Page 196 of Wicked Brutal

Kaiden’s voice is quiet. “You good?”

“Yeah.” I look across the courtyard. Ally is still there. Still safe. Still pregnant. Still mine even when I can’t sit beside her. “Yeah,” I say again. “For right now, I fucking am.”

I look down at my phone. Back to the other fucking nightmare. Arthur sent me another batch before first period. Old society pages. Archived photographs. Foundation records. Event programs. Anything his people could find on Victor’s dead wives that might tell us something the clean timelines don’t. So far, it’s mostly told me rich people take a lot of pictures.

“I’m still getting nowhere with Marianne.” Kaiden looks over. “Nothing useful. She’s everywhere before the wedding. Still everywhere right after. Then it starts thinning out.”

“How fast?” Xander asks.

“Slow. Couple years.”

Penny holds out her hand. “Let me see.”

I pass her the phone. She scrolls through the folder. Hospital benefit. Political fundraiser. Whitmore. Foundation dinner. Marianne beside Victor in nearly every one.

Penny stops. “Whitmore. The spring benefit?”

Iz looks over. “The one where Danny and X got caught smoking behind the conservatory?”

Xander looks at him. “We didn’t get caught.”

Penny laughs. “Your mom saw you guys.”

Iz stares at her. “For four fucking years you’ve had this information?”

“I didn’t realize it was important.”

Penny pats Iz’s arm. “Darla knew too.” “My dad worked Whitmore that year,” she says.

Kaiden nods. “My mom was on the education committee.”

Xander looks at Kaiden. “Was that the roof night?”

Kaiden immediately grins.

Cat looks between them. “What roof night?”

“No roof night,” Kaiden says.

I laugh. “You spent half the benefit trying to convince me we could jump off the conservatory roof into the pool.”

“We could’ve. The pool was heated.”

Cat stares at him. “You wanted to jump off a roof?”

“I was fourteen.”

She considers that. “Actually, yeah. That tracks.”

I take my phone back. For a second, it’s just another old event. One of a hundred. Our parents dressed up. Us dressed up. Adults drinking and talking about shit we didn’t care about while we found increasingly creative ways to disappear.

Then I look at the photograph again. Actually look. Marianne’s smiling. Victor’s beside her. His hand rests against the small of her back. My thumb stops.

Kaiden catches it. “What?”

“She marries him. Keeps showing up. Then less. Then barely at all.”

Cat looks at the pictures. “So what changed?”