I told her.
She inspected the scar. “What do you mean it wasn’t Kyros?”
I captured her chestnut gaze, wondering if I’d be physically sick. Unfortunately, saying names had never been an issue. “Not Kyros. It was Theodore.”
Tommy stared at me, unmoving.
“Theodore,” I repeated.
“I don’t understand,” she said, slowly standing.
A lie.
I could see her put everything together, and fuck, how I wished repeating the details of the triplets’ plan to win the Le Spyre fortune was easy as blurting them out. Because maybe then she’d believe I’d had no choice. The explanation was going to take hours. I wasn’t even sure if I had the creativity to force the direction of my intention for so long. It was fucking hard.
“He was a—” She clapped her hands over her mouth.
Hope stirred in my chest.
Not shifting, I waited for her to process that Theodore was a vampire, watching as her eyes darted and she gasped at intervals.
Eventually, she turned to me.
“He must have had reason to attack you.”
I directed my thoughts to Bluff City Bank. “My money and power.”
Ingenium was involved. I wracked my brain, then thought of Twister. “A game.”
She shook her head, backing away. “That’s not possible. I met him at my last job. Before you started at Live Right.” Her chest rose and fell. “You’re wrong.”
My chest tightened as she crumbled. “I wouldn’t ever make this up.”
Tommy whirled, anger twisting her face. “You’re wrong! Where is he? What the fuck did that psychotic fucker do to him?”
She rushed me, and I didn’t glance away though my insides shrivelled to dust.
The word was bitter on my tongue. Because Theodore shouldn’t carry this much power in death. Not when he was a twisted, cruel piece of shit. He didn’t just drug my friend and use her body to get information on me; he made her fall in love.
He didn’t intend her to leave the underground chamber. He broke her for fun.
To get to me.
Later, to get back at me.
I forced the lump in my throat down, thinking of my grandmother in her coffin.
“Dead,” I said in a low voice.
She reeled back as if slapped. Pain suffused her anguished expression and her usually warm gaze that filled most of my best memories.
Taking a shuddering inhale, thoughts on the toast I managed to make myself this morning, I broke what was left of my best friend. “I did it.”
The sound coming from her chest was awful. Air wouldn’t fill her lungs. Or it couldn’t get out.
She backed away again, stumbling over the leg of the chaise.
Lost.
Betrayed.
Fixing my mind on the day I kicked Harriet Gregorian and my other rich friends out of my life for good, I said, “To save you.”
Standing, I moved closer.
She stilled, anger coating her grief. “To save me? Are you fucking serious? You mean to save yourself! Or that animal you keep running to over and over again. Theod—” She blanched, clutching at her chest. “Theodore loved me. I loved him. We had a future together.”
Tommy crossed the gap, and I made no effort to move. My head rocketed to the right as her palm met my cheek.
“What did you do to him?” she screamed in my face. “Where is he?”
I clutched my ears, tears of pain pricking the corners of my eyes.
“He’s not gone,” she said, gasping for air. “You’re hiding him. You and that asshole. This is a game. Part of the game. He found out. And t-tried to get you free and…”
He never took photographs with her because I would have recognised him. I was willing to bet the estate that he manipulated Tommy to feel she shouldn’t introduce us.
I stepped toward her. “Tom—”
“Stay the fuck away from me,” she choked out. “You’re just like them. How did I never see it? You’re a fucking monster too. Everyone you touch ends up dead.”
Pain struck me and my legs nearly buckled.
Her words were far more effective than her slap.
“That’s right,” she said. “I see you, Basilia Le Spyre. What a fucking wake-up call. I’m leaving. Don’t send your fucking freak squad after me. My father and I are cutting ties with your family. Come after me, and I won’t be responsible for what I do to you.”