Page 48 of Power
I close my eyes briefly, jaw locking. I set the phone down, then stare at nothing. “She was supposed to betray me.”
Silence. Rafa curses under his breath. “You sure?”
I push the phone across the desk. He picks it up, reads, and I watch as the realization hits him.
“Damn.” He shakes his head. “That’s a hell of a twist.”
I didn’t see it coming.
And yet, I should have.
The pieces fit too well. The questions she asked, the way she moved through my house, her curiosity about things she had no business knowing. I wanted to believe it was desperation, that she was just trying to survive, but this? This is something else.
Betrayal isn’t new to me. I was raised in it, shaped by it, taught from a young age that trust is just another weakness waiting to be exploited. But for some reason, this one cuts differently.
I stand abruptly and push away from my desk.
Rafa says, watching me carefully. “Why do I feel like you’re gonna break something? Probably her neck.”
“Get her for me.”
Rafa hesitates. “Dario—”
“Now.”
He doesn’t argue. He never does.
Minutes later, she stands in the center of my office with hands clenched at her sides. She looks at me, then at her phone still on my desk. Smart girl. She knows.
I pick up the device and hold it up between us. “You want to explain this?”
She doesn’t answer right away but also doesn’t deny it. And that tells me more than words ever could.
“Dario, I—”
I move before she can finish, closing the space between us in a second. My hand grips her throat, not tight enough to cut off her breath, but enough to make sure she knows exactly how close she is to getting her life snuffed out of her.
“Do not lie to me.” My voice is calm and controlled, but my blood is anything but. It’s boiling. “You were working with him. You planned to betray me.”
Her breath shudders out, her chest rising sharply beneath my grip. “At first, yes. That was the plan.”
The admission still knocks the breath from my lungs even when I already knew the answer.
She swallows against my hand. “But it changed. I fell—”
“No.” My fingers flex, tightening even more.
Her expression twists. “Dario. You think this was easy for me? You think I wanted any of this?”
“I think you made a choice.”
She shakes her head and digs her nails into my wrist, but she doesn’t fight me off. “You don’t understand.”
“Then make me understand.”
She hesitates. And that’s the worst part. If there was something—anything—she could say to make this right, she’d have said it by now.
The stillness in the room hums, louder than any sound.
