He shrugs. “We thought you were a Darling. We don’t normally kill them, but it’s not like we care if they die. And after what you did? You got off easy.”
“But why pretend to be someone else? A Darling, no less. You let me think you were helping me.”
“I did help you,” he says. “You went to Willow Heights, didn’t you? And of course I wasn’t going to help you take down my own family. You’re the one who made assumptions. I never said I was a Darling. I never said I wanted to take down the Dolces. You wanted it to be true, so you believed it.”
She stands there for a minute and then nods. “You’re right. I thought we were friends in some sick way, because that’s what I needed.”
“I really don’t see what you’re so upset about,” he says. “Unless you’re just pissed that you didn’t fool us all. You may have pulled one over on Royal, but you should know we always have his back. I stayed sharp because I had to, just like he did with Mabel when things went down with her. That’s the way it works. We’re a family. We look out for each other. And it’s not like I did anything to you. Yeah, I sent you into some situations to test you, like telling you to go after the Swans. I never told you to go after Royal. I never even told you to fuck him. You did that on your own.”
“You told me to fuck you,” she says. “You and Duke.”
“He did?” I ask, turning to her.
“Yeah, so what?” Baron says. “I knew you were getting in too deep with her, and I knew you’d be done with her if she fucked us. But she didn’t. She just lied about it. If anyone’s the liar here, Harper, it’s you. You lied and told Mr. D you’d fucked us, that you were a Swan. I never lied, not even as Mr. D. I just let you believe the stories you made up in your own head.”
“And what about when you told Royal that I’d told all his secrets to a stranger, probably a Darling?” Harper asks, looking annoyed now. “When you made him turn against me and give me to you and Duke to punish. How are you justifying that to yourself, Baron? It was just a joke, you never meant him to take it seriously?”
“You told a stranger about our business,” Baron says, frowning at her. “It doesn’t matter that it was me. You didn’t know that. You could have been telling anyone, and you didn’t care. You were trying to tell our enemy. You deserved what you had coming.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “No one deserves that.”
“No one deserves what you did to Royal,” Baron says. “To tell something like that… It does something to a man. To imagine that being any of us, and having you tell someone something like that about us…”
Rage and shame swell inside me, and I feel the monster stirring, pushing toward the surface, knowing he’s needed the way he is every time I think about what Harper did to me. I can never undo what I let happen to her. She’s right about no one deserving that. But Baron’s right, too.
“What do you mean, our business?” I ask.
Baron turns to me. “What?”
“You said she told someone our business. Has Dad been asking you to meet with…clients?” I can barely get the words out past the swell of the monster inside. If I did all that for nothing, I’ll fucking kill Dad. He manipulated me into doing his bidding to protect first my sister and then my brothers. If all along he was using them, too…
Baron shakes his head. “No. I have my own shit with him.”
Of course. He and Dad run the business under the candy business, the one that’s bringing Dad closer to the powerful families in New York, the way he always wanted. He may be in Arkansas, but his influence with Al Valenti has grown this year despite the distance. After all, he’s got more to offer now than he ever did before.
This isn’t about that, though.
I hate that Baron knows what I’ve done for Dad. I hate that it’s because of Harper. I don’t want anyone, not even my brothers, to know. I’ve kept other things from them, and I don’t regret it. I only regret telling King and Dad what happened when the Darlings took me. Now Harper knows that, too. Will she use that as ammunition the first chance she gets, the first time I piss her off?
I’ve spent months trying to make things right with her, and I know our crimes against each other are not equal, but she hasn’t even acknowledged hers. I just swallow it down every day like bitter poison, and know I fucking deserve worse. But it didn’t go away. It never goes away.
“Are we done with the inquisition?” Duke asks. “Because it doesn’t sound like Baron really did anything wrong, so maybe you could put the gun away and we can go home. I’m starving, and I could really use a beer.”
“Yeah,” Baron says levelly. “It’s over. I don’t see the point in this, anyway. You could have just told me you knew I was Mr. D. The worst thing I did was get a few jerk-off fantasies out of you. Hell, I got more from Preston with those videos he sent this summer. You got a fucking scholarship, Harper.”
He turns to me. “And just because you’re pissed about what we did to her, or you regret what you did, don’t forget what she did to you. She almost died this summer, and suddenly you forget everything? Come on, Royal. Death doesn’t erase her crime. Sure, I can believe she’s not a Darling if you saw a DNA test. That changes who she is, though, not what she did. Even if she’s not a Darling, she deserved punishment. We punished her accordingly. It’s over. Move on or not, but it has shit to do with me talking to her online for a few months.”
“And hey, if she’s not a Darling, you could be together,” Duke says. “Now that everyone’s done stabbing everyone else in the back, and we’re all on the same page. We’ve all paid, right? So we can go back to being friends?”
“You say that like we were friends to begin with,” Harper says.
“Aw, come on, don’t be like that,” Duke says, slinging an arm around her neck and kissing the top of her head. “We were friends. And if you’re with Royal, you’re still our friend. What do you say we go light some shit on fire down by the tracks tonight?”
Harper lets the gun hang by her side and rubs her temple with the other hand. “I have one more question for Baron. Why’d you tell us both to go to the party?”
He shrugs and starts back toward the car. “I wanted to see what would happen.”
Of course he did. Life is just one big fucking experiment to him, and one big game to Duke. I return to the Rover with them, but it all sits wrong in my gut. It didn’t go the way I wanted, the way I thought it would. I was supposed to deal with Baron, but now he’s reminded me where my loyalties should always lie—with our family. His never wavered. I’m the one who fucked up.