Page 209 of Mile High Ruin

“It doesn’t matter. And I had no intention of waiting to discover whether the next thing she did was put that knife into you.”

Her eyes return to mine. There are tears on her face now. She doesn’t wipe them away.

“How easy would it be?”

The question is so quiet that for a second I think I misheard her.

“What?”

“To kill me.”

Something inside my chest tightens.

Sloane laughs once, but there’s nothing amused in it. “If you thought I betrayed you, if you thought I helped Petrov, if you decided I was a threat the way Camille was, how easy would it be for you to do the same thing to me?”

I should tell her never. I should say something that takes the fear out of her face. Instead, anger answers first.

“Easier than you would like to believe.”

Her expression breaks.

The regret is immediate, but I don’t take it back. Maybe cruelty is safer than hope. Maybe if she’s afraid of me, I will stop wanting things from her that I have no right to want anymore.

She looks down. A tear drops from her jaw.

I hate myself.

My hand nearly lifts, but I stop it. I can’t comfort her. Not while I don’t know whose child she’s carrying. Not while I don’t know what she did. Not while she’s still withholding my sister from me.

So I stand there and let her cry.

Eventually she wipes her face with the heel of her hand and looks toward the hospital entrance. “My brother is waiting.”

I nod. We go inside.

The hospital is too bright after the street, all polished floors and quiet voices and people moving with the exhausted efficiency of those who have forgotten what time means. Sloane knows exactly where she’s going, turning through corridors without looking at signs until we reach a ward where the air feels different.

Quieter. Heavier.

She slows outside one room. I see him through the glass before she says anything.

Ethan.

He looks younger than I expected and much sicker than the photographs in the file I reviewed months ago. There are tubes running beneath the blanket and a monitor beside him showing numbers I don’t understand well enough to like.

Sloane’s entire expression changes when she sees him. Everything she was fighting with me disappears. She opens the door and goes inside.

I stay outside. I don’t belong in that room.

She sits beside him and takes his hand.

Ethan’s eyes open after a moment. He says something, and she answers.

Then his gaze moves past her. To me.

Sloane turns.

I expect her to ignore me. Instead, Ethan says something else, and her shoulders tighten.