Page 94 of Monk

“You can’t—” I started.

“I can. And I will.”

He leaned back, satisfied. “So. What’s it going to be, John?”

I stared at him, mind racing. He was bluffing. He had to be bluffing. But what if he wasn’t? What if refusing him meant destroying everyone I loved?

“Go fuck yourself,” I said, my voice shaking.

Roberts’ smile faded. “Wrong answer.”

The door slammed open. Lina stood in the doorway, her briefcase in hand, eyes blazing with fury. “What the fuck is going on?” she demanded.

Roberts turned, his expression shifting back to professional. “This is government business, Ms. Wilcox. You need to leave.”

“Like hell I do.” Lina strode into the room, slamming her briefcase on the table. “My client isn’t saying or agreeing to shit without his lawyer present.”

Roberts stood, hands in his pockets. “Ms. Wilcox, this is a matter of national security. You don’t have clearance?—”

“You must be Agent James Roberts.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I don’t give a fuck about your clearance. My client has a constitutional right to counsel. Unless you have a warrant or a court order, you need to stop speaking to him immediately.”

Roberts’ jaw tightened. “This is a federal investigation?—”

“I don’t care if it’s a presidential investigation,” Lina snapped. “You’re violating his rights. And if you continue, I will file a motion to suppress every word spoken in this room.”

They stared each other down, the air thick with tension.

Roberts turned to me, his voice soft and dangerous. “Does she know what you and your club did with the body? Because I do. And unless you agree to return to WITSEC, I will make damn sure the police find it.” With that, Roberts left.

Lina’s head snapped toward me, eyes wide. “Monk—what body?”

I closed my eyes.Fuck.

“What the fuck is he talking about?” she demanded.

I opened my eyes, meeting hers, and for the first time in years, I had no idea what to say.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Lina

The silence in the interrogation room was a living thing. It pressed against my eardrums, crawled over my skin, settled like cold ash in my lungs. Roberts had just dropped a bomb in the middle of the room and walked out as if he’d done nothing more than mention the weather.A body. What the club did with a body.The words kept circling, jagged and poisonous, cutting a little deeper every time they came back around.

I stared at John. He sat rigid in the chair, one wrist cuffed to the table, his jaw locked so tight the muscle fluttered under his skin. His eyes were closed, not in calm, but in retreat—as if he could shut out the room, the questions, the truth itself, if he just held still long enough. Something inside me snapped.

No. Absolutely not. I wasn’t going to let him disappear behind that hard, empty mask and leave me alone with fragments. I leaned forward and slammed my palm against the metal table. The crack split the room open. John’s eyes flew open instantly, dark and alert, and for one sharp second I saw the man underneath the silence—the one coiled tight, dangerous, cornered.

“No,” I said, my voice cutting through the room like broken glass. “You do not get to shut down on me. Not now. Not when I’m the one standing between you and a prison cell.” I leaned in farther, every nerve in my body humming hot and raw. “I need to know what the hell he meant, John. Right now.”

John held my gaze for a long, punishing beat. Then he gave the slightest shake of his head. “It’s club business,” he said. His tone was flat, stripped of emotion, which somehow made it worse. Like whatever truth sat underneath those words was too dark to touch in open air.

Rage flashed through me so fast it felt white. Blinding. Purifying. I shoved back from the table and came to my feet so violently the chair shrieked across the floor. “Club business?” I repeated, each word sharper than the last. “Clubfuckingbusiness? Fuck you, John,” I snapped. My hands were shaking now, not with fear, but with the sheer force of holding myself together. “Fuck you, your club, your rules, and whatever code you think still matters in here.” I planted both palms on the table and leaned in until my face was only inches from his. “You want me to defend you? You want me to get you out of this?” My voice dropped low, dangerous, stripped down to steel. “Then you tell me what the hell I’m walking into. Because I cannot save you from something I can’t even see.”

His jaw tightened until it looked carved from stone. He didn’t speak. Didn’t shift. Didn’t even blink. He just stared at me with those unreadable dark eyes, and for a terrifying second, I had the sickening sense that if I pushed any harder, whatever was buried under that silence might come up bloody. Then his gaze flicked upward. Just once. Quick. Precise.