Mae

37

We do terrible things for the people we love. Tristan and I are no different. At least I know who I'm protecting. He doesn't. He believes he wants to give his mother justice, but he wants that for himself.

It's been two hours since Tristan trusted me with the information of his mother's death, his thirst for revenge, and the one helping him to quench that thirst—the Italian Mafia.

He made me drink some fruit juice, orange was it, or apple? I don't remember. I laughed when he brought just juice when I asked for food. He doesn't want to feed me or doesn't want me to regain my strength, rather.

I used these two hours to study the room he's trapped me in. The office room. There's a plate with a knife on it on the other side of the desk. He probably ate fruits while watching me sleep. Sick bastard.

But I can't fetch it. I either need my hands free or my legs to reach it. Apart from that, the other significant thing I noticed is the huge painting hanging on the front wall. It's a regular painting, with the moon and sun colliding to form another sky. The thing that stands out is the frame. There's got to be something behind it.

The door opens behind me.

"Enough of this crap," Tristan says, throwing his phone on the desk. He grabs me by the throat, catching me off guard. "I need that pen drive. Now."

"So you've been saying." I manage the words out.

He exhales harshly, tightening his hold. "Lilith." He cocks an eyebrow. "You wanted to talk, we talked. Now give me what I want."

I glance at his other hand, at his sides, in a fist. He's holding back, still not ready to hurt me.

"If you want to bring down Wyatt, why are you so persistent on giving him back that pen drive?" I ask. "Why not use it against him?"

"Because it's not Wyatt's dirt hidden in it!" he hisses, then closes his eyes. He's furious, tempted to break his principle of never hurting me. I don't need him to spell it out who's pressuring him to do it.

"The mafia. Of course, it's their dirt." I roll my eyes, but he tightens his grip, making me look at him.

"You don't know them. And I'll pray you never know." He nods, then continues. "Now, before I regret—"

"If the information on the pen drive belongs to the mafia, why did Wyatt have it in his locker?" I ask. "And does the drug storage at the North Avenue belongs to the Mafia as well?"

His face grows hard, a thin line holding him together. He knows I'm stalling. He knows I will never willingly give up information that confidential and corrupted easily.

"Wyatt's too self-absorbed to notice shit. He doesn't know the servants working for him or the color of the room next to his in his own house." Tristan gives up, his outburst subsiding. "Wyatt doesn't know there's another locker in his house. From where you stole it. I got his entire house renovated and build the security system myself. There are many things hidden in his house he's oblivious to."

"So if his house is raided, all the stuff found will belong to him." I piece it together.

He nods, releasing my neck. He stares at me as if saying, 'anything else you want to know and divert the conversation?'

I swallow and move my head left and right to relax the muscles.

"You've got 48 hours," I repeat his words. "Though you wasted 12, you've still got 36. Plenty of time." Plenty of things to talk about.

He scoffs, putting his hands on the desk behind him. He watches me for a moment.

"What do I have to do for that pen drive?" he asks finally.

"Easy. Remove these cuffs and chains." I would have answered something else, but it's almost impossible to fool Tristan. I had to be clever. "I'll have to make some calls to tell my people to bring it."

"Do you take me for an idiot?" he asks, seeing right through my façade. "Setting you free is like inviting myself into a lion's cage."

I'm happy that he's aware of my strength.

I mask an innocent face, lowering my voice. Men fall right into my trap with this one. "Why? Are you afraid of me?"

His hair falls over his eyes as he lowers his head a little. "You would think so, wouldn't you?"

I can feel the familiar heat rising inside me. The taste of power coating my teeth. "I killed you once. I'm capable of doing it again."

"You got lucky the first time. I was unaware that the person I gave my heart to will backstab me for trying to protect her."

My jaw clenches. The vein on my temple twitching. Dreadful memories of that night flooding my mind were not what I had planned to let happen. Not when I'm around the one person who would want me dead for the same. "I didn't backstab you. You were out of control, had lost your mind—"

"But I was protecting—"

"You weren't protecting me!" I scream, bruising my wrist furthermore than it already is with the force I pull on it. "Anger that triggered the worst in you wasn't because Ethan tried to put his hands on me. You were being possessive of me." This is the thing we haven't yet talked about. And I know neither of us wants to accept the truth. "You were scared."

"I wasn't scared." He speaks almost immediately. But him rejecting the possibility of what I'm saying doesn't change the reality.

"You were scared Ethan might take away the one thing that was yours."

Tristan turns around and pushes off everything lying on the desk as far as his arms allow him. He groans and lets his head hang between his shoulders. I continue, determined to make him accept his behavior that night. "Ethan took away your father, your rightful place as an heir to the Arctic Stones. He had everything you didn't."

"Except you," Tristan says after a long pause, his voice shaking. "That day, Asher Wyatt and I had a fight. He wanted me to quit my job at his company. He said Ethan doesn't like me there."

There it was. That time, that night, I didn't know what caused him to act out his worst on Ethan, what made him murderous of Ethan.

"You saw the family photo hanging big in Wyatt's living room, didn't you?"

I nod. "I did."

So much of that night and the days leading up to it started making sense to me after seeing that photo of Wyatt, his wife, and his son. Ethan works under Wyatt—just like Stefan started. But Wyatt is too fanatical about his position and ownership of the Arctic Stones to pass it on to Ethan. He's been denying Ethan any access to real business dealings and paperwork.

Tristan turns around, his eyes puff and red.

"You weren't supposed to break me." He says.

"This conversation was long due," I say. "Among other things." Every conversation we had since yesterday came with some much emotional distress to each one of us. He broke me. I broke him. There's one more thing that will tear our hearts out if we ever recover from the damage we already did to one another to talk about it. I don't think I have the courage to bring up the subject, and I know he doesn't have it either.

He frowns, casually running his hand through his long hair. "What other things?"

***