King doesn’t lose his temper like I do. Even when he’d jump into a fight to have my back, he did it in a more calculated way, like Baron. But unlike Baron, there’s rage simmering beneath his cool surface when he looks at me now.
“It’s just fucking,” I say. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It fucks with your head,” he says.
We’ve never talked about this. We all knew King did it for Dad. He was the one sent to seduce the women because he’s the perfect candidate. He’s smooth and charming when he needs to be, detached when he’s finished a job. He’s not a loose cannon like Duke or a sadist like Baron or a ticking time bomb like me. Dad loves to remind me how much better at it King always was.
But maybe he’s the perfect man for the job because he was groomed to fill the role, trained to do a job until he did it flawlessly.
“You seem to be doing okay,” I say finally. “You have a wife and a son.”
“You’re doing better, too,” he says. “You have Harper.”
We stand for a minute in silence. “Yeah,” I say at last, turning to close Crystal’s door. “Until I kill her, too.”
“Why would you do that?”
I shrug. “Probably by accident. I do that to girls.”
“You didn’t kill Crystal.”
We never say her name. It’s the unspoken truth in every room I walk into, the weight of my presence at every family dinner. I’m the reason she’s not here. I’m the reason Ma doesn’t have a daughter and had to erase the evidence from the room.
King’s watching me intently, but this time, I can’t meet his gaze. I just shake my head, glaring at the end of the hall. I only speak of her to Harper.
“You’re the only one who believes that,” King says at last.
“Don’t treat me like a fucking child,” I snap. “Everyone knows I did.”
“No one thinks it’s your fault except you.”
“It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks,” I say. “If I held her under water and drowned her when no one else was there to see it, I still killed her.”
“But you didn’t do that.”
“I might as well have.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I did the equivalent.”
“You didn’t.”
I stare him down, pulling myself to my full height so I’m looking down at him. He doesn’t even blink.
“I told her she was dead to me,” I say slowly. “And now she is.”
“I got myself shot,” he says. “I was the one in charge of protecting her, and I didn’t. I didn’t get her back in the car before we left.”
I just blink at him, probably looking as stupid as his words sound. “I left her there,” I point out.
“I let you leave her there.”
“I told her she wasn’t a Dolce anymore.”
“I sat in the car like a pussy and didn’t protect any of you.”
“You had a bullet in you.”