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Then Roth steps back, smooth as ever, and nods. Not a single flicker of anger in his expression, just a measured, calculated acknowledgement that I’ve won—for now at least. I return the gesture with a tight smirk that’s really a silent promise.I see you, and I will remember this.

Without another word, he disappears into the crowd.

32

Precious Resource

Sophie

The taxi ride isthick with silence.

Dahlia rips off her diamond earrings, throwing them into her purse with shaking hands. She wipes her mouth with a tissue, smearing what’s left of her lipstick, but she doesn’t touch her eyes. Tears tremble on her lashes, unshed. She sits rigidly, staring straight ahead of her, not even deigning to glance out at the skyline glittering past the tinted windows.

“I had it under control,” she said when we got in the taxi.

I didn’t bother to argue.

Standing up to Marcel Roth was about Marcel Roth. If it had been any girl but Dahlia, I would have done the exact same thing. And even though I despise Roth and men like him, none of it changes the way I feel about Dahlia.

That’s how I know that I hate her, all the way down in the pit of my soul.

I can feel the two separate entities, side by side: my cold detached hatred of her, for her part in the prank, for her part in my break-up with Evan. And at the same time, I can also feel sympathy for what she’s gone through.

The two feelings coexist, Dahlia held in the balance.

It’s not sympathy that makes me follow her out of the taxi outside her apartment. Just human decency. But the second we step under the pool of yellow lamplight, Dahlia whirls around, eyes blazing.

“I won’t be indebted to you.”

Her voice shakes with rage, but I recognise it for what it is: the anger of someone who’s been shaken by a brutal, unexpected defeat. I know this feeling well: it’s the exact same angerIfelt the night Evan and I broke up.

“So whatever you want from me,” she sneers, “spit it out already.”

The venom in her voice would be impressive if her whole body wasn’t tensed like an angry animal fighting against an invisible chain.

“I’m not stupid,” she goes on, voice climbing higher, more frantic. “I know what you did to Anthony. I know you’re still furious about that dumb, stupid prank and I know you blame us for your break-up. And now you know about Marcel. But I won’t let you hold it over me—so let’s get it over with. Tell me what you want.”

I let the silence stretch, let her feel how much pain and ugliness can be found in something as simple assilence.

Then, finally, I answer her.

“I could hate your guts and want you dead,” I say, “but I would still never stoop low enough to blackmail a victim for my own gain.”

Dahlia flinches like I slapped her across the face.

“I’m not avictim.”

She spits it out like a reflex, like the twitching of a pricked limb.

Maybe she believes it—I don’t think so.

Dahlia might be self-deluded and narcissistic, but she’s not stupid. She knows that, even if she got something she wanted from Marcel, he still managed to take something from her she didn’t want to give him.

And that makes her a victim, whether she likes it or not.

“And even if Iwasthe kind of person to blackmail victims,” I continue, “what makes you think you have anything I want?”

Dahlia lets out a sharp, ragged breath. Tears slip freely down her cheeks now, streaking shimmering make-up along her sculpted face.