Page 151 of The Scandal You Started
Pin. Drop. Silence. Numb and cold and agonising.
The same kind that had shattered Rayna’s strength when she’d seen her mum’s weak body in the hospital bed thirteen years ago. The explosion had bruised her mum’s body where it’d thrown her across the room. But the real damage had been on the inside, where the Type Two Z-energy that the POTeM functioned on began causing her organs to fail one by one until she lay lifeless two days later.
The pain, the realisation, panic, disbelief, the tears, and screaming had hit her when a sobbing Victor, her grandparents, and her dad had all tried holding her back as she fought to stop the doctors from wheeling her mum out of the room.
She could hear it all in her ears, see it all behind her eyes, as she tried to process the answers she’d never gotten to her questions all those years ago. And it was cracking the numbness, spreading a cold sweat across her neck, as throbs of excruciating pain radiated from her chest.
Dominic clenched her hand, rubbing her wrist under the table too as he watched her, and she could sense it, but she could barely feel it as she put all her concentration into trying to breathe over the suffocating emotions.
“So that’s what this is about? Those same baseless accusations.”
The low, emotionless voice of Jim Pine filtered through the noise in Rayna’s head, and she raised her gaze.
“Do you see now, Miss Faez?” he said. “Dr Johnson is using you in some scheme to get back at me for something he’s convinced himself in his grief that I did, when what happened to your mother and the others was a devastating accident. The very reason no Study is allowed to stay anymore.”
“Be quiet,” Dominic growled, clamping his hand around her forearm like he was willing her not to listen to the man.
But Jim ignored him. “Do you understand now that it’s in your best interest to end things with Lord Norland?”
She felt both Dominic and Victor react on either side of her, ready to slice the man with words, but—
“No.”
Everyone’s attention fell on her as her voice lingered in the silence.
Jim Pine had no idea who she was if he thought he could manipulate her and turn her against Victor. And to use that to try to separate her and Dominic? He couldn’t have done anything more to earn her instant distrust and hatred.
“No,” she repeated harder. “I won’t end things with Dominic, and you’re insane if you think I’d believe you over V.” She sat upright. “If what he says is true, then you’re a murderer. You stole my mum from me, you took George’s parents from him, and the Board helped brush it under the carpet as if you didn’t ruin multiple people’s lives!”
She shot glares at all of them, and the black man who’d once been a scientist and the older brunette lady at the other end had the decency to look away guiltily.
“I won’t let you do the same to me and Dominic,” she continued. “And threatening or manipulating us isn’t going to work in your favour, I promise you that. We’ll fight you tooth and nail if that’s what it’s going to take, but you owe us the chance to overcome Dominic’s Rupture.
“This project owes me for taking my mum away from me. You owe me for all the work I’ve done, for everything my mum did, for everything V and George have done and lost. For all the pain you’ve caused the three of us.You owe me time!”
Some of the Board members exchanged wary, contemplative looks. Then the brunette lady at the end took a deep breath.
She said, “I accept Miss Faez’s request.”
Jim’s gaze snapped to the woman, but she didn’t glance at him, and soon enough the black scientist voiced the same opinion. Eventually, the two other women did too, leaving the silent Jim, Lang, and Sheun outnumbered.
Vindictive satisfaction touched Rayna’s pride, but it wasn’t powerful enough to show over her anger as Jim’s jaw moved back and forth faintly. Still, he didn’t relent.
“We will do this with or without your permission, Dr Pine,” she warned him. “At this point, it really doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
He didn’t like that she’d challenged him; his irritation was practically pouring from his pores like boiling liquid. “Three days,” he said. “And Dr River Harris will return Lord Norland if the Rupture reduction is not predicted at ninety percent.”
“That’s impossible,” Victor snapped.
“Then that settles that.”
Victor clamped his jaw together. “Two weeks. Sixty percent.”
“Three days. Ninety percent.”
“Lord Norland will need longer than three days to wrap things up at the museum,” Monty interrupted. “And Dr Harris has been given this week off, seeing as he hasn’t had a proper break since he first scouted Lord Norland in April. So it’s not possible to send the marquess back so soon anyway. And there’s no one from the Evidence team either who could travel with him.”
“Fine,” Jim said after a while. “One week. Ninety percent.”
