Chapter 17
Fault Lines
Asher
For two days, I tell myself observation is enough.
That this is what I do—watch, measure, and contain. I keep my hands clean by keeping my body out of it. I let the cameras feed me what I need, and I make decisions from behind glass, where nothing can touch me.
Except Violet Cole doesn’t exist behind glass. Not the version I’m seeing.
The first day, she moves like she’s trying to convince the apartment she’s fine. She gets Ella out the door. She makes coffee. She wipes the counter twice. Three times. Like if she can sanitize the surface hard enough, she can scrub the world back into its old shape.
By the second day, the routine falls apart.
She doesn’t eat. I see her open the fridge, stare into it, and close it again like food is a foreign concept. She flinches at small sounds. She jumps at the buzz of her phone and then leaves it where it lies, face-down on the counter, as if it’s something venomous.
And the part that crawls under my skin—the part I don’t have language for—is the way she stops masking.
Not for Ella.
When the kid comes home, Violet tries. I can see her attempt to be human again, to smile, and to ask about school.
But it’s brittle. Forced. Like she’s acting in a scene she hasn’t rehearsed.
She laughs too late. Her eyes don’t move with her mouth.
When Ella talks, Violet’s gaze keeps sliding to the window, the door, and the phone, as if any of them might open and swallow her whole.
Maverick gives me the same report, delivered the same way he delivers everything—clean, flat, and operational.
No one has been in or out. No visitors. No calls. No patterns suggesting she sent product to the penthouse, no trace of her leaving to meet anyone. Just withdrawal. Deterioration. A woman going hollow.
“Maybe she’s just guilty,” Maverick says, as if guilt is a tidy thing. A checkbox.
But guilt doesn’t look like this.
Guilt doesn’t make someone stare at their phone like it’s going to bite them.
I tell myself I’m watching her because she’s a liability. Because the drug is involved, and so is my territory. A girl is dead, and I’m still trying to work out whether that blood sits on my hands or on someone else’s.
That’s the story I keep repeating.
It would be easier if it were true.
Cami doesn’t call her. Not once. Not in a way I can see.
Not in a way that matters. Cami Devereaux is too busy being outraged on behalf of her parties, too busy smoothing the feathers of people who are already looking for someone to blame.
The silence from her side is loud, and it makes Violet’s isolation feel crueler than it should.
By the end of the second day, I can’t stand it.
I’m angry about the party that happened inside my borders without my approval.
I’m angry about a designer drug I still can’t replicate no matter how many brilliant minds I throw at it.
I’m furious at the thought that Violet made something powerful enough to kill and then let it leave her hands like it didn’t matter.
And beneath all of that is something worse—something I refuse to name—because it doesn’t fit in the structure I’ve built to survive.
I don’t like watching her collapse.
I don’t like that I can feel it in my chest as if the crack is happening inside me. I shouldn’t care like this. I don’t let myself care like this. Caring leads to weakness, and weakness gets people killed.
So I make a decision I shouldn’t.
The drive out of Manhattan stretches and contracts all at once, traffic crawling toward the river before finally loosening its grip.
The city gives way to bridges, dark water, and the quiet hum of leaving one world for another.
By the time I cross into New Jersey, the tension in my chest has settled into something sharper. More dangerous.
This isn’t impulse. It’s inevitability.
When I pull onto her street, it’s quieter than it should be, residential and dim, and nothing like the constant thrum of Manhattan. I park without thinking about cameras, without thinking about alternate exits or who might be watching me do this.
That alone should concern me.
I cut the engine and sit there for a moment, hands still on the wheel, reminding myself that I’m here because I have to be. Because she’s a variable I can’t leave unattended. Because watching her fall apart from a distance is no longer acceptable.
Not because I want to see her.
I get out of the car before I can talk myself out of it.
The sound of my knock echoes through the hall. A pause follows, heavy enough that I almost turn around out of habit, and almost retreat into the version of myself that never asks for anything.
Slow footsteps approach.
The door opens a crack, chain still latched. One eye appears in the gap, wary and bright with sleeplessness.
She freezes the second she recognizes me. “Asher?” Her voice is careful, guarded. Fear flashes first, then anger rushes in to cover it like a coat. “What are you doing here?”
I hold her gaze because I don’t trust myself to soften. “Checking on you.”
She scoffs, but it’s thin, breathy. “You don’t know me.”
I should agree. I should remind her—and myself—that this isn’t personal. That I don’t do personal.
Instead, I say nothing.
Her fingers twitch on the chain like she’s weighing danger against exhaustion. She inhales sharply, then unhooks it and steps back, granting me entry as if it costs her something.
She moves fast after that, putting distance between us like space can function as armor.
The apartment is dim, only the kitchen light is on, throwing long shadows across the floor. She stands with her arms crossed, chin lifted in defiance, but her shoulders are rigid, her body tight, as if she’s ready to bolt.
“You’ve been in here for two days,” I say. “You’re not leaving. You’re not answering anyone.”
Her head snaps up. “What?”
Her eyes focus on me. “How do you know that?”
“I know,” I say, letting it land like a warning.
Her eyes flick to the counter where her phone sits face-down, untouched. The movement is instant, unconscious.
She looks back at me, anger burning hotter now. “No. That’s not an answer.” She takes a step toward me instead of away, jaw tight. “How do you know what I’ve been doing in my own apartment?”
Silence stretches.
“You watching me?” she presses. “You having someone watch me?” Her voice cracks at the edges—not fear yet, but the threat of it. “Because those are very different problems, Asher.”
“It’s not safe for you to be alone,” I add, and I hate the way the words sound like concern.
She laughs, sharp and brittle. “Right. Because you’re so worried about my safety.”
I don’t rise to it. I take a step closer instead, and she stiffens, her fingers gripping the edge of the table like it’s an anchor.
The skin under her eyes is bruised with exhaustion. Her hair is pulled back, messy, and impatient.
“Does this have something to do with the dead girl?” she asks, and the question comes out quieter than her posture suggests.
“You think I’m here because of her?”
“Aren’t you?”
I tilt my head, studying her. “I wasn’t her friend.”
Her face flushes, anger sparked and immediate. “Then why are you here? And how do you even know where I live?”
“Because you’re in my world now,” I say, letting the steel back into my voice where it belongs. “A party happened in my territory. Someone died.”
Her expression shifts, the defiance wobbling into something warier. “I didn’t send Zephyra to that party,” she says quickly. “I wasn’t even there.”
“I know,” I say, and it’s the truth—Maverick’s surveillance makes that part clear, even if the rest of the story doesn’t add up yet.
Her eyes flicker. “Then why are you blaming me?”
“I’m not blaming you,” I snap, because it’s too close to a different kind of truth. “I’m trying to figure out how it happened at all.”
She drags a hand through her hair, breath stuttering. “Maybe someone stole it. Maybe someone copied it. I don’t know. I don’t even know how you—”
“How I know?” I cut in.
She looks like she wants to deny everything again, to retreat into lies she doesn’t have the energy to maintain.
Then her mouth trembles, just once, before she clamps down hard.
“I never wanted this,” she says, and the words are ragged.
“Do you think I enjoy knowing someone died? Do you think I’m proud of what I’ve done? ”
The anger in me surges, ugly and hot. Not because she’s lying—because she isn’t. Because I can see the truth in the way her throat works around the words, in the way her eyes shine without letting the tears fall.
“Then why do it?” I demand. “Why risk everything?”
Her silence stretches, thick and dangerous.
Without thinking, I reach for her. My fingers catch a stray curl and tuck it back; a small, intimate motion that lands like a punch the second I do it.
She stills. Looks up at me.
Gone is the feisty kitten from the party, claws out and mouth sharp. This version of her is stripped to nerve endings and fear, and it makes something in me tighten.
I pull my hand back like I’ve touched fire.
My gaze drops, needing somewhere else to look, and that’s when I see it—the glossy brochure on the counter, half-hidden under her keys.
Langport Academy.
I pick it up before I can stop myself, the photo of smiling students too bright for the room.
“Langport?” My voice comes out lower than I intend.
She snatches it from my hand, eyes blazing. “That’s none of your business.”
“Everything became my business when your drug showed up in my territory,” I say, gentler than the words deserve, sharper than she does.
Her shoulders sag, the fight draining out of her like she can’t afford it anymore. “You don’t understand,” she whispers. “It’s the only way I can give her a future. The only way to stop being another disappointment in her life.”
“Ella,” I say, and her flinch tells me I’ve hit the center.
It twists something in my chest—raw, unfamiliar. I don’t want to feel anything about it, and yet I do.
“And what happens to her,” I ask, “if you get caught? Or worse?”
Her mouth tightens. “I don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice.” My voice turns cold, because if I let it soften, I’ll do something stupid. “You’re just making the wrong one.”
The fire returns to her eyes, furious and wounded. “Don’t you dare lecture me about choices,” she spits. “You have no idea what it’s like to live like this. To have nothing. To scrape, claw, and still come up short.”
I take a step closer, the room suddenly too small. “I know more than you think,” I say, and my voice drops, dangerous. “And I know that if you keep going, you won’t just lose the money. You’ll lose her.”
Her breath catches. For a moment, it feels like the tension between us might snap in either direction—violence or something worse.
Then she looks away, fingers white-knuckled around the brochure.
“Get out,” she whispers. “Just… get out.”
Every instinct in me screams to stay. To fix it. To fix her. To pull her out of the spiral before it swallows her whole.
But I’m not a savior. I don’t do rescue. I do control.
So I turn and leave, the door clicking shut behind me, and the sound follows me down the hall like a warning.
Because whatever is happening here—whatever is circling her—it isn’t finished.
And neither am I.