Deceptive, maybe. Temperamental, definitely.
But she was the only friend I had. The only one I wanted.
“This isn’t just about money, Isla. Breaking the agreement has consequences far deeper than you understand. You can’t buy your way out of this.”
Her jaw sets. “What’s the code?”
I fight the instinct to drag her out of here. To save her from herself.Fuck.“Eight. Seven. Seven. Eight. Six.”
She punches in the digits, each one screeching a beep of sound through the painfully silent room.
The lock clicks open.
She pulls the door wide.
Don’t do it, Isla.
Trust me. Just this once.
She reaches inside, retrieves the lone folder, then eases back on her heels and stares at the blank black cover.
Walk away, Isla.
Get up and fucking run.
She drags in a deep breath, then opens the file.
The first page contains the original agreement—preferential treatment, insider knowledge, all exchanged for a tidy sum of seven-hundred and fifty thousand.
Her expression shifts. Her skin pales.
I ignore the guilt. The pity. The wreckage between us.
It’s only the beginning.
She turns the page, then another, each flick more frantic than the last. She’s not absorbing the fine print, just chasing the numbers that keep accumulating—five hundred thousand, three seventy-five, one point two million.
I know the figures by heart. Could recite them in sequence or reverse, Philip’s sickness burned into my brain.
She raises a trembling hand to her mouth, her lashes fluttering.
Nine hundred thousand. Two million. Then three.
I can practically hear her adding the numbers in her head, trying to reconcile how her father bled through money like water through a sieve.
“I don’t understand,” she whispers, voice fraying. “What did he do with all this money?”
She’s not talking to me.
And I don’t have an answer she wants to hear. This all came down to addiction. Shame. Weakness.
Things I don’t claim to understand, at least not from Cross’s perspective.
She reaches the last page, and freezes.
I don’t need to glimpse the paperwork to know what she sees—the thumbprint in blood, the rewritten terms, the shift from monetary value to something infinitely worse.
Her brows pull tight. “Wh-what am I looking at?”