Page 140 of Ruin My Life
“The security office was unlocked,” he says slowly. “And your keys are sitting on my desk.”
What?
My fingers plunge into my jeans pocket—no keys.
No…
No, no, no.
“Fuck.”
I throw open my bedroom door and storm down the hall shirtless, my heart already racing.
I don’t bother knocking on her door. I slam it open, and the wood bangs roughly against the doorstop.
The room is wrong.
Not trashed. Not chaotic. Just… empty in the way that screamsintentional.
The bed’s untouched. The walls feel hollow. There’s a thick picture album on the bed, but the photos inside are gone. Her suitcase is still in the closet, but her clothes? Gone. Bathroom’s half-stocked with lotions and perfume—but no toothbrush, no hairbrush, no shampoo.
She took what she needed. Left what she didn’t.
She’sgone.
And I didn’t even fucking see it coming.
She took my keys. Got into the security office. Probably left the moment I passed out, too high on her scent and the illusion that she was starting to trust me.
ThatIcould trusther.
I knew she was trying to seduce me at first, to get information. But I didn’t realize she was playing me the whole time—just so she could find it herself.
“FUCK!”
The sound echoes off the walls like a detonation, and within seconds, Chavez bursts through the hallway like a shot. He’s probably been on guard the last hour with no clue she was already gone.
He skids around the corner into Brie’s room with his gun raised and scans, his eyes landing on me—alone.
“Damon? What the hell’s going on? Where’s Brie?”
“Oh shit,” Lee mutters through the phone, the pieces clicking into place in his brain.
“She’s gone,” I say through clenched teeth.
My jaw aches almost as much as my stupid heart does.
“And she knows about Xander.”
IT ONLY TAKEStwenty minutes to gather Monroe and Connor and start running the camera feeds from both my apartment building and The Speakeasy. Twenty minutes to confirm what I already fucking knew the second I woke up alone and realized my keys were missing.
She planned this.
Brie planned every fucking step.
But seeing it on screen? Watching her move with calm precision—slipping past Connor, accessing the security room like it was hers by right, not theft—somehow makes it worse.
It’s like her betrayal has grown teeth and now it’s chewing through my ribs just for fun.
