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I didn’t, but knowing Mari wouldn’t rest until she tried, I simply shrugged.
The door at the end of the hall seemed innocuous, plain even, but not knowing what lay behind it made it all the more sinister. What had our friend been through with her husband? What had he done to her besides make her fall for a lie?
I didn’t know that either, and it roiled my stomach.
“Won’t know until we try.” Mari drew in a deep breath and knocked.
No response.
After a minute, she knocked again.
Still nothing.
“Do I keep pounding on the door until she opens up, or do I give her space?”
Mari sagged against me, and I tucked her into my chest. When she hurt, I hurt, and she was fucking hurting. “I can’t answer that, reina.” I ran a hand over her hair, loving how she leaned into the comfort—if only for a minute before steeling her spine.
“We’ll keep checking on her. Text Moore and Tennessee. We need them to keep an eye out. Have them let me know when she comes back, if she’s left at all.”
Nodding, I steered her to the elevator with one hand and relayed the message with the other while we rode down in silence.
With one step out of the doors, cold air seeped into us from the underground basement. Part of me wanted to grab a jacket for Mari, and the other embraced it, knowing we wouldn’t be cold for long. Interrogating warmed the body fast, even if I wasn’t the one doing it.
In the time it had taken us to run our errand, Nate and Dominic had strung Cameron up, suspending him with chains wrapped around one of the ceiling’s steel beams. His legs barely held him, and the grimace of pain told me he was still suffering from the injuries he’d sustained in the fire.
Now that I thought about it, had the fire been part of the plan all along to throw us off the scent, or had Cash gone off book? Thinking back, I recalled Cameron had been enraged at the situation. He’d nearly died—his wife had nearly died—but knowing that Ash’s safety was more for his image than anything else, I could see how the rage had been manufactured in places. I was nearly feral at the idea of Mari getting caught in that fire.
Dominic, Nate, and I took our places behind Mari. This was her show; we were just the silent supporters.
The two cousins silently watched each other. I wondered what Mari saw when she looked at her cousin’s face. Was it the boy she’d grown up with—or the man who’d betrayed her? Maybe she was one of the unlucky ones, and it was both. How would she handle the punishment in that case?
A glance at Nate and Dominic showed the same worries on their faces, but before I could sink too far into the concern, Mari spoke. “I figured it out, you know.”
Cameron just watched her. He didn’t fight the chains or try to defend himself. He knew he’d been caught. He knew it was over. When Mari took the knife Nate handed her, Cameron didn’t even flinch.
She stepped up, slicing the shirt off his chest with careful motions as she talked. “I had Moore look into your comings and goings over the last year, though I’m sure it was longer. Honestly, I’m surprised I missed the signs, but when we knew what to look for, we found everything I needed. Going out late, sneaking around, showing up places you shouldn’t have been. Not to mention all the fuckups that made things difficult. The people trying to rob Gilded—hell, even the raid on the club—was your doing. You scanned your ID card less than an hour before the cops showed up and slipped out the back before anyone noticed.”
Her fingers clenched with anger, and I wondered if she was fighting the urge to hit him. Shara had been in jail, in danger, because of him. That rankled Mari. Her pride was tightly tethered to keeping her people safe, and he’d preyed on that.
The first swipe of the knife was shallow, barely enough to draw blood, but paper cuts always stung something fierce, didn’t they? Cameron still didn’t react, and I saw how much it pissed her off in the tension of her shoulders.
“Mari.” I wasn’t going to let her cousin goad her into killing him.
She was too far gone to listen, though.
She swiped again, this time cutting deep enough for rivulets of blood to leak down his chest. Cameron’s only reaction was a soft hiss.
“All those nights you said you were following your father, you were really meeting Cash. Nate said the compound was one big party. It’s always easier to get people to agree with you when they’re drunk and high, living the good life, right?”
Another swipe, this one from hip to hip. She was close enough to his pelvis that he tensed automatically, but he still didn’t respond, and I felt Mari’s satisfaction like my own.
“Joaquin was a good scapegoat,” she admitted, and for the first time, a flicker of something flashed on Cameron’s face.
Guilt.
He felt guilty that his father had died in his place. It was almost gratifying to know he wasn’t a robot. I knew Mari felt the same on some level, but even if she hadn’t killed Joaquin for supposedly working for Cash, he would have died eventually. Mari wouldn’t have been safe as long as he was alive, but it would take her time to see that side of things. She would, though. We’d make sure of it.
Tapping the knife on her leg, she paced. “What I keep racking my brain trying to figure out is what you possibly could have wanted that I didn’t give you. You had power, prestige, and more money than God. Beyond that, you had the ear of the queen of this city, and you had a beautiful, kind wife who loved you. Yet you went behind my back. For what? What was so damn important that you had to throw away thirty years of memories and every ounce of trust I’ve ever given you?”
