Page 102 of Ricochet
Here we go, my time to play.
"I don't know what you're talking about." I smiled.
"Don't play dumb, Ophelia. We both know you aren't stupid. You know very well which night I’m talking about."
"Hmmm." I pretended to think about it. "No, not really. Enlighten me please."
"Stop playing, Phee."
Oh wouldn't you love that?
"I am not playing, my dear brother. I just don't know which night you’re talking about."
"You know." He seemed uncomfortable. "The night."
"Ohhh, the night. You mean the night you betrayed me and decided money was more important than your own flesh and blood. When you decided killing my best friend and framing me was the way to go. Now I remember. How could I ever forget?"
How could I ever forget that he was the one who set me up? How could I ever forget being chained to the wall after Cillian and Tristan found me, cutting me bit by bit, letting me bleed out?
"I didn't kill her. I never even touched her."
"Oh really?" I stood in front of him, and leaned on the chair, my hands on the armrests. "I don't fucking believe you."
"I'm telling the truth. I swear."
"Well, excuse me, because I find that hard to believe."
"Look." He tugged at his tie. "I don't care what you believe or not. I need you to keep your mouth shut about my involvement there."
"And why would I ever do that?"
Not that I would ever use it for my personal gain. The Nightingales didn't believe it even after I repeatedly told them it wasn't me. So why bother now, when all I had left were bitter memories and a lifetime of regrets.
Besides, his downfall would be caused by me, and nobody else. I would be his personal executioner.
"Because if you ever say anything, I would make sure that Maya gets something worse than what she is getting now."
"Are you threatening me, Theo?"
He was fucking threatening me, when he knew how much I wanted to find our sister. Our father was tight-lipped about her whereabouts, always saying she deserved it. And if our father thought you deserved something and it wasn’t death, it was a fate worse than anything I would ever put upon my worst enemy.
Wherever she was, it started with Kieran and his father, and no matter how much I tried, nobody knew where she was. Or they didn't want to tell me.
"I am just stating facts."
"No." I sat on the bed, getting away from him. "I think you're threatening me."
"Me?" He seemed offended. "I would never—”
"Cut the bullshit, Theo. You can remove the mask you are so diligently wearing on a daily basis. Or are you forgetting that I know what kind of scum you really are?"
The fake innocence with which he came with disappeared altogether, and I finally saw him for what he really was.
A fucking traitor.
That leering look on his face used to be directed at me so many times, I sometimes forgot how it felt having him look at me in any other way. As soon as I got initiated and started doing the jobs assigned by Syndicate, my brother changed.
He was always an asshole, but he never went out of his way to make me feel worthless. When our father started preferring my company over his, all niceties flew out the window. He became a person I couldn't trust, and I was young, thinking my brother would never betray me like that.
