The Moth and the Flame (When Rivals Play #2) - B.B. Reid Page 0,143

distance knew it.

“I’m impressed with you, Louchana.” The sound of Lou’s name on his tongue made me want to rip his throat out for the gall. She was too precious to even be in his presence. “Coming here to rescue him was a very brave thing—generous even—considering what he’s done to you.”

My heart dropped to my stomach. The air I was breathing suddenly felt too thick. The blood in my veins ran cold as the world around me began to crumble. I struggled against my bonds, wishing that I weren’t muzzled so I could tell Lou the truth. The truth that Fox was ready to so carelessly dump at her feet.

Not like this.

Her gaze shifted to me for the first time, and the minute she saw the plea in my eyes, she lost some of her bravado. “What are you talking about?”

Fox feigned surprise. “Didn’t our dear Wren tell you about his initiation?”

Her chest rose and fell faster now, and her voice was heavy when she answered him. “No.”

Fox nodded his understanding and began pacing. “I suppose he wouldn’t.” He looked at me then and tsk-tsked as he shook his head in admonishment. “You were orphaned five years ago, were you not?”

“How do you know that?”

He ignored her question and asked another of his own. “It was all rather sudden, wasn’t it?” Stopping in his tracks, he faced Lou again. “Would you like to know?”

Lou’s eyes narrowed as she sneered at him. “Do you really think I’ll believe anything you say?”

“No, my dear, I don’t, but I know you’ll believe him.”

Fox turned and nodded to the men holding me. My gaze was fixed on Lou, but it was Fox I addressed when the tape was ripped from my mouth. “Don’t do this.”

There wasn’t an ounce of compassion to be found in him when he said, “Tell her what you did.”

“I’d rather die,” I said with a snarl at my former boss.

“Oh, no, I won’t kill you. First, I’ll tell her what you did, and then she’ll be reunited with her parents after I have Shane here blow her brains out right in front of you. You, my dear boy, will live the rest of your life knowing she died hating you.”

Lou’s head slowly turned to me, and her eyes welled at Fox’s words. “Dead?” Her voice quaked.

“Yes, dear,” Fox confirmed, and then his head tilted as he regarded Lou. “Where did you think they were?”

Paris.

She thought her parents had run off to live there. A missing person’s report was filed, but no bodies were ever found, only two one-way tickets to Paris in Brian and Emily Valentine’s names.

“Wren, what is he talking about?”

“We’re all waiting, Wren, with bated breath,” Fox goaded. “Tell us how you single-handedly betrayed and ruined this oh-so-sweet and innocent girl.”

The remaining part of my world that hadn’t crumbled away faded to dust at that moment. Lou’s face was an expression of horror as she stared at me through unfocused eyes—as if she didn’t see me at all. As if she were playing her parents’ murder in her head. Tears flowed down her cheeks and over her trembling lips in an unending stream.

Seeing her gut-wrenching reaction to the truth, I knew it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d told her sooner. I’d done the unthinkable, the unforgivable. Lou and I were irrevocably through.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” Fox said when I couldn’t find the courage to speak, to beg. “Leave now, without Wren, and I’ll give you a two-minute head start.”

For a moment, hope flared when she didn’t immediately leave, but then that hoped died when she took one last look at me, a look full of betrayal and hatred, before turning away.

I watched as Lou slowly walked away, and my heart tore a little more with each step she took. It didn’t even come close to being the pain I deserved. When she reached the edge of the trees, she looked over her shoulder, and I drank in the sight of her one last time.

“Hey, Fox?” He turned back around at her request and frowned when she smiled. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

She flicked something with her thumb, and the two-headed coin I never knew she had landed in the grass at his feet.

Crow’s head up.

By the time Fox and I looked back toward the trees, she’d already disappeared, and the silence she left behind was heavy…tense—the calm before the storm.

In quick succession, the two men guarding me collapsed with one bullet to