Dangerous Lies (Lies 5)

“I hate you,” he says.

I love you.

Fuck. Fuck!

He’s not supposed to love me, and I’m not supposed to love him. I don’t have a heart left to love him with, right?

Something is keeping him from saying the actual words, though, so instead of saying he loves me, he says he hates me. Maybe he senses the fear in me? Maybe he thinks I’d run if he said he loves me? Maybe he’s too stubborn to say the actual words?

Whatever it is that is preventing him from saying the words I’ll hold on to that for as long as I can. It doesn’t actually change anything, but it makes me feel like we are safe for a few more minutes.

“I hate you more,” I say back.

He smiles, knowing the truth of my words. That’s what we do—we lie.

“What are we going to do?” I ask.

“We are going to get our kids back. We are going to get the damn treasure. And we are going to kill anyone who gets in our way.”

He speaks his words as if it’s already happened, without fear. He’s not afraid of failing because it’s not a possibility. We are going to get our kids back.

I, on the other hand, am not so sure.

“Hey,” he lifts my chin as if sensing that I need comforting. “I’m not going to let anything happen to those kids—all three of them. I love them. They are mine as much as they are yours. I won’t let anyone hurt them. We are going to get them back and then never let them out of sight again. Beckett won’t be babysitting again; no one will. We’ll homeschool them, do whatever it takes to keep them safe. I’m telling you the truth, huntress. Believe every word I’m telling you.”

His lips lower, and he seals his promise to me with a kiss. Our lips touch only for a second, but with that kiss, he breathes new life into me.

“What do we do now?” I ask, my head spinning, trying to decide between getting the treasure to pay the ransom to get our kids back and going after them now before getting the treasure.

“Now, we get the crew together. We fight. We get the treasure, and we get our kids.”

The crew—he means Enzo, Kai, Zeke, Siren, Beckett.

“Do you trust them after what they did?”

He nods. “I think we’ve punished them enough. We have three kids to keep safe, being kept in three separate locations. We need their help.”

I don’t want to trust anyone, not even them. Beckett failed to keep my kids safe. The others betrayed us and manipulated us to try and get us to like each other. But we need help, and they are the closest thing to family that we have.

Langston calls for a car, and then we are headed back to the airport. We are in our private plane in record time. I should ask Langston about the treasure, about what he found out about what we have to do next. But all I can think about is my kids and about what Langston said about Atlas being sick.

I have to choose my words carefully, so he doesn’t know that I was lying. I had no idea that Atlas was sick and dying. If I did, of course, I would have done what I could to help him. Langston holding on to that little piece of hate might be the only thing that ends up saving him in the end, but I have to know what happened.

I’m lying against Langston’s chest as the plane takeoffs. “Tell me about when Atlas was sick. How did you save him?”

2

Langston

I don’t want to talk to her about Atlas being sick. Up until this point, it was the worst time of my life. I had her child, and he was dying. Terminal, the doctors said. I had to live with the fact that Liesel knew and did nothing.

But did she really know? The fear she feels about him now is real. I can’t imagine she wouldn’t have felt the same fear then if she had known. She would have tried to save him, just like I did.

Liesel lies to protect those she cares about. So why is she lying to me?

Right now isn’t the time to get the truth from her.

I can’t talk in great detail about Atlas. It will break me. Although, she deserves to hear a sliver of the truth even if she won’t give it to me, so I say a single sentence and hope she reads into it.