Page 45 of Watch Me Burn
They’ve been planning this from the start. Framing her. Turning her into the perfect villain. The disposable daughter. The buried liability. They want to destroy her. Use her as the fall. Feed her to monsters while her father smiles for the cameras.
Not fucking happening.
Not while I’m still breathing.
“I’ll kill him,” I whisper, more to myself than anyone else.
Cat turns to face me, not seeming upset or shocked by what she heard.
“We’ll do it together. I have plans for him.”
She doesn’t stop me from wanting it. Doesn’t try to talk me down. Because she knows how this makes me feel, how sometimes I need to let the caged animal out.
If Mortelle thought I was dangerous before, he has no idea what he’s unleashed.
“And Aaron?” Tristan asks Keira, distracting me from my thoughts.
“The loyal husband. Swayed by love. Manipulated into laundering her blood money through his clean, respectable firm.”
“I thought they plan to get rid of him too.”
Keira nods, reaching for her cup. “Oh, they’re planning it. But they won’t let it touch him. Men always find a way to blame the woman, don’t they? The untrustworthy muse. The seductress who ruined everything.”
I glance at Caterina.
She hasn’t moved. Her face is calm but her pulse is a fuse, ticking rapidly. Rage, coiled and suffocating, locked beneath flawless skin.
“And why should we believe all of this?” Tristan is playing the skeptic, but we all know he believes her. He just wants to hear it out of her mouth.
“Track A4. Audio of Giovanni and Callum discussing what to do ‘when the girl becomes a liability.’ There are photos too, of Caterina at scenes no one but the killers should have been able to document. They’ve been following her. Much longer than she’s aware.”
Cat exhales loudly, and that seems to be all the emotion she allows herself to feel. I know what she’s thinking, everything threatening to consume her. Knowing how long she was being followed, watched, documented, framed. Set up to burn. With her father lighting the match.
“Not to mention, I extracted Dominik’s mother. Made sure she was and will continue to stay safe. That was part of the deal.”
Tristan leans back, crossing his arms. “So you claim.”
“Has your friend heard back?”
Tristan shrugs, either playing with Keira or forcing her to stick around longer... I’m not sure which anymore. We know Dom’s mom is safe.
Keira rolls her eyes, pulling out her phone and tapping twice on the screen before sliding it across the surface. “Home and protected. I sent one of my contacts to extract her before Patrick could send cleaners.”
Tristan studies the footage. “Why now, Keira? Why turn on them after all this time?”
Keira doesn’t say anything for a long time. Then, her shoulders drop, as though she’s surrendering.
“They trained me. Raised me after my parents died. And now they’re cleaning house as though I was never there. I was loyal for twenty years, and they tried to put me down. Period.” She takes a measured breath. “I don’t want justice anymore. I want them to feel what it’s like to lose everything.”
It seems a little too rehearsed. But pain doesn’t lie. The slight shake in her hand as she reaches for her cup. The hard swallow before she continued. Either she’s the best actress I’ve ever seen, or she’s telling the truth. Maybe both.
“And what do you want from us?”
“Protection, initially,” Keira says. “Then a seat at the negotiation when we take them down, especially the Irish.” Her stare stays locked on Tristan’s.
“I know where the bodies are buried, literally. I know which judges are bought, which cops close their vision. I know the escape routes, the real safe houses, the transfer homes where they keep the women and children. Their offshore accounts. Every rotten root of their operation.”
“I’m going to skin my father and his men alive,” Cat grits out. “One by one. Disgusting fucking scumbags.”
Those words have never been truer.
God, I fucking love this woman.
She’s everything I feared she was when I first met her, and everything I never dared to want.
Caterina glances my way. “She knows too much. She’s either the solution or the weapon that ends us. There’s no middle ground.”
I nod once, silent agreement passing between us.
“Timeline?” Tristan asks.
“Fast,” Keira replies. “Within ten days, the Doyles are meeting with their Asian distributors to finalize an expansion deal. If they get that partnership locked, they’ll have international immunity—money, diplomatic cover, protection across three governments.”
“Which means we’ve got a week,” Tristan concludes.
“At most. If we don’t strike before then, they vanish into the fog, becoming untouchable. And the women trapped in that system will be gone with them.”
“You seem awfully calm for someone with a death sentence,” Tristan observes, not unkindly.
“Death and I are old friends, Karev. We’ve been dancing for years.”
“Don’t call me that,” Tristan whispers. “Not here.”
Keira arches a brow. “Keeping secrets from your friends? Not surprised.”
“You always wanted your shot at the Doyles, didn’t you?” Keira pivots, studying him.
Something flashes behind Tristan’s stare. A memory, maybe. Then it’s gone in a blink, buried behind all that charming indifference he wears.
“We all have our reasons,” he says, shaking it off.
But I don’t miss the way he watches Keira with some type of longing.
Keira rises, brushing her hand over the surface as though smoothing out creases. She leans in as though saying a friendly goodbye. But her words aren’t for Tristan—they’re for me.
“Oh, and Aaron, be careful. You’ve got someone feeding information to Lorenzo. Look at your project manager. The one handling the downtown build. She reports to Mortelle every week.”
My body goes still.
“Megan.” I say her name with venom. “My downtown security lead.”
Every missed meeting. Every delay. The requests for more time. Increased vacation needs. The sudden budget errors. The lack of care. I remember the bitchy neutral smile she wore at the quarterly meeting last month, and how badly I wanted to wipe it off her face.
There’s a reason I’ve always hated that bitch.
She knew everything. Where I hid her, how I touched her, the exact moment Caterina let me in. And she fed it all to the man who wants her dead.
“We let in a Trojan horse, fan-fucking-tastic.” Tristan takes the words right out of my mouth.
Cat’s fingertips dig into my forearm, her body suddenly rigid beside me. “That means she knows about the warehouse. About us and that night.”
We sit there for what feels an eternity, staring at one another before Tristan slides into the empty seat across from us. He places the flash drive between us on the surface.
“Well?” he asks.
“Keira’s telling the truth,” Cat says before I can. “The cut on her jaw? That was a Morestead blade. Patrick Doyle’s personal guards carry them.”
“She’s a target,” I add, jaw tight. “Which means her intel’s real. And she’s running out of time.”
Tristan nods, but he’s watching Cat closely. “We trust her?”
“I wouldn’t call it trust but I’ve seen what betrayal does to someone.”
Tristan pockets the drive again. “We’ll verify everything before we move.”
I’m pulling out my phone. “We need surveillance on Megan. I want every call she makes, every message she sends. And I want to be the one to end her.”
“If Lorenzo has someone inside your company,” Cat says quietly, “they could be tracking our movements, our plans. Everything.”
We’ve been exposed this entire time in front of an enemy who never stopped watching.
“Then we change the game,” I say firmly. “We feed the mole false information. Make them think we’re planning something we’re not.”
“And while they chase shadows,” Tristan says, his voice low and lethal, “we take out the real foundation from under them.”
Cat’s fingertips brush against mine, grounding me. A tether. It shouldn’t matter, but it does.
“For the first time,” she says quietly, “we have everything we need to end this.”
I flip my hand, threading our fingers together.
“Then we don’t waste it. Let them believe they’ve won. Let them watch us squirm.”
I lean forward, locking stares with both of them.
“And when the fire comes, we make sure it’s too late.”