Chapter 12 #2
I hadn’t been driving that night, but I felt as guilty as if I had been.
Because it easily could have been me. I’d had close calls before.
Drank too much and thought I was okay to operate a vehicle when I wasn’t.
And I’d done nothing to prevent Maddie from driving, even though I’d known better.
Complacency would be a nice way of looking at our behavior, but that wasn’t it; it was privilege, pure and simple.
Nothing bad had ever happened to us. Despite all the stupid shit we’d done before the accident, there’d never been any real consequences.
A night in the drunk tank, maybe some community service if we were unlucky.
Our lawyers or parents got us out of everything else.
Shame burned through me every time I thought of my younger self.
I’d been reckless, careless, so hell-bent on chasing the next high—whether it came from alcohol or drugs or adrenaline—that I never paused to consider my actions.
I’d been a bored, spoiled, entitled bitch, an absolutely insufferable human being, and memories of my past behavior would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Everything changed that night seven years ago.
Fuck, Runa had almost bled out and died right there on the sidewalk because I’d been so drunk that I kept fumbling the tourniquet the 911 operator instructed me to tie.
“Stop,” Runa said.
I blinked and came back to myself.
Runa’s gaze was censoring. “You’re doing it again.”
“I’m not,” I lied.
“You literally just started crying.”
“No, I—” The words died on my tongue as I lifted a hand to find a tear streaming down my cheek. Whoops. I sent Runa a tentative smile. “Sorry.”
“I’m fine, Stel. The doctor said everything went as well as could be expected.”
“I know,” I told her. “I just . . . worry.”
Her expression softened. “I know you do.”
Our gazes locked, and there was so much I wanted to say to her.
Apologize, again, for my role that night.
Ask her how she really was, beneath the brave face she always put on.
I wanted to reassure her that even if this surgery didn’t completely fix her pain, I would pay for another one, and another.
As many as she needed or was willing to endure.
She must have seen the words bubbling up in me because she quickly changed the subject. “How’s Blake?”
I grimaced.
Her eyebrows rose. “Oh? The golden boy not so golden anymore?”
“He gambled away his inheritance.”
Runa’s jaw dropped. “No.”
“Yes, but I managed to get his debt transferred to me, so now I owe a bookie three million dollars.”
“You’re joking, obviously.”
I shook my head.
She leaned forward. “Tell me everything.”
I opened my mouth, and the whole sordid story poured out.
Runa and I had been through so much together that we’d developed this weird kind of relationship where we weren’t, like, besties, but still told each other absolutely everything.
More than you would tell a friend. I’m talking the worst of the worst, things you wouldn’t even say to your therapist—the kind of shit you usually took to your grave.
I blamed all the late nights sitting awake in hospitals.
In the early days, we didn’t know if Runa would make it, and I’d been almost like a priest to her, a way for her to admit to her sins, tell me all her last confessions and life’s regrets.
I hadn’t liked how one-sided it felt, so I started reciprocating, and now, all these years later, every time we were in a hospital room together, we dredged up forgotten memories or horrors and visited them upon each other.
It was trauma bonding at its finest, but afterward, we both felt lighter, closer. Less lonely.
So I held nothing back, telling Runa everything, and out of all the details for her to pick up on, including all the awful threats and the fight in my father’s study, of course she chose to zero in on the first kiss.
“In your booth?” she said, looking scandalized.
I nodded. “I crawled right on top of him in the client chair.”
She sniffed and glanced at the ink on her arm. “I didn’t get that kind of treatment when you tattooed me.”
“You’re not even attracted to women.”
“Still,” she said. “I would have liked the opportunity to turn you down.”
I flicked her shoulder. Carefully, because, god, there were so many wires.
“You want to kiss him again, don’t you?” she prodded.
“Absolutely not. Twice was two times too many.”
“Stella. It’s me.”
I heaved a sigh. “I don’t know. Maybe I do, or maybe I just want to kiss someone. I’ve been alone for . . .”
“Your entire adult life?” she helpfully supplied.
“Yeah, that,” I groused. “Play-acting like we were all coupley messed with my head. Not like I’ve started to feel anything for him, but it’s made me realize how alone I’ve been, and I think . . . I want that. Someone to do things with.”
“Aww,” Runa said. “The tin woman longs for a heart.”
I flipped her off.
She sobered. “You should introduce Maddie to Theo. Tell him to get her shit-faced next and drain her entire inheritance.”
“I’d have to see her to do that, and I don’t think I could pull it off without trying to kill her. She told Mom to say hi to me.”
Runa reared back. “No she fucking didn’t.”
“Yuuup.”
“Bring me to the next party. Beating her to death with one of my prosthetic legs would be such poetic justice.”
I choked. Runa’s sense of humor had always tilted toward the darker side of the spectrum, and she was forever saying things that I would probably go to hell for laughing at.
“Seriously, though,” she said. “Are you really going to do this? Help Theo go after your family’s friends?”
“I don’t think I have a choice,” I told her. “I keep trying to think of some way to hold out, but I’m scared of what he might do if I sabotage him.”
Her expression turned contemplative. “What if . . . you really do tell him to go after Maddie? Or if not her, people like her. The worst of the worst in your parents’ circle.
The ones who have gotten away with horrible shit.
People like the Bluhms and Montgomerys and Hatchers.
Didn’t Vincent Prout and his son just get away with swindling hundreds of millions of dollars from their investors? ”
I frowned, contemplating her words, thinking back to something Theo had said over dinner about how my not liking these people should make my job easier.
Maybe there was something to that statement.
So far, I’d been floundering, desperately trying to come up with a way to get myself out of this situation, but what if there were another way? What if Runa was onto something?
Previously, all my crimes had been committed while under the influence, and most of them had been accidental. This would be the first time I’d be making an intentional choice, while fully sober, to cause someone else real harm.
God, could I do that? I’d spent so many years in therapy trying to work through all my hatred and resentment toward the people I’d grown up around, and I had just reached the point where I was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
By doing this, immersing myself back into that world with the intention of helping ruin those people, would I be undoing all of my progress?
Reverting to the worst version of myself?
My focus returned to Runa, to the tubes attached to her, the steady sound of the heartbeat monitor at her side. Maddie had done this to her. And then she’d gone on to live a happy, unencumbered life . . . if her lavish Instagram feed was anything to go by.
Anger burned in my belly. Runa was far from the only person in this city who’d been wronged by the wealthy and left to fend for herself.
There were people walking around who had done horrible, unspeakable things, and they’d gotten away with it for so long that I doubted their crimes would ever catch up to them.
Those people? If anyone deserved Theo, they did.
Runa caught sight of my expression and smiled, some color returning to her cheeks. “Take your phone out, and we’ll make Theo a hit list.”
“Careful. He is a bookie. Putting hits out on people might not be entirely out of the realm of possibility.”
The smile spreading over her face was pure evil. “In that case, put Maddie’s name at the top of it.”