Page 217 of Nothing Above

“I’ve been working you since moment one.”

“On God, you better be fucking lying right now.”

“Don’t you get it? All I’ve been doing is lying. Those symptoms you noticed? I was already pregnant.”

“No.”

“It’s true. Soon after I found out Kordin was using my name to pocket extra earnings for himself, I discovered I was carrying his baby. I didn’t want him to have access to any child of mine, and I wasn’t going to risk giving birth in a jail cell, so I hired Cyrus to get me Kordin’s hard drive. I was planning on stealing that money to start over somewhere else.”

Scowling, his head rotates side to side. “Your mom though…”

I ignore him, distracting him from the glaring truth by placing blame on him.

“But you went and fucked everything up, making me have to change my target to Cyrus. All I needed was the code to his safe and I could finally be free. Yesterday, you—”

“I gave you the code. I cracked the fucking safe for you, then gave you the code to do it yourself.”

I nod.

“And you were going to take off today? Without me? Without eventellingme?”

I nod again. “I just needed to get a few of my personal items, including the pregnancy test I took weeks ago and stored here, and then—”

“And then you were going to fucking disappear off the face of the planet and let me wonder for the rest of my goddamn motherfucking life what happened to you!”

It’s not even a question. The story’s that believable because I’m that untrustworthy.

I’ve been that untrustworthy. I don’t want to be that anymore. I don’t want to be…me anymore.

But that’s exactly who I have to be. For him.

I raise my voice, too. “You knew I was playing you all along! You knew! You just didn’t mind. Except…” I wave a hand at him. “…apparently you did. You shouldn’t have fallen in love with your mark, rook. It made flipping you a breeze.”

“You were never my mark, Snow. You were my world.”

The look of utter treachery on Reece’s face brings real tears to my eyes as I murmur, “A world too crooked for someone so sweet.”

Reece’s fill with water, too.

“You’re not crooked, Lex. You’re heartless.”

I do have a heart—his.

But I just drove a blade through it.

“I’ll make sure your family gets what you hid in the window boxes before I leave.” If he is going to jail, I need him focused on his own safety, not his family’s.

Thankfully, the door to my office swings open before I make more promises, putting Reece’s life in danger all over again.

As police officers swarm my office like it’s a buy-one-get-one sale on donuts, I rush forward and surreptitiously tuck the pregnancy test into the Sweet Peas.

Using the raw emotion clogging my throat, I transition from act one to act two seamlessly, rasping out, “Kordin, is what Mr. Souza said true? Are you stealing from the firm?”

“Reece Souza, you’re under arrest…”

While one officer reads Reece his rights, two others grab his arms, shoving him down on top of my desk to handcuff him. One even digs his elbow into the back of Reece’s neck.

Reece doesn’t so much as make a sound.

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