His voice cracked, but he covered it by flicking the lighter one more time, letting the flame dance before snapping it closed again. The silence that followed felt unbearable.
I took another step, more cautious this time, the old wood groaning again. “Pretty, youdomatter. I never?—”
“Don’t call me that,” he snapped, his gaze meeting mine, sharp and full of fury. “And don’t lie to me.”
I stopped where I stood, frozen by the weight of those words. He thought he didn’t matter to me?
“Let me explain,” I said, quieter now.
Jamie’s expression twisted—hurt, angry, betrayed. But underneath it all, there was a glimmer of something else. Maybe it was still hope. Or perhaps the last trace of what we’d once been to each other.
He didn’t answer. Not yet.
I took a breath and ran a hand through my hair. “Lassiter came to me. It was my first high-profile case—my shot. I was young and hungry and didn’t ask too many questions at the time. I was part of the prosecution team, not the lead, but I had access to the information. Then, I met the defendant, Zachary Hillway-Spencer.”
Jamie didn’t move.
“The minute I looked him in the eye, I got this feeling,” I continued. “A niggle in my gut that the man was innocent. It didn’t make sense with the file in front of me, but it wouldn’t leave me alone. And I didn’t think Lassiter was crooked—not then. Not at all. But something about the case didn’t feel right.”
I stepped around a broken board, closer to Jamie, his gaze fixed on me. “So, I played the game. I kept my mouth shut so the Cave could dig. Quietly. Behind the scenes. They went through everything with a fine-tooth comb.”
I paused, heart beating hard. Jamie’s grip on the lighter was tight, his knuckles white. Flicked on. Off. On. Off.
“We found that evidence had been tampered with. Reports rewritten. Photographs doctored. But nothing pointed directly to Lassiter building a case against an innocent person at that point. There was no smoking gun. Just a whole lot of wrong.”
Still, Jamie said nothing. That silence was heavier than anything he could have shouted.
“The Cave found a way to challenge the case without exposing our hand. They focused on the evidence mishandling. Turns out, one of the detectives on the case—a guy named Collins—wassleeping with Zachary’s wife. The same wife Zachary supposedly murdered.”
I let the weight of that sit before continuing. “Legally, it was a nightmare. Conflict of interest. Undisclosed relationships. The chain of custody for critical evidence was deliberately broken. Inadmissible. We handed everything over to the defense team anonymously, separate from Lassiter. The defense filed a motion for dismissal based on prosecutorial misconduct and contamination of the evidence trail. The judge had no choice but to throw the case out.”
I looked Jamie straight in the eye, trying to get through the fury I saw there. “Lassiter came out of it clean. The official narrative? He helped the DA’s office avoid a costly trial once the evidence fell apart. He got praise. Credit. He was furious that the whole thing had stopped being some huge show trial, but we thought nothing of it.”
My voice dropped. “And I regret every single thing I ever did to build his reputation. It was the only case I worked under his name, and I swear to you, Jamie—I didn’t know how deep his rot went until you pulled the name from John Mitchell. Until then, he was just another political player. I didn’t know about the money, the laundering, thetrafficking, or the rest of it. He was on our list as morally ambiguous, but waywaydown, and we never saw it.”
Still, Jamie didn’t speak. But something in his stance had shifted, and I clung to that. Maybe he was still listening.
“Then, he called me, a while back, wanted me to look into a certain suspicious fire at a club, a missing laptop, akayourfire.” I paused to let that sink in. “He told me he knew that I’d handed over prosecution research to the defense team when he’d wanted it quashed.”
Jamie stiffened. “He’s blackmailing you?”
“I guess. It won’t work. He comes for me and my team, and we’d destroy him in a heartbeat. He just doesn’t know that yet.”
I took one more step, slow and deliberate, until I stood so close I could almost reach him.
“You won’t reach me in time to stop me burning this place,” Jamie warned, voice low and rough. “So don’t try.”
“I wasn’t going to,” I said, calm but firm. “I want you to know I trust you. And if that means I stand here with you until you trust me back, then I will.” I let that settle for a moment, heart pounding. Then added, “I love you, and if you go up in flames, I’mgoing with you. That’s how this works. You burn. I burn. Together.”
Jamie’s eyes widened and then his lips twitched, a half-smile flickering and fading like the flame he kept playing with. “You’re an idiot.”
“Yeah,” I said, the hint of a smile tugging at my mouth. “But I’myouridiot.”
Another step, and I reached out, my fingers closing around the lighter in his hand. It was hot to the touch as if it had been burning too long. I didn’t flinch. With my other hand, I cradled his face, brushing my thumb along the sharp edge of his jaw, then up under his eye.
“I didn’t know about Lassiter,” I said, voice low, the words meant only for him. “I swear to you, if I had, I would’ve stopped him a long time ago.”
His breath hitched, and I leaned forward until our foreheads touched.
