We kept on for five hours before we turned off onto smaller roads, and finally we turned on to a gravel road again. This place felt similar to the New York home, with the driveway that wound back into a forest of pine trees for almost a mile. Finally we pulled up to the cabin, which perched on a cliffside overlooking a lake. It was still large for my standards, but not one of the oversized mansions we’d been using. Water stretched out for what seemed like another mile around us. We were so far up, it was a little scary.
Forest packed us in, with trees that seemed to stretch as far as the water did. Miles and miles. Stepping out and stretching my legs, I took it all in. A shiver went down my spine. I couldn’t even see the roads out there, though I knew they were there. We’d just come from one.
Looking for even another house nearby, I saw nothing.
That shiver doubled, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
I wrapped my arms more tightly around myself, and Kai approached. He didn’t touch me, but he studied me, his eyebrows pulling together.
“You okay?”
Brooke got out of her vehicle, her bag close to her chest. She marched past us, glowering. “Traitor,” she hissed under her breath.
Something inside me snapped. “YOU LIED TO ME!”
I wasn’t sure who was more shocked by my outburst. I think me.
“You have no idea what you have done, what lives you have uprooted, what futures you have changed,” I told her in a fury. “No idea! Your lie had a domino effect. It brought your brother to me. It pulled me out of the life I was living, a life I loved. It brought me away from my roommates, my job, my mission in life—and it’s not even just me. Hiders from my Network were affected by your decision. My roommate was affected. You, you—since leaving my father, everything has made sense in my world. Everything. I knew right and wrong. I was good at what I did. I loved what I did, and then your brother had me brought to him, and ever since then, everything has been turned upside down. All because of you. All because of your lie!”
I started forward, ready to slap her. But I caught myself.
No one said a word. Brooke gasped and jumped in reflex, but even she didn’t speak.
They all would’ve let me hit her.
I stopped myself. I did. Not them. That clicked with me.
There was no moral compass here. They were mafia. They worked for the mafia. A slap was nothing to them, but that wasn’t true for me. Not for the little girl who cowered before her father, or the teenager who ran from him, or the adult who was defying him.
I’d been waiting, hoping to lean on others for cues about what to do or where to go. Blade had helped with that before. Carol too. My job. Even the people we hid. But it wasn’t the same here.
I was alone.
Breathing hard, my ribs feeling stretched, I lowered my hand.
But I did not apologize. I would not. It was wrong to use violence, but I wasn’t wrong to have the emotion behind it. Just like it was wrong to act on jealousy. It was an emotion just like all others. You couldn’t deny an emotion. If you did, that sucker burrowed down inside you and would work its way out whether you wanted it or not.
Am I jealous of Brooke? I asked myself.
I was.
I was jealous she had a family who loved her. I was jealous she had a family of brothers, because even though Kai was furious with her, he loved her. So did Tanner and Jonah.
My throat stung. “Words matter.” My voice was hollow, but I had to still say it. “Actions matter. To be reckless with words is to be selfish, and combine that with power, and it is dangerous. Be better.”
I walked past her. I walked past the guards around her, and I moved past the house.
There was a trail leading around the side, going into the woods.
I started down to it.
“He—”
“Leave her,” Kai spoke over the guard.
I didn’t hear whatever else he said. I had already slipped away into the trees.
• • •
A twig snapped, and I looked up.
I had walked for a mile until I came upon a large boulder. It was on the side of the trail, stuck firmly into the ground overlooking a