Page 9 of Cruel Hearts

Struggling to focus, I push up onto my elbow.

I roll onto the other set of tracks seconds before the train would have run me over, wheels screeching. The train speeds by possessing such a momentum the engineer couldn’t hope to harness it, and I fight back a scream.

Sirens blare, a shrilling that threatens to deafen me. The emergency alarm. I’ve heard them go off whenever someone was in danger on the tracks. Today, that someone is me.

Subway employees jump off the platform and help me to my feet. I’m woozy, blood rushing to my head, and I stumble. Train security boosts me onto the platform and hustles me unwillingly into an office. Quinn must be freaking out, being separated after my near miss, but I don’t have a phone and can’t arrange to meet her.

“Ma’am, are you all right? Do you need us to call an ambulance?” The man has kind brown eyes, grey hair, and a matching mustache.

I’m not all right, but not in the way he means. “I’m okay. Just a bit shaken.”

I grapple for my purse and yank it open. I need to check the flash drive isn’t broken. It’s there and in one piece, and I want to cry, so thankful my evidence wasn’t destroyed.

Reluctantly, he lets me go, but there’s nothing anyone can do. The man who pushed me is long gone, and in the dim light, I couldn’t see his features clearly enough to describe him. There will be security footage, but if I couldn’t see his face, a fuzzy video won’t help the authorities identify him. It’s common in a big city like King’s Crossing. People falling onto the tracks, I mean, and the cops won’t bother looking for long, if at all. I was counting on the anonymity the city would give me, but I was stupid. It took Ash less than twenty-four hours to find me.

My legs are wobbly as I walk up the stairs, and I reach the sidewalk above ground mentally and emotionally exhausted. The evening sun is blazing, and the heat warms me. I’m so cold—it must be shock. I start to shake, and I stagger to a bench near the entrance to the train stop.

I wait for Quinn, my arms wrapped around myself, trying to keep in the warmth. People walking by stare, but they leave me alone.

This is Ash’s doing. I don’t have proof, but I know it’s him. He knows where I am. Maybe not what I’m trying to do, but he knows I didn’t leave King’s Crossing the minute I escaped his building. I should have left. I should have said to hell with Zane Maddox and his loyalties, but I didn’t, and now it’s too late.

Ash won’t stop until I’m dead.

I don’t know how much time passes until Quinn finds me. Crying, she sits and hugs me to her. Her tears wet my shoulder, and I let her sob.

“I’m okay,” I say, rubbing her back. “It’s going to be okay. The faster we get this flash drive to Zane, the sooner we can leave. Quinn, Ashton Black isn’t going to leave me alone.”

“The fuck he’s not,” she says, and I smile. The Quinn who cries is not the girl I know and love. The Quinn I know will laugh when a foster dad beats the crap out of her. The Quinn I know tells schoolyard bullies to eat shit and die. The Quinn I know runs her own purse counterfeiting operation and can, assumedly, shoot a gun. At least, it seems like she can—she handled hers at the warehouse competently enough. “I’ll kill him before he touches another hair on your head.”

Those are good words, strong words, but they’re only words. I lived with Ash for five years. Was privy to information he probably forgot he was exposing me to because he treated me like I was less than the dirt on his shoes. The things I heard would make anyone vomit, but I soaked it in, to remember. To remember that what Ash learned, he learned from his dad, and before his death, Kagan Maddox and Clayton Black were best friends.

“Let’s go,” I say. We’re only targets if we sit here any longer.

She wipes her eyes with the hem of her dress. “How do you feel?” she asks, her voice watery.

“My ribs hurt where I landed, but I’ll be okay.”

We don’t try to ride the train again, walking instead. Maddox Industries is miles of blocks ahead of us, and Quinn uses the time to ask, “How mixed up are you with these people?”

“You don’t want to know,” I say, but she needs to—protecting me will get her killed.

Stopping at a sidewalk café, I sit in a wrought iron chair, and Quinn follows. A waiter dressed in jeans, a white dress shirt, and a black apron tied around his waist asks what we’d like, and Quinn orders two coffees.

He serves our Americanos, heavy on the cream, and he asks if there’s anything else we need. We decline, silently shaking our heads, and I wait for him to go inside the café.

In a low voice, I start at the beginning, unsure of what Quinn remembers. “I’d only been working at Maddox Industries for six months when I met Zarah. She was still grieving her parents’ deaths, and she didn’t know what she wanted to do, with her life or at the company. She toured the payroll department, and my boss asked if she could shadow me. We got along, and she invited me to her penthouse for wine after work that night. I kept expecting not to like her, and I labeled her a snob before I got to know her.” I worry my dress’s skirt between my fingers. Somehow, my fall ripped it. “Then Zane came in, moody and half naked, and before I knew it, I was his executive assistant and he was fucking me in his office. I fell hard, Quinn. I think he did, too.” I like to think he did, but five years is a long time and what’s real and what’s not is hazy in my memories.

Quinn brushes her trembling fingers over my cheek. “I can’t blame him, Stella. I saw you fall, and, oh, God.”

“I don’t mean to keep hurting you,” I say, tears filling my eyes.

“I know you’re straight, honey. It’s my own stubbornness that won’t let me give you up.” She rubs her thumb over my bottom lip and then wraps her hands around her mug. “Tell me more.”

“One night at Temptations, Zane introduced me to Ash. They’ve been best friends all their lives. I told him Ash threatened me, but he didn’t believe it.”

“Asshole,” she mutters.

I huff a sad, quiet laugh. “Yeah. All that was going on at the same time he was trying to figure out why his parents were killed. You said it was because Kagan Maddox was doing some bad stuff. On the night of Zane’s party, Ash said he had proof that it was true.”

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