Page 61 of Ruthless Regret

“No, I want to hear what he has to say about understanding.” Her eyes are spitting fire at me. “Do you understand what it’s like to be used as bait? To feel like your life is worthless to someone beyond that? To go from having sex with someone and thinking you’ve reached an understanding, only for it to become clear it was just a means to an end?”

I curl my fingers, nails biting into my palm. “Do you understand what it’s like to be accused of murder? Of going from planning what you want to do with your life to losing everything? To go from being able to get up and do whatever you want every day to living in an eight by ten cell? You think you’ve been living in fear, Ashley? You have no fucking idea what it’s like living with the knowledge that every minute might be your last because you pissed off the wrong person. So yeah, Idounderstand.” She has the decency to blush and look away. “I know I’ve done things that hurt you, that made you feel less than human?—”

“Things?” Her laugh is bitter. “You’ve donethings? Is that what you’re calling it?”

“I’m trying to make it right. It’s more than what you’re fucking doing!” My shout echoes around the room.

“Make it right?” Scott interrupts again, and the thought of silencing him for good crosses my mind. “How the hell do you make something like that right?”

I make the conscious decision to ignore him, and force myself to calm down, to let go of the anger and focus on what’s important. “Fighting about the things we’ve both done is getting us nowhere. I need your help, Ashley.”

“My help.” Her voice is flat. “Why would I help you?”

“Not for me. For Jason. For Louisa. For the truth we deserve to know.”

“Don’t youdaretry and guilt me into doing what you want. I don’t care what evidence you think you have. I don’t care about your apologies,notthat you’ve actually apologized for anything you’ve done. I want you out of my house.”

“Ashley,” Peter speaks up, voice calm. “I know you have every reason to distrust Zain at the moment, but perhaps you should hear what he’s found.”

“No.”

I take a step closer to her. “You’re already investigating.” I gesture to the papers on the table. “You know there’s more to this story. Don’t let your anger with me cloud your thinking.”

“I don’t need you here to carry on researching.”

“Maybe not, but you need the information I have, and I need what you have. Whether you like it or not, we might both be targets. We’re safer working together than apart.”

Her internal struggle plays out over her face. The desire for answers warring with her hatred of me.

When she finally speaks, her voice is tight with barely contained emotion. “You have five minutes.Five minutesto convince me that whatever you’ve found is worth the risk of spending more time with you. After that, if I’m not satisfied, you leave. For good. Deal?”

I nod. Five minutes is all I’ll need. “Deal.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

ASHLEY

“Your time starts now.”Him listing the things he’s had to deal with has taken the fight out of me, but I’m not going to let him see that. He’ll use it.

Zain’s head swings toward the papers strewn across the table. “The articles you have. What made you print them off?”

“I wanted to make sense of everything.”

He nods. “Yeah … Do any of them mention the partial fingerprint they found?”

My heart skips a beat. “What? No. That’s not possible. They would have?—”

“They buried it. No follow-up, no investigation. Just swept under the rug like it never existed.”

“Surely that’s not legal,” Scott says, and it’s clear he doesn’t believe Zain.

Zain turns to him, and aggression radiates off his body in waves. “I’ve got the fucking reports. You want to see them?”

“Zain,” Peter’s voice is soft.

Zain’s attention returns to me. “My mom told me about some guy asking questions after the murders and my arrest. He knew things. Things that weren’t made public.”

“What kind of things?”

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