I’m walking toward the exit, toward Atticus’s car, toward anywhere that isn’t here when I hear it.
“You set me up?”
Koa’s voice. Rough, damaged, but certain—stating it like it’s a fact rather than a question.
I stop walking. Turn slowly.
He’s managed to lift his head somehow, neck craning at an impossible angle to see me. His face is destroyed—blood and bruises and swelling that makes him almost unrecognizable. But his eyes are clear. Focused. Accusing.
“You set me up?” he asks again.
Something in me hardens. Crystallizes into something cold and unyielding.
“Me?” My voice is ice. “Or did you set yourself up the moment you delivered me to Vincent?”
“I was protecting you—”
“By drugging me? By tying me to a chair? By standing there while your psycho stepfather threatened my brother?” I take a step closer, then another. “That’s what you call protection?”
“It was the only way—”
“Fuck y––” I’m standing over him now, looking down at this man who I thought I knew, who I thought I could trust. “Don’t you dare try to justify what you did. You made your choice. Now you get to live with it.”
His eyes search mine, looking for something—forgiveness, understanding, anything that says the girl he fucked still exists somewhere beneath this rage.
He won’t find her.
“Lexi—” His voice cracks.
The word almost breaks me. Almost.
But the parasite in my chest is too hungry now, fed too well on betrayal and lies. It won’t let me soften, won’t let me break.
“You wanted me to understand your world?” I crouch down, getting close enough to see every injury, every consequence of the life he chose. “Congratulations. I understand perfectly now. Tell me more fucking lies, Koa, and I’ll smash your head in myself.”
I stand, papers still clutched in my hand and turn away.
“I lied to protect you. There was no other way.” he calls after me.
I don’t answer. Don’t look back.
Because the truth is, I don’t know where I’m going. Don’t know what comes next or how to process what Gilbert just told me or how to reconcile the fact that my own brother has been working with our father this entire time.
All I know is that I need to move. Need to keep walking before this rage inside me turns into something else—something that looks too much like grief.
I push through the warehouse door and the cold air hits my face like absolution.
Behind me, I hear Koa’s voice one more time, broken and desperate.
“Put the pieces together and think about it, Tiger.”
I keep walking.
And I feel that power settling in my chest, satisfied and patient, waiting for the next person who thinks they can use me.
46
Revan
