Page 111 of Snitches and Serpents

“Tristan Kane, member of the White Serpents and high-ranking subordinate to Rob Bracken himself, caught with a bag of drugs,” he says, a distinctly smug smile on his lips.

I’m just about to open my mouth and speak, but someone else beats me to it.

“You,” Elle blurts out.

“Hello, Elle,” he replies, turning towards her. “Thank you for leading us right to him and the drugs.”

My heart stops.

Fucking stops dead in my chest.

Coldness spreads through my limbs like poison. My body feels numb. I try to draw in a breath but I’m not sure if it actually contained any air.

“You know him,” I manage to press out, my eyes locked on Elle. It’s half statement, half question.

“I… well, I…” she stammers.

“Of course she does,” the guy interrupts. Turning back to me, he flashes me a smile full of smug superiority. “She has been spying on you for me for weeks.”

Everything inside my head goes dead silent. For a few seconds, I’m not even sure if my heart is beating anymore.

“That’s not…” Elle begins. Panic and regret flash across her face as she stares at me with pleading eyes. “It’s not… It wasn’t like that. It?—”

Realization hits me like a knife to the gut. “All that time you were following me around, hiding in the bushes outside my window, watching me… You weren’t keeping tabs on me for yourself. You were spying on me. For him.”

“I…” Desperation washes across her features. “Yes, but it’s not?—”

A cold laugh rips from my lungs. It’s so harsh that I almost taste blood.

I feel like my heart has just been ripped out of my chest.

It was a setup.

It was all a setup.

She didn’t offer to pay off my debt to help me. She didn’t make a deal with Bracken to sell drugs for him because she cared about me. She did it so that she could get me and the drugs in the same room, and then call the police on me.

Pain slashes through my chest like shards of glass as another harsh laugh rips out of me.

Fuck, I underestimated her. If this isn’t the best fucking revenge she could ever have concocted, I don’t know what is. What a ruthless fucking savage she is.

“Get him up,” the guy with the gray eyes says, and jerks his chin at the man I thought was the leader. “And take him to the car.”

He nods in acknowledgement and grabs me by the arm, pulling me to my feet.

My ears are ringing. I feel like I’ve been caught in the blast radius of a dirty bomb.

“It wasn’t like that!” Elle cries.

Another policeman has stepped up and is holding her back as I’m led towards the door. She struggles against his hold, her eyes wild and desperate as she stares at me.

“Please, Tristan,” she calls. “It wasn’t like that. Yes, I spied on you for a few weeks. But I didn’t know that he was a cop. And I only did it because I needed protection. I stopped it the moment we decided on a truce.” She struggles hard against the arms holding her. “Tristan! I didn’t?—”

Fury flashes through me, flamed by the searing pain where my heart would’ve been if she hadn’t just ripped it out of my chest. I can barely concentrate on her words. I just know that I don’t want to hear my name on her tongue one more fucking time. Because if I do, the pain inside me is going to rip me apart.

“I should’ve known,” I snarl, cutting her off. Rage laces every word out of my mouth, and disgust pulses through me as I lock cold eyes on Elle. “Once a rat, always a rat.”

Hurt washes over her features. It’s followed by desperation. “Tristan, please?—”

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