Page 58 of Never Broken

Control the center, control the game, boy.

If he wanted disruption, I’d give him disruption.

So with my master standing right there, I shook the hand of the man I’d been hunting for a year and looked him straight in his frigid blue eyes. I hoped my message was clear.

I’m not buying what you’re selling, asshole. And if you touch my sister, it’ll be more than your limbs the coyotes will be chewing on.

Wainwright-Phillips, to his credit, seemed to notice none of this. He just nodded cluelessly at the eccentric behavior of those richer than him and wandered off to greet some more guests. But Max Langer remained, his smooth, firm hand still grippingmine. And as he leaned in close, the phone in my back pocket took that exact moment to start buzzing audibly.

Fuck.

I went rigid, and I know Langer felt it.Of courseI’d been too stressed out and distracted to get the volume settings right. In horror, I looked up at Langer again—right in the one place a slave was never supposed to look.

But he didn’t even blink. He just quirked an eyebrow and leaned in closer. “You might want to answer that, kid,” he whispered, his breath cold in my ear, “and let her know she shouldn’t dig too deep—or she might get exposed.”

The phone stopped buzzing, thank fuck, but it still took about fifteen more minutes and the housekeeper handing me a garbage bag—full of about fifty empty liquor bottles and a broken lamp thanks to Louisa’s mom—to give me my chance to finally look at it. And as soon as I had the bag, I hurled it into the garbage bin and ducked behind the bin, out of the way of the security camera I knew was situated on the eaves, frantic to see what Maeve had written.

But the first message wasn’t from Maeve.

Marie Curie

It’s the gardener, he has evidence

About us

Motherfucker.

She was goddamn right we had to figure out something to do: kill him. What elsewasthere to do?

Okay. I took a deep breath. When I’d left the terrace mere minutes ago, Louisa had been by the pool, talking to some of her parents’ friends seemingly without a care. She was safe, for now.

But if he had evidence, that didn’t matter. He could throw it all in the middle of the goddamn dinner table if he wanted. Hell, he could nestle it lovingly in a bed of romaine lettuce right on Louisa’s dad’s plate. Or he could?—

Marie Curie

But I’ll take care of it

I dropped the phone on the lava rocks with a crunch. Not for the first time that night, horror crashed over me like a rogue wave.

She was wrong. The gardener didn’t want to expose us. He didn’t give a fuck. If he did, he would have done it already. But I knew exactly what he did want.

Oh, I got a mind to do a lot more than see.

And after he didthat, he’d expose us anyway, just for shits and giggles.

Why, why, why had I ever let Louisa out of my sight?

I knew she cared. Too much. She’d proved it by risking her own neck for me, and to keep me out of the mines, I knew she’d do it again.

But I couldn’t let her. Because the price he’d ask wouldn’t be her neck. It would be a price too high for her to pay. Foranyoneto pay.

I knew because my mother had paid it.

And of all the fucking awful memories shoved into the far recesses of my brain, it wasthatI was reliving as I stood there, watching the phone as it buzzed angrily in the rocks. Another message was coming in.

This onewasfrom Maeve. But the timestamp was hours ago, as if some tech glitch had prevented it from reaching me until now.

773541N0

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