Page 132 of Liars

“Kaylor!”

I froze.

“Kaylor!” Kreed’s roar was desperate, frantic even.

I swallowed against the lump forming in my throat. Why was he here? After everything I’d just learned, after the truth had ripped the foundation from under me, why the hell would he come for me now? Was he here to finish what his father started? To drag me back to Donovan like the obedient son he was? Or was this just another manipulation, another move in whatever sick game their family had been playing with me?

My feet moved before I could think. I pushed open the office door, stepping out onto the platform above the warehouse below. My eyes scanned the mayhem, and then I found him.

Kreed was in the middle of it all, his chest rising and falling hard, his fists clenched, his dark eyes locked on mine the second I appeared. He was being held back by Rusty’s men, but he wasn’t fighting them—not really. He looked desperate.

His gaze swept over me, his relief almost palpable, but I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand him.

“Why are you here?” I demanded, my voice slicing through the noise.

Kreed tensed, every line of him tightening, like he was holding back a tide of words he couldn’t quite shape, but I didn’t give him the chance. My mind was already spiraling, unraveling beneath the weight of betrayal. His father had orchestrated my parents’ deaths. His family had lied to me, manipulated me, and controlled my every move.

And now,now, he wanted to act like he cared?

He wasn’t alone. He’d broughthiscrew, not his father’s, which only raised more questions. Why wasn’t Donovan here? Had Kreed gone rogue? Was this part of some last-ditch effort to keep me under his thumb?

“To save your ass,” he bit out, his voice a gruff rasp.

A hollow laugh escaped me, raw and vinegary. “You mean the way your family saved my parents?” I shouldn’t move closer. Shouldn’t go down there. Shouldn’t put myself within arm’sreach of the one person who had broken me the most. But I needed to look Kreed in the eye when I shattered the illusion he was still desperately clinging to. I needed to see his face when I told him exactly what I thought of him. “I’ve been rescued. It’s you I need to be saved from,” I said as I took the stairs slowly, my fingers gliding over the railing, my eyes locked on him like a predator sizing up prey.

His gaze tracked my every move, dark and tormented, but I didn’t let it sway me. “Kaylor, listen to me?—”

“No,” I snapped, the force of my voice shaking me. My fists clenched at my sides, and I ignored everyone in the room but him. Kreed was the one who fucked with me the most. His betrayal cut the deepest. “I don’t want to hear it.”

His jaw flexed, but the raw emotion in his eyes—God, it hurt to see it. I hated that it affected me at all. “Do you even know where you are?” he asked, his voice rough and low. “What you’ve walked into?”

I knew exactly where I was. I was standing on the edge of a war, and I was done letting Kreed pretend he was fighting on my side. “You shouldn’t be here,” I said coldly.

“I had to come,” he ground out. “For you.”

I scoffed, shaking my head. “Don’t insult me.”

“Kaylor, please. Just—let me explain.”

“Explain?” I echoed, the word slicing my throat on the way out. “What’s left to explain? That everything between us was a lie? That I was just a pawn in your father’s sick revenge? I know what you are. I know who you are. You made me believe you were protecting me.”

Pain flickered across his face like a crack in armor, but I didn’t let it pierce me.

He had his family. I had no one.

And I wasn’t about to let him break me again.

“That was before,” he defended, but I was past reason.

I snorted. “Don’t even give me that bullshit.”

Rusty moved beside me, silent but solid, a pillar of certainty in the crumbling wreckage of my life. His presence grounded me, reminding me I wasn’t alone. That I had someone.

Kreed’s eyes flicked to him, narrowing, his entire body taut with barely restrained fury. “You don’t know the whole truth. You only know his side.”

“How could you do this to me?” My voice cracked, betraying me. “Tell me it’s not true. Tell me it’s a lie.”

Kreed’s throat worked, but he hesitated. “Would you believe me?”

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