Page 80 of Ruin
If Zhukov's people are approaching Judge Hart, they're doing the same thing they've been doing everywhere: mapping Cassius's network, identifying pressure points, finding the cracks they can exploit.
Judge Hart took me in after my parents died.
Judge Hart is connected to the Deveraux case.
And Emilia, sitting across from me in a sundress, talking about her father's strange behavior over bottomless mimosas, doesn't know that she's become a node on a very dangerous map.
I look at her. Really look. The blonde bob. The blue eyes. The freckle on her left cheekbone that she's had since we were teenagers. The engagement ring from Tyler that she keeps twisting on her finger because it's still new enough to feel foreign.
She is completely, devastatingly unprotected.
"Em." The word comes out before I can filter it. "If anything weird happens, if anyone approaches you or shows up at your apartment, if your Dad gets more rattled, will you tell me? Right away?"
She blinks. "What? Why would someone?—"
"Just promise me."
Something in my tone makes her face change.
The lightness drains out of it and she looks at me the way she looked at me the night I showed up at her door at sixteen years old, soaked in rain and shaking, after the police told me my parents were dead.
"Sel. You're scaring me."
"I'm not trying to scare you. I just..." I take a breath. Steady. Control it. "The world is weird right now. I want to know you're okay. That's all."
She watches me for a long time.
I can see her making decisions behind those blue eyes, weighing the instinct to push against the history of trusting me, trying to find the shape of whatever I'm not saying.
"I promise," she says finally. "But you have to promise me something, too."
"What?"
"Whatever's going on with you, whatever this 'work stuff' is that's eating you alive, you'll come to me when you're ready. You won't disappear. You won't shut me out."
I hold her gaze and lie to my best friend for the last time.
"I promise."
I hugher goodbye in front of the restaurant, and I hold on longer than I should.
She laughs against my shoulder and says, "Okay, weirdo, it's brunch, not a funeral," and the word funeral lands like a stone in my chest.
"Love you, Em."
"Love you, too. Next Saturday. Same place. Non-negotiable."
I watch her walk to her car, that small blonde figure in a sundress, waving once over her shoulder before she disappears behind a white Prius.
I memorize the wave. The way her bob swings when she turns. The flash of her engagement ring in the sun.
I memorize all of it because some part of me knows this is ending.
Not today, maybe not next week, but the distance between my world and hers is growing by the hour, and eventually the gap will be too wide for brunch to bridge.
The drive back to my apartment takes twelve minutes.
I spend all twelve with both hands on the wheel, jaw clenched, running scenarios I don't want to run.
