Page 67 of Torgash

The screen blurs, and I blink hard. Shit.

"So the relationship is purely...?"

"It served its purpose."

I stop the recording.

My hands clench as I replay those last thirty seconds, listening to Nova dismiss what happened between us like it was some strategic play. Like she'd been playing a long con from the moment we met.

But that's bullshit.

I've interrogated liars, manipulators, people who've spent decades perfecting deception. Nova's good, better than most, but she's not that good. Nobody is.

The way she'd trembled when I first touched her. The catch in her breath when I said her name. The tears she'd tried to hide when she told me about Carman.

You can't fake surrender like that. Can't manufacture the kind of vulnerability she'd shown me in the dark, when she thought no one was watching.

I rewind further, listening to her voice again. Too controlled. Too practiced.

Damn. I see it now.

"You're seeing what I wanted you to see," her voice repeats from the recording.

Hell.

I slam my fist on the table hard enough to rattle the laptop.

Why would Royce risk having this conversation at all? Bastard's too careful, too paranoid to leave himself exposed like this. Unless...

Unless he thought he was safe. Because any recording of this deal would implicate Nova just as much. A sheriff caught taking bribes has no career, no credibility. The moment she tried to use this against him, she'd destroy herself too.

Royce thought he had her figured out. Thought I did too.

"He's useful. Access to their intelligence, their resources. Nothing more."

My gut twists, hearing it again, but now I see what she did. She played Royce's game, said what he wanted to hear, and let him think he'd won. All to create evidence she'd never be able to use herself.

Son of a bitch. We both got played by our own assumptions.

But I remember the weight of her in my arms after she'd broken down, the way she'd said Torgash like it was sacred instead of feared, her fingers tracing my scars while she whispered about nightmares and dead sisters and carrying grief alone.

She couldn't have faked that—wouldn't have known how.

Which means she was playing Royce, not me. Painting herself as the villain to protect us from whatever leverage he thought he had.

Clever as hell, and she'd seen his weakness from the start—arrogant bastard would underestimate a dirty cop, think she was just another piece on his board. So she became exactly what he expected while handing us everything we needed to bury him.

I drop my head into my hands as grief hits first, then respect, and fury that she thought she had to do this alone.

She didn't sell us out.

She torched her own life to save the town. To keep families in their homes. To make sure two years of fighting corruption actually meant something.

The war room door slams open. Diesel fills the doorway, eyes wild with barely controlled fury.

"Prospect's tearing himself up over missing her slip," he snarls. "Heard you sent Knox to the station with Santos."

Behind him, I can see Crow making his way in.

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