Page 133 of A Lethal Game of Trust

“You’re late,” she chided.

“Late?”

“It took you an hour and forty-two minutes,” she said, voice curt. “I wasn’t expecting to wait so long.”

“I came—”

“Yeah, I get it,” she cut me off, flipping the page. “You came as quickly as you could.”

“I did—”

As I stepped forward, she raised the gun and the song repeated.

“This is what you think of me?” I asked, gesturing to the speaker. My voice was breaking. “You going to shoot me to this song? I told you I didn’t know, Leo.”

“Can you remember the last time we were in this room together?” she asked easily as if she wasn’t holding a gun up to me.

I moved to sit on her bed. The barrel followed me though her eyes didn’t. It was still the same duvet cover as the time she mentioned. When she had thrown the covers over herself to hide her activities with Sam.

“Yes.”

“That was the beginning, wasn’t it?” she said, pulling the notebook onto her lap. “That night. When you came in here and finished breaking my heart because someone else mightlike me when you were too scared to admit it yourself.”

“Finished?”

“The night before this was when we went to the cove and I said we should go skinny dipping. You turned me down. You’ve been breaking my heart for years, Dom. But when you walked in on me and Sam— you came around the day my dad died to tell me you loved me,” she said and glanced up at me for me to confirm, though she had already heard it.

Keep those eyes on me, Leo.

“There’s someone you need to meet,” she said and stood, her hand requesting my gun.

I handed it over.

If I was going to die, it would be by her hands, and that was okay with me.

Her eyes were so very tired.

She pocketed my gun, and the second her hand was free, I took it in mine. She looked down at our connection with no emotion. But she didn’t pull back.

I held that inch and took a mile. “Leonie, I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry. I’ve missed you. Please.”

Her bottom lip was pulled into her mouth as she thought with a deep breath. “There’s someone you need to meet.”

And she pulled me down the stairs. I squeezed her hand so tightly, trying to show her how much I meant those words. “You weren’t there at the parole hearing.”

That had been my last resort. Flying the world playing chase hadn’t got me anywhere, so I waited at the courthouse for her to arrive, knowing she wouldn’t leave it to chance.

I was wrong. She didn’t come.

“Because I needed him to be free.”

“For?” I asked. For weeks she had been hellbent on writingthat statement, on keeping him locked up forever.

“For you to know what really happened,” she said and tugged me in the direction of the kitchen. My phone vibrated in my pocket and with her leading the way, I managed to draw my eyes away from her to let the front gate open for the team Chris had sent.

Only because they would probably blow the gate up if Chris had any concerns.

There was something different in the way she moved. Graceful but predatory. She had always been strong footed, nothing would stop her, but now there was something more than determination. A hardness.