Page 40 of Gatsby's Starlet
I exhaled, frustration and fear tangling together until I didn’t know which one I was feeling more. “This isn’t going to end the way you think it is,” I said, my voice tighter now. “Men like him don’t just let people go. You’re not safe with him.”
Her jaw tightened. “I’m safer with him than I am against him.”
“That’s not safety,” I said. “That’s control.”
She didn’t argue that.
“Evie,” she said, softer now, like she was trying something different, “you just need to do this one thing. Come with me tomorrow. Let him talk to you. That’s it.”
“That’s it?” I repeated, disbelief creeping in. “You really think that’s all he wants?”
Her silence answered for her.
I felt something snap. “You’re playing with something you don’t understand,” I said, the words sharper than I meant them to be, slipping out before I could stop them, carrying more than I had planned to reveal. “You have no idea what he’ll do if he finds out—”
“Finds out what?” she demanded.
And that was where it broke. That single second where I should have stopped, should have swallowed it down and stayed quiet, but I didn’t.
“If he finds out Zeynep is alive—”
The words hit between us like a bomb.
Ruby froze completely, her face going blank for half a second as if her mind hadn’t caught up yet. “What did you just say?”
I felt it then, the mistake, fast and immediate, settling in my chest before I could push it away. “Nothing,” I said quickly, too quickly. “I didn’t mean—”
“Evie.”
My name came out low, dangerous in a way I had never heard from her before, and it stopped me just as effectively as if she’d grabbed me.
“Zeynep is dead.”
“No,” I said, because there was no pulling it back now, no softening it into something safer. “She’s not.”
Ruby stared at me, searching my face like she could force the truth out of it, like she could decide whether or not to believe me just by looking hard enough. “That’s not possible,” she said, but there was a crack in it now, something breaking beneath the certainty. “Drago—he—”
“He thinks she is,” I said, quieter now but unwavering, the words landing with a weight I couldn’t take back. “But she’s alive, and she’s with a man named Mystic. I met them both when Gatsby took me to the clubhouse.”
Silence settled over us then, heavy, breathing, and I saw the exact moment it hit her, the shift in her expression as doubt gave way to understanding.
To fear.
Her hand came up to cover her mouth for a second before she dropped it again, shaking her head like she could undo what she’d just heard. “No,” she whispered, the word unraveling as it left her. “No, no, no… he can’t know that.”
“I know,” I said, stepping closer, trying to anchor her before she slipped too far into it. “That’s why you need to get out of this, Ruby. Before this gets worse.”
She grabbed my arm suddenly, her grip tight enough to hurt, her fingers digging in like she needed something solid to hold onto. “You cannot tell him.”
“I’m not going to—”
“You cannot tell anyone,” she pressed, her voice turning urgent now, panicked in a way I had never seen from her before. “Do you understand me? If he finds out she’s alive—”
She didn’t finish it.
I nodded slowly. “I know.”
Her grip tightened once more before she finally let go, stepping back like she needed space to think, to breathe, to pull herself back together. “You don’t say her name,” she said, quieter now but no less serious. “Not to him. Not to anyone connected to him. You don’t even hint at it.”
