40. Tristan
40
TRISTAN
L ounging arrogantly in my chair, I keep my arms crossed as I watch Derrik Payne with a completely casual look on my face. He sits in the chair opposite me, on the other side of a metal table, looking at me with gray eyes full of hatred and anger. There is nothing else in this little interrogation room.
“You’re looking awfully relaxed for someone who is about to be charge with dealing drugs,” Payne says.
That’s because I will be out of here before sunrise. But I don’t bother telling him that. Instead, I just give him a lazy smile.
“Tristan Kane, you—” he begins, but I cut him off.
“Do I know you?” I ask.
He bristles and grinds his teeth at being interrupted, and his fingers tighten around the pen he’s holding.
“It’s just…” I continue. “You’re looking at me as if you’d like nothing better than to grab a baton and beat the shit out of me. And yet, I’m pretty sure we’ve never met.”
“We haven’t. ”
“But…?” I prompt.
He clenches his jaw, looking as if he’s debating whether to tell me or to go and grab that baton. Then he at last bites out, “You beat up my cousin.”
Ah . Well, that’ll do it.
Keeping a nonchalant expression on my face, I hold his stare and reply, “If I, allegedly , beat up your cousin, it would’ve been because he took something without paying for it. Which, as you know, is a crime.”
“So is dealing drugs.”
“I know. Which is why I would never engage in such a despicable activity.”
He scoffs and adds, “And so is beating people up.”
Uncrossing my arms, I sit up straight in my chair and spread my arms wide. Giving him a clear target on my chest and the rest of my body.
“You could always go and get that baton, if you want.” I flash him a lethal smile. “Though, you should probably have kept the handcuffs on for that.”
“I could always get another pair.”
“You do that.” My smile sharpens even more. “See how that turns out.”
For a few seconds, it looks like he’s actually considering it.
Then he forces out a long breath and flexes his fingers on the pen before setting it down on the table. Clasping his hands, he rests them on top of the notepad before him.
“I’ll get straight to the point,” he says. “While I do despise you, you are not my main target. I want Bracken.”
Crossing my arms again, I lean back in my chair once more and draw my eyebrows down. “I’m not a snitch.”
“And I respect that. But are you really prepared to ruin the rest of your life over that? ”
“I’m not ruining anything.”
“You will be charged and convicted of dealing drugs. Do you really think anyone will hire you as an engineer after that?”
A low chuckle rolls from my chest, and I give Derrik a nod of acknowledgement. “You’re good, I’ll give you that. Coming in here, dripping with confidence, and just laying it all out like it’s an already open and shut case. I’m sure it has worked on lots of nervous lowlifes.”
He says nothing, looking as if he’s caught between being pleased with my praise and angry that I’m not responding the way he expected me to.
“But you see, here’s what you’re missing.” I sit forward and brace my forearms on the table so that I can truly lock eyes with him when I say, “You don’t actually have anything.”
“Of course I do. I have you and Elle with a bag of drugs.”
Pain slashes through my heart at the mention of her name, and it takes all of my willpower to stop it from showing on my face.
“No, you don’t,” I reply instead, keeping my shredded heart firmly locked away. “Here’s what you have. You found two college students, who had snuck away from a charity event, about to have sex in a deserted room. We had no idea that there was a bag of drugs hidden in there.”
“Of course you did! You brought it.”
“Do you have any proof of that?”
He grips the pen again, squeezing it hard. Anger burns in his gray eyes. But he doesn’t respond. Because he knows that I’m right.
There is nothing tying us to that bag. It was hidden behind some chairs in the corner. We weren’t touching it or even moving towards it when they burst through the door. I was on the other side of the room, three seconds away from fucking Elle hard against the wall.
Another stab of pain sears through my heart.
Fuck, I can’t believe that I fell for it. That I fell for her . I had finally started to admit to myself that I love Elle Summers. And then she goes and does that. Fucking rat. I should’ve known that it was a setup. I should’ve known that she was always going to betray me.
Across the table, Payne lets out a grunt that sounds like equal parts frustration and grudging respect. “This really isn’t your first rodeo, huh?”
I just flash him a sharp smile in reply. Then I lean back in my chair once more, making an effort to look as calm and relaxed as possible.
“Well, then I suppose I will skip all the half-truths and get right to the point,” Payne says. “I’m willing to make you a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“I will let you walk out of here a free man. Today. No charges. No record of any wrongdoing. Nothing. If you testify that you personally saw Rob Bracken hand that bag of drugs to Elle and say that you personally heard Bracken tell her to sell drugs at that charity event.”
My heart jolts violently behind my ribs, and it takes everything I have to keep the shock from my face. He wants me to pin it on Elle? But I thought she was his informant.
Confusion and wariness swirl inside me.
“Like I said, I’m not a snitch,” I reply, hedging a little since I’m no longer sure what’s going on here. “And as we have just established, you don’t have any proof that the drugs are in any way connected to me. ”
“Unless I have a sworn statement from a direct eyewitness.”
My heart stalls. “What?”
He smiles. It’s a mocking, victorious sort of smile. “I have just offered Elle this exact deal. If she testifies that she saw Bracken give you the drugs, she will be released without charges.”
Everything inside my head goes deafeningly silent. And it is in that silence that I realize with shocking clarity that I was wrong.
Elle was arrested too. She is sitting in a room somewhere down the hall, facing the same drug charges and the same ruthless interrogation as I am.
Which means that this wasn’t a setup.
She didn’t offer to pay off my debt or offer to work for Bracken simply to get me in the same room as a bag of drugs. She wasn’t out for revenge. She did it solely out of love.
My lungs constrict.
Fuck. What have I done? I was so hurt, so fucking devastated, by the thought that she had betrayed me that I couldn’t think straight. All I could feel was that searing pain in my chest. I shouldn’t have doubted her.
But I did.
And not only that. The last thing I said to her…
Oh fuck.
Across the table, Derrik Payne simply continues speaking. As if my entire world hasn’t just been jolted out of its axis and then forcefully slammed back again.
“And, not that I’m an expert on all things Elle Summers,” he says, “but I really can’t see her doing well in prison, so my money is on her taking the deal. ”
“She wouldn’t sell me out like that,” I press out, my shattered mind still scrambling to catch up.
“Wouldn’t she? I have told her that I’m offering you the same deal. And she knows just how much you hate her now, so she knows that you will take this deal in a heartbeat.”
“I don’t—” I cut myself off before I can say too much.
Because fuck, he’s right. Elle probably thinks that I hate her now. Hell, I did hate her up until a mere minute ago when my dumbass self finally realized that this was indeed a setup, but not one of her doing.
God, I have to give it to him. He’s a damn cunning bastard.
He can’t prove that we brought the drugs unless one of us talks.
So he set this whole thing up so that I would think that Elle had done it, and so that she would see that I thought that she had done it. Which would then make her think that I hated her. So when Payne dropped the news that he had offered us both this deal, she would be convinced that I would take it.
Even if she has figured out that he can’t nail us for this as long as neither one of us confesses, she also has to be able to trust that I will keep my mouth shut too.
And given that the last thing I did was to tell her that I would kill her the next time I saw her, I have royally screwed up any chance of that.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. If I hadn’t been so damn insecure about her feelings for me, this would never have happened. If I had just believed her, if I had just trusted that her feelings for me were actually genuine, we could have both walked out of here free and clear.
But now, because of my devastating moment of hurt and insecurity, one of us is going down for this crime .
Either I rat her out, and she takes the fall while I go free.
Or she rats me out, and I take the fall while she goes free.
Derrik Payne flashes me a smug grin, full of victory, as he leans forward and holds my gaze. “The first one to take the deal is the one that gets it.”
My heart jerks behind my ribs.
His smirk widens. “So, what’s it gonna be?”