Page 65 of Cruel Lies

Her mug lowered, and the intrigue and sass turned to concern. "How long has it been since you saw him?"

"Years."

Seven, to be exact.

I walked out of his house that night after doing his bidding for the last time and took my brothers with me to start a new life away from a man whose only aim was to better his own bank account and line his pockets with things that brought him prosperity, power, and status.

"Be careful, okay?" she whispered, a hand resting on my shoulder. "He’s not someone you play with. He’s the cat, and we’re all mice in his world."

"I’m no mouse," I spat, offended that she’d think I wasn’t on his level. That I couldn’t be impartial or outsmart him. "If anything, I’ve been honing my skills for years, while his got rusty from that wingback chair of his."

"Okay, killer, you do what you do. I’ll just pass out on the couch for a few more hours."

I didn’t watch her leave. And she didn’t come back, either.

Apparently, the couch meant the one in the living room, not the one behind me.

Shame.

Anger and jealousy rising in me once more, I threw myself into my work and laser-focused on my new target—my father. A man who lived on the other side of Port Wylde, high up in his mansion, a place that I’d soon be seeing the inside of again.

Because if there was something I needed right now, it was to run far the fuck away from these feelings she stirred in me.

I had to get control again before I spiraled so far out of it that I lost my damn mind.

If it was even possible to regain control now.

TWENTY-NINE

NASH

I wokearound noon with a splitting headache, an empty, still-protesting stomach, and a fucking case of cotton mouth that had me drinking from the faucet in the bathroom before I even realized I’d moved.

Fuck me, I was never drinking again.

Lies I’d told myself a thousand times before. Perhaps now, I’d fucking stick to it. Turn it into truth.

There was a first time for everything, after all.

I slipped into some clean pants, threw on a shirt, and ran my fingers through my hair, trying to look like a human being as I walked from the room, cautious to make sure no one else was inhabiting the commons.

I made it three steps in the room before I noticed Harper on the couch, fast asleep, draped over an armrest.

Her soft snores were like a soothing balm. At least she’d gotten some sleep last night. I was afraid after my outburst?—

Fuck.

I’d forgotten how I treated her the night before.

Pieces of a self-depreciating conversation with her came back to me as I woke up proper, words that cut me to the quick slicing new wounds inside me as words I’d been a fool to say out loud ricocheted in my mind.

It didn’t surprise me she’d listened so well when I told her to get the fuck out.

From Harper, I expected a fight. Some stern fuckery about how I should never think of myself so lowly. How I shouldn’t try to chase away good things when I had them. A slap on the cheek, maybe. Instead, she’d given me exactly what I asked for, precisely what I demanded.

She walked away.

Because I hurt her enough to make her bleed, the kind of wound that didn’t bleed on the outside. The blood not of the veins, but of theheart.

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