Page 82 of Cruel Riches

Maybe I really was losing my mind. Or maybe I already lost it.

My heart hammered as a question repeated itself over and over in my brain. What did I do that night when I left my dorm?

I had no memory of it at all, but I knew it happened. It explained the dirt I found on my floor the next morning, so it obviously wasn’t fake footage like the deepfake sex tape. It also showed me coming home covered in blood, which I did wake up to the next morning… but that was just my period.

Right?

I clutched my chest and sucked down deep, heaving breaths. “I… I didn’t do anything,” I finally said. “I can’t explain that video. But I know I’m not a killer.”

Nate packed everything away in his bag and smiled thinly. “You sure about that?” he asked. Then he stepped away, footsteps echoing in the dark tunnel beyond the cell.

I collapsed to the mattress and curled up in a ball as thoughts and emotions swirled around inside me like a typhoon.

The worst part about all of this wasn’t that I was trapped in a cold, lonely cell under threat of torture and death. It was that Nate was right to ask me if I was sure about not being a killer.

I didn’t want to admit it, but after everything he’d shown me… I wasn’t sure at all.

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