I swallowed.
“Then I got a call from Philip’s parents. He never made it home.”
Archie stiffened.
“There wasn’t a record of him boarding the plane. There wasn’t even a record of him at the damn airport. He just… disappeared.”
“Henry—” Archie started, voice tight.
“Ilookedfor him. I went through everything. Called everyone. Bribed the airport for access to their security cam footage. I couldn’t find anything that made sense.”
“And you just—” he huffed, frustrated. “You let me sit there and talk about Abel like you didn’t know what that felt like? Like you didn’t know what it was like to love someone and not know what happened to them?”
“Oh, sweetheart.” I pressed my lips briefly to his temple. “I know what happened to him.”
His eyes were wild beneath his glasses, hair around his ears poking in directions as he sat up and braced both hands on my chest. “What?”
“I was one of Ashford's student aides. I worked early mornings in the annex of the library. I preferred quiet shifts, and no one really paid attention to me being there.”
“Idiots,” he muttered. “You’re brilliant and devastatingly handsome. I would’ve followed you around like a fucking pet.”
“I’ll file that idea away for later, Rabbit,” I mused, kissing his shocked lips. “But I was different back then.”
Before the need for revenge turned me into a killer.
“There was one morning I wasn’t supposed to be there,” I continued. “I’d already clocked my hours for the week, but I didn’t want to be home. My parents were… garbage humans. Fucking monstrosities. My dad was a pretentious prick who beat the shit out of me when I came out as gay and then told me to walk it off. My mom made our housekeeper help me cover it with makeup so I didn’t miss school.”
Archie reared back like he’d been slapped. “If they weren’t already dead, I’d kill them.”
“Take it easy, baby. I already did.”
His jaw went slack. “Youkilled them?”
“Mm.” I confirmed. “But if you want a map of all the people I murdered and why, you’ve got to stop interrupting me.”
An incredulous noise burst from him, his mouth opening and closing, over and over like a little fish.
Cute as hell.
“My house was a fucking prison, even worse in the days after Philip left, so I went in early.”
The room narrowed around the memory.
“There was a meeting. A bunch of faculty who weren’t usually together were talking about students. Exchange students.”
“Philip?”
I nodded. “They kept mentioning shipments and rattling off eight digit numbers.”
It wasn’t a memory faded at the edges but one that had been waiting for me to look at it again.
Every detail was exactly where I left it—the light, the sound, the way the air felt in my lungs.
“There was this drawer in the bottom of an antique desk nobody ever used. I saw them lock their folders in there. Came back later that day and broke into it. Found the false bottom.”
“They just kept their files in a building that constantly had staff and students roaming around?Morons.”
“Nobody ever went that deep into the annex, and I only found it because I was looking for it.”