Page 202 of Pretty Little Lies

Another gunshot rips through the volume of the phone, and I almost drop it.

This can’t be right.

Judah—Lennox—he’s not dead. I never saw his face lying in a casket. I always believed he ran off to go do something for himself.

That he’d be back.

I would’ve known. If my brother was dead, I would’vefeltit.

The gentle sobs of Bay’s voice come through the phone and my vision goes hazy. Ifeelher through the device but my brother…he’s silent.

“Grab him,” I order, my words barely leaving my throat as I try to latch onto my voice to speak.

I need to know what happened.

I have to find out how he has this.

Within seconds, Matteo stumbles toward me, and I want to kill him. I want to rip his fucking head off because he possibly just annihilated my whole future with the woman I just handed my heart to.

“How do you have this?” Reeve asks for me. “Andwhydo you have it?”

“I have it because I never trusted her. Bay was always a fleeting soul. Ask your boy how easy it was to touch her when she was mine.”

I wouldn’t say easy.

I would have said linked, fated, and obsessed—on my end.

“One of my men saw her leave with Judah that night from the camp,” Matteo continues. “Your brother was always sniffing around her, but he flirted with anything with a pussy, and he wasmy second…so I had no reason to think Judah would betray me. He was more ruthless than me and even wanted the Pistol Posse to succeed more than I did. It was his idea. Judah just didn’t want the full responsibility of being the leader. And I had no problem bossing people around.”

“Get to the fuckin’ point,” Reeve snarls. “Today.”

“If you want the full story, dickhead,” Matteo chides through a glower. “Then?—”

“Where’s my brother, De Leon?” I cut in, boring daggers into the side of his head and imagined doing that exact thing in real life.

Matteo looks at me with a straight face. “You already know the answer to that question, bro.”

“I never saw a body.”

He shakes his head and plucks another cigarette from his pocket. “Listen, I’m not your therapist. I sent back pieces to your father to bury.”

“Then let me reiterate”—I step forward at the same moment Matteo flicks his lighter—“I didn’t see a face. That could’ve been anyone’s body.”

“Are you saying that I’mhidinghim from you?”

“I’m saying that the video you just had me watch doesn’t mean shit.”

“Judah was right,” Matteo vouches. “She was in danger. Actually…shewasthe danger. She worked for Levi Wallace way before you got involved with your crew. She was working to grab all my intel, burn my posse to the ground, and it looks like she’s doing the same fucking thing to you.”

That’s a lie.

“Why the fuck do you care?” I snap, feeling a vein tick in my jaw. “It has nothing to do with?—”

“It has everything to do withmeand mine when Bay hates me enough to destroy me. I wasn’t the perfect boyfriend, by anymeans. I’m not going to stand here and say I didn’t do some fucked up shit.”

“Which we should kill you for right now,” Reeve pipes back.

Matteo ignores him, still keeping his gaze glued onto mine. “But she holds more power than you, me, and your daddy combined, Wildes.”

---