Chapter Thirteen. Asad #5
“Now.” I return my attention to her. “You ready to tell me the truth, or do you need some incentive?”
Eli wheels one of the trays over, stopping at the edge of the plastic sheet, and Ember’s gaze flicks in that direction. Panic widens her eyes, but she still mugs me.
Gotdamn.
She’s going to make me hurt her.
“I’m a traitor and a threat now?” She scoffs. “Just this morning, I was an asset to this organization and a fiancée. That went left quick.”
“You got jokes.”
“No, I got no fucking clue why I’m here.”
I push off the chair, straightening and removing my cell from the inner pocket of my suit jacket. It doesn’t take me long to pull up the video I sent myself from Michelle’s laptop and hold the phone up in front of Ember.
For the next ten minutes, silence fills the room as we watch her watch the security tape. A myriad of emotions marches across her face. Shock. Anger. Resolve.
Guilt.
My gut clenches hard around nothing, and I grip the phone hard.
Either that or hurl it across the room to shatter against the concrete wall.
Or go kick a fucking hole in that wall. Anything to release this fucking pain.
If I caught that flicker of guilt, then everyone else in this room did, too. Ember has sealed her own fate.
Sealed ours.
And that’s a good part of my rage. Her actions ruined us before we could even fully begin. I get the why—God knows I get the why—but her recklessness, her carelessness has stolen something from me.
Stolen her.
And that makes her crime fucking unforgivable.
“I didn’t kill Marcus,” she fervently says as I lower the phone.
I study her face and chuckle, the sound dry, disbelieving as that flash of guilt flickers in my mind again. Part of me hungers to claw it out of my head, but I can’t.
“What were you doing there, Ember?”
“I went to see him.”
I wait for her to continue, to add to that obvious-as-fuck statement. When she doesn’t, I huff out a dry laugh and hunker down in front of her.
“Careful, baby girl,” I murmur. “Be real careful how you choose to move next. You about to fuck around, but I’ma help you find out.
Now”—I lower a knee onto the floor and lean closer to her, peering into her eyes and letting her glimpse the pain she’s courting by being evasive with me—“what were you doing there at Marcus’s apartment building? ”
“I didn’t kill him,” she reiterates, jerking at the bindings on her wrists. With a frustrated growl, she sucks her teeth. “Marcus was a piece-of-shit human being and an even shittier father, but I. Didn’t. Kill. Him.”
“Then why did you go there, Ember?” Makeda asks as gently as I’ve ever heard from her. Ever. Uncrossing her arms, she steps forward into Ember’s line of sight. “That apartment was well-known as his ho pad. Why would you go there to see him?”
Ember’s head jerks toward Makeda, but she doesn’t answer. Instead, she looks at her for a long moment but eventually shifts her attention back to me. And I decipher the answer in her eyes.
Michelle.
It’d been years since Ember had willingly stepped foot in her childhood home, and she for damn sure wouldn’t seek out Marcus in that house where Michelle lurked, exerting influence.
“I said all I’m going to. If you don’t believe me, then you better get on with what you have planned. But the answer isn’t going to change.”
Rising, I’m almost rocked back on my heels by the blast of heat surging through me.
She thinks this is a game? Thinks we’re playing fucking show-and-tell?
She’s in a torture chamber, and in this moment, with all these people here prepared and eager to witness her death, she isn’t better than Deacon or Xavier.
Nah, she’s worse. To them, she killed not just the head of Cross but her own father. To them, she’s worse than any traitor.
“Were you working with Deacon and Xavier?”
Unbidden, an image of Deacon’s body invades my mind. Just last night, she confessed she’d done that for me. Because he’d hurt me. But could it have been for an alternative reason? After all, dead men can’t talk …
She recoils in shock … or flinches in guilt.
“What?” She frowns, and what sounds like genuine offense and hurt echoes in her voice. “Are you serious right now? You believe I…” She trails off, but I pick it up for her.
“You killed Deacon before we could get to him.” I tilt my head. “Was it because you didn’t want him speaking to me? You afraid of what he had to tell me?”
Disgust darkens her expression, and the shit leaves me winded.
With my back to the rest of the people in the room, I risk briefly closing my eyes.
Risk that momentary sign of vulnerability.
I believe her. I believe she didn’t have anything to do with Deacon or Xavier.
Or the attempt on my life. Even with all signs pointing to the exact opposite.
And yet, it won’t change a mu’fucking thing.
Except my loathing for myself. I won’t ever be able to wash the stink of that clean.
“Fuck you,” she coldly snarls.
The blow of it, of the hatred drenching those two words, has my body aching but I step back and away from her.
I don’t try to smother the pain. Nah, I bask in it, fucking roll in it.
Because what kind of man abandons the woman he …
the woman he claimed for his own to this fate?
I’m no better than Michelle, killing my father for a come up.
I almost bolt to the far corner to hurl the nonexistent contents of my stomach.
Instead, I backpedal toward the tray. Only when I reach it do I break our visual connection, and I scope out all my choices of tools, running my fingers along the scalpel, pliers, ice pick … I eventually pick up the pliers.
“Prince,” Eli murmurs, moving to my side and speaking low enough for just me to hear. “Be sure this is what you want to do. There’s no coming back from it.”
I ignore his warning and walk back over to Ember, and she defiantly watches me. Her cold demeanor doesn’t change. Even when her gaze dips to the pliers, she doesn’t plead, doesn’t sweat, doesn’t flinch. I admire her for that.
“Prince,” Kareem calls out, but I ignore him, too.
Gripping her slender pointer finger between the pliers, I apply pressure. Blood sluggishly starts to pool as the blade bites into her skin.
Still … No movement. No confession.
Her jaw clenches, a tiny muscle ticking along the edge. Moisture glazes her eyes but not one tear falls.
I apply more pressure.
A small, muted sound crawls out of her, but it’s immediately silenced as if she deliberately cut it off, refusing to give me that satisfaction, although her shoulders hunch slightly forward and a very fine tremble races through her.
Bile rushes in my stomach, races like a gold medalist for the back of my throat, the acid burning my esophagus. Do it. Fucking do it. Make an example out of her. Show every person here, show her, that you’re not weak. That she’s not your weakness.
More pressure …
Gotdammit. Fuck.
I release my grip on the pliers and damn near lurch back a step.
“Everybody out,” I growl. No one moves, and I whip around, gaze landing on each one of them. They stare at me, eyes wide, mouths open like I’ve lost my shit. And I have. “I said, get. The fuck. Out.”
One of the soldiers looses a sharp bark of laughter, spreading his arms wide. “What the hell? You gotta be fucking kiddin—”
I whip out my gun again and aim it in his direction. His mouth snaps closed, and he holds his hands up, palms out in surrender.
“You want to finish that?” He shakes his head, but I don’t lower my weapon. “Like I said, get out.”
In seconds, the room empties, the heavy door slamming shut and leaving only me and Ember inside. Disgusted with myself, her, and this fucked-up situation, I drop the pliers, and they hit the ground with a clank that seems deafening in the tomb-like quiet.
Dragging both hands over my braids, I stalk over to the second tray and grab a white towel before returning to Ember.
She doesn’t snatch her hand away from me while I tightly wrap her injured finger.
She doesn’t look at me when I kneel down in front of her, briefly pressing my forehead to her hand before lifting my head.
“Look at me.” She keeps her gaze fixed straight ahead. “Ember, look at me.” A full minute passes before she lowers her head. “Why were you there that night?”
She stares at me, her eyes blank, freezing chips of amber. She’s not going to tell me. And I don’t blame her.
And I’m still not going to kill her. I refuse to become Michelle.
Is one person’s life bigger than the good of the entire organization or all those in it? That’s what Eli had asked Makeda in the elevator on the way down here.
Then, my answer was no. Shit, until seconds ago, it remained no.
But now?
Yes. Gotdammit. Yes. Her life is bigger, more important. And if I have to replace hers for mine, then so be it. Mine is forfeit because I’m not killing her.
I sigh, standing to my feet—
“To see him. I was there to see him. I didn’t lie.
” She grimaces. “I didn’t just plan to make my exit strategy from Cross after Marcus died.
It’d been in the works for months, over a year.
I was walking away the very next day, and I couldn’t wait to be free of Cross and HoC.
And Marcus. I didn’t need any of his money, because God knew he wasn’t going to offer me any.
Not my inheritance, not any percentage of the profits from HEA or Glass Slipper.
But none of that mattered because I had my own source of income.
” A small smile ghosts across her face, there and gone.
“I’ve designed another drug—Fairy Dust. Once it’s complete, get ready, ’cause it’s going to give yours competition. ”
“Why’re you telling me this now?”
Not ’cause she trusts me. We’ve both destroyed those tentative tethers and salted the fucking earth. She might’ve went low, but I went to hell.
I became Marcus.