“You wouldn’t have found her. He didn’t have the information to give to you, Sloane.”

“That’s bullshit! I went into that office. I found Eli sitting there with a goddamn letter opener sticking out of his chest. And I found the file he had on Alexis! It was right there in his filing cabinet, except you’d taken all of the information out of it! Why! Why did you do that?”

I’m doing my best here, but I don’t have a great track record with anger management. Only what they taught me in prison, and that didn’t ever really help. Fuck it, though. She wants to rehash this? We can rehash this.

“The file didn’t have anything about Alexis in it, Sloane. It was all you. Eli had all your personal details in there. He had photos of you at work, in your car. At home.” I let that last part linger between us for a moment, letting all the connotations develop in her mind. Her eyes are bright and shining, but the information seems to have taken her aback.

“Me? What do you mean, photos of me at home?”

“I mean photos of you in the shower, in bed, walking around naked. He had video files of you fucking touching yourself, Sloane.”

“What?” Her voice is a whisper. The horror on her face…

Fuck.

“I went in there to get Alexis’ information for you, but Eli laughed about it. He said he knew your sister was living in LA but he had no clue where. He’d just heard on the grapevine that a dark haired girl had been taken by bikers and she was working for them now. He wasn’t even gonna tell you that much, though, okay? He was gonna feed you some shitty line that would end up being a dead-end lead, and you would have had to go back to him again for more information. And guess fucking what? You weren’t gonna be a virgin anymore, so you were gonna have to fuck three guys to get that fake piece of info. And on and on it would have gone. Round and round we go. And then I saw the other files on the other girls he had in his office. Did you bother looking in those?”

“Yes! I—” She stops, though. All her furious energy has waned away; she’s staring at the floor, tears trembling on the tips of her eyelashes, while her brain works overtime. “I saw them. I looked through a few. They were all…” She swallows hard. “They were all normal. Regular cases. Adulterers and broken bail bonds.”

It’s my turn to shake my head now. “No, you didn’t see the files. Because I took them, too. I took them all. He was doing the same thing to at least twelve other women, and he was pulling the strings on each and every one of them. I destroyed the photos, the thumb drives, the disc everything. And then you’re right—I did kill Eli. I killed him because he stabbed me first. Here. You want fucking proof?” I tear my shirt over my head, twisting so she can see the two inches of narrow scar tissue where Eli Horowitz stuck me in the side with his stupid fucking letter opener. I mean what kind of P.I. doesn’t have a proper fucking knife? Or a gun, come to think of it?

“Zeth…” She’s reaching out, her fingertips shaking, but she doesn’t touch my skin. By the look on her face, she’s scared. Scared shitless. She jerks her head in a small motion of denial. “You had those scars before. In the hotel. I felt them.”

“I had these scars, sure.” I point to the four jagged marks across my torso, the ones I earned myself back in New York and while I was in Chino. “But this…this was after. After I saw you at the hotel.”

“Oh my God.” Sloane steps backward, once, twice and then the backs of her legs hit the bed. Her ass hits the mattress hard as she sits down. “I had no idea.” She covers her mouth with her hands, breathing noisily through her fingers.

“And in response to your earlier question, Sloane. I am clean. I’ve only ever slept with you without using protection. I figured it was safe with you since I’m the only guy you’ve been with. But still. I needed a good STD accusation to finish off my day nicely. So fuck you very much.”

I want to leave. I want to storm out of the room and slam the door so fucking hard it smashes off its hinges. I’ve been walking out a lot recently, though, and we can’t afford to keep yelling at each other in Julio’s villa. The guy’s gonna kill me sooner rather than later if we keep ruining his peace and quiet. Instead, I turn my back on her, digging the heels of my palms into my eyes, trying to breathe through it all. To try and pull myself back from the brink of all out war with her. This is why fucking and leaving has always worked so well in the past. If you don’t stick around for shit to get awkward, you never have to go through this bullshit. I had a good system. I should go back to—

I go rigid when I feel her hand touch my back.

“Why did you do all of that?” she whispers.

“Which part? Protect your modesty, or prevent you from being used by a scumbag asshole?”

“All of it. Why did you even intervene in the first place? How did you know Eli was…was selling me?”

It’s easier to answer these questions with my back to her. Easier but not easy. I don’t know if…I don’t think I can answer her properly. Not really. I do my best.

“My uncle Carl.” That’s how I begin. That’s how a lot of the stories in my life have begun. With him. “When my parents died, my uncle Carl took me on. He was a piece of shit, and he used to beat me. He wasn’t all that bad, though. He’d wait long enough for me to heal from the last one before laying into me again. And he hardly ever broke bones. That was a small mercy, I guess. Things got real bad when I was about eight. He started drinking more. Whatever. So I learned how to distance myself from it all. For me, Carl was like a festering wound that refused to fucking heal, and yet I somehow managed to turn off the nerve endings. I managed to not feel any of it anymore. I shut myself down and suddenly I could handle everything that was happening to me.