“May I get up and see if my father still has a pulse, or will you shoot me, too?” James snarls.
I lower the gun, feel James walk in front of me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, because I am. “It had to be done.”
It did. I am as certain of that as I have ever been of anything. So many deaths—too many deaths—because of this man. He can’t hurt us anymore.
“You’re ruined now, too.” Fia’s voice is sad, so sad. “I couldn’t save you.”
I lean my head against her shoulder. “This was my choice, Fia. I made the right choice so you didn’t have to make a wrong one. I saved you.”
“What now?” she whispers.
“I honestly have no idea.” The only future I’d seen is gone now.
“You could have stopped this,” James says, dazed and lost.
Fia leans closer to me.
“She couldn’t have,” I say. I changed everything. I took what fate had laid out for us, and I made a different choice.
“No one’s going to kill me.” Sadie’s voice is relieved and puzzled, and very, very small. James clears his throat of a strangled sob. Fia drifts in his direction, then stops, tethered by my hand.
James sounds exhausted, but there is that edge of anger to his voice, the edge that has always been there. It sounds hardened, now, baked in a fire to a razor-sharp sheen. “I wasn’t lying, Fia. We were almost there. I was so close.” He stands, his voice getting distant. I imagine him looking out the window, back turned to us all. Fia lets out a strangled, lonely sound, and I squeeze her hand tighter.
James continues. “My father killed himself. He discovered his accounts were drained almost dry, that another company had bought controlling shares in all his endeavors, and that there was a whistle-blower whose information would have sent him to prison. I’m going to find his body in here in a few minutes, along with a note.”
“We’ll be leaving, then,” I say, relieved. But it also makes me wonder—how had Fia never questioned James’s comfort level with disposing of bodies? “Come on, Sadie.”
“No, I don’t think so.” His change in tone freezes me in place. “You have powder residue on your fingers, you are on all our security footage, I have multiple witnesses putting you in the building. You leave. I never want to see you again. As far as I’m concerned from this time forward you really are dead. Sadie stays with Fia and me.”
“You can’t—”
“I can,” he snaps. “Unless you want to shoot me, too, and figure out how to get out of this mess on your own. Be my guest, Annie. Blow my brains out.”
I stutter, my mind skipping through ways around his demands, but . . . I have nothing. I have no leverage. I saved Fia for now, but I didn’t save Sadie.
“No?” James asks, mocking me. “Then get out of my building before I call security.”
“You have no money,” Fia says, sad.
“What are you talking about?” He takes a breath, then sounds kinder. “Come here, Fia. It’s okay. I’ll let Annie go. My father—I—” His voice catches and I wonder if it’s an act or if it’s real. “I didn’t want this. But it’s done, and you’re safe, and we can move on now. Everything he had is mine. We can finally move on.”
“Everything you had is mine,” she says. She moves closer to me, and I realize someone is standing on her other side. A low murmur lets me know that it’s Mae.
“I don’t understand,” James says.
“All the accounts. All the money. I hid it.”
I don’t know whether he sounds angrier or sadder. “Why would you do that?”
I feel her shoulder move in a shrug next to me. “Just felt like I should. Been doing it for months.”
“Fia.” Her name is a growl coming from deep in his throat. “I know this isn’t what you had pla
nned. And I’m sorry I let you think we were going to destroy everything and then walk away. But I can’t. We can’t. I owe it to my mother to see to her legacy. People know girls like you, like Sadie, exist now. They’re not safe. If we’re here, if we’re in control, then we are the most powerful and we can keep them safe. Together.”
“I love you. But I can’t—” Her voice changes; she’s turned her head away, toward the window. “I can’t stay. I can’t live with what you wanted me to do.” Another small shrug, like she’s trying to shake something off her shoulders. “What I would have done.”