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RHAIM

L ia didn’t look like herself that night when she came on camera, so I called right away. “You okay?”

“No, not very,” she said, kicking off her heels.

“Stressful day?”

“Not really,” she said, looking over at me. “And…that was the problem.”

She went on to tell me all about her wedding “plans” and then her dinner with Marcus and his offspring.

“They were assholes, of course.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“But the thing is, Rhaim…all day long…everyone ignored me.” She shrunk herself into a small, beige colored ball on the bed. “I didn’t get to decide a thing. The only time someone asked my opinion was when the waiter wanted to put pepper on my salad.”

“I’m sorry, moth.”

She gawked at the camera briefly. “Wow—if I’m earning a ‘sorry’ from Mister-I-Don’t-Apologize, something must be sincerely wrong.”

I inhaled, and then shook my head, even though she wouldn’t see it. “I’m not enjoying not being in control of this situation.”

“You and me both.” She rested her face in the palms of her hands.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said—without looking up.

And suddenly the plans I’d been putting into progress with Sable, framing Zane, now one-hundred-percent confirmed as Marcus’s shittier son, with Bix’s death next week—I knew needed to shift them forward.

Lia needed to be out of the shadow of Nero’s bad decision as soon as possible.

Once and for all.

“How much longer can you make it?” I asked her.

“As long as it takes,” she said, picking her head up, and giving me a sad smile.

“I’ve got you, little girl, I swear.”

I watched her set her shoulders and softly nod.

“Go to sleep. I’ll watch over you,” I said, and hung up—then did as I promised, waiting as she walked into view and out again, putting on pajamas and presumably brushing her teeth, before tucking herself into bed, where she waved at me.

I sent her Goodnight, as a text, and then watched her sleep, working the angles on speeding up my plans, until I also fell asleep, in my chair, at my desk.