23. Mira

23

MIRA

"I'm going to be honest: I don't fully know why I'm here." Taylor adjusts her smartwatch on her wrist and tightens her ponytail. "Am I acting in a bodyguard capacity or is this more for moral support?"

" Evan is the bodyguard." I hitch a thumb to where Evan's hulking shadow can be seen through the frosted glass. " You're here because you came to pick me up for pre-kickboxing coffee even after I told you I had other plans."

Truth be told, I knew Taylor didn't hear me tell her I had other plans. She was prattling on the phone about picking me up and grabbing lattes, and I realized all at once that I didn't want to go see Hollis by myself. So I let her organize picking me up at the condo, knowing full well oat milk lattes were not in our future.

Sue me.

We are at an attorney's office, after all.

I told Zane I wasn't ready to make any decisions about how to handle the PR nightmare that is my bloody past, but he told me I should at least go and figure out my options. I agreed, but only because he was supposed to come with me. But that was before he got checked in the game last night, and I begged him not to rush home on the first flight to Phoenix.

Head injuries + overnight flights = bad news, I texted. I'd rather have you alive tomorrow than dead tonight.

After a lot of back and forth, he finally agreed to sleep in Jace's hotel room—on the condition Jace would wake him up every few hours—and fly home with the team today.

Which means I had a vacancy in the "moral support" department.

Taylor swirls the collection of fountain pens in the cup Hollis has on the corner of his desk. "So, what does this guy think he can do for you? My dad has good lawyers, you know. If you want help, I can get it for you."

"I don't even know if I want help. I'm just here to talk. Or, listen, I guess." I sigh. "I want to hear what he thinks."

Taylor hums, unconvinced. "This guy is a sports agent, right?"

"And a former attorney." Hollis pushes through his office door with a smile. "I don't practice much anymore. This consultation is a favor for my favorite client."

I jump to my feet, but Taylor just juts her hip out defiantly. "How do we know we can trust you? This is a big secret my bestie is carting around. You could destroy her if you wanted to."

"Taylor!" I hiss.

"What?" she shrugs. "I'm looking out for you. I don't know this guy. Neither do you. If you'd asked me for help, I could've given you the number of an attorney I trust."

I never quite know what to expect from Taylor, but her getting territorial over where I go for legal help wasn't on my bingo card.

Hollis doesn't flinch. "At this exact moment, I have no less than fourteen pieces of information with the power to blow up headlines the world over. But it's my job to make sure that doesn't happen. If confidential information leaks out of this office, I'm out of a job. It's something I work hard to avoid."

Taylor narrows her eyes for a second and then nods once. "Okay, Mimi. You can trust him."

"Yeah, I know." I brush her aside and shake Hollis's hand. "I'm sorry. She's just here because—actually, I don't know why she's here."

"Then maybe she'd be more comfortable waiting in the lobby." It's a suggestion, but it's really not a suggestion at the same time.

Taylor looks at me, silently confirming that's fine before she slips into the hallway with Evan.

"Sorry," Hollis says, softening immediately. "I prefer one-on-one consultations. I like to control the ears in any room. If there's a leak, I want to know who is responsible. Because I know it won't be me."

"That makes sense." I fold my hands between my thighs. "I don't really know where to start."

"How about the beginning? I've gotten your story secondhand, but I'd like to hear it from the source to keep things clean."

"Okay."

I don't know why I'm shaking. You'd think by this point I'd be used to telling my horror story to people. I went from not telling anyone for the first twenty-six years of my life to telling a new person every couple of days. It should be easier by now.

Spoiler: it isn't.

I offer Hollis the same shortened version of events I gave our friends the night they came to Zane's condo, but it's still a very fresh Band-Aid I'm ripping off here.

When tears pool in my eyes, Hollis slides a box of tissues my way, and then waves for me to continue.

At the end, he doesn't offer apologies or condolences. He just leans forward and steeples his hands in front of him. "You have two options, as I see them. You can either pretend Katerina Costa ceased to exist the day your dad died and hope you never get caught. Or you can turn yourself in."

His options are a one-two punch to the chest. It takes me a few seconds to remember how to breathe. "Those aren't—I thought you were supposed to give me options. New options."

Zane made it sound like there might be a way out of this mess for me. The dark, cynical parts of me didn't believe him. But the soft, mushy parts of me that melt against him in the night and pinch his ass while he makes our morning coffee grabbed onto that little bit of hope.

Now, it's being yanked away.

"Sorry; let me explain." Hollis plucks a pen out of the cup on his desk and sweeps a clean piece of paper in front of him. He draws two circles on the page. "You have two options. No matter what happens from this point forward, you either tell people you killed your father or you don't. Those are the big picture options, but—" He draws lines coming out from each circle in every direction like rays of sunlight. "—each option comes with an array of smaller options."

I frown down at his drawing. Maybe Taylor had a point. This guy might be a quack. "Okay, so I confess that I killed my dad and they, what, let me pick my jumpsuit color?"

"It's about the tone." He points a finger at me. "For instance, you could have folded your hands demurely in your lap and requested that I explain what those options would look like. Instead, you scowled and hit me with sarcasm."

I wince. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize." He waves me off, completely unbothered. "The only thing that matters to me is making sure I get the best possible outcome for you. So, in the case of confessing that you killed your father, you have the option of showing deep remorse for your actions, but explaining that you had to do it to save your life. Or you tremble and shake and look as scared now as the day it all happened, which would garner you some sympathy, especially with the battered women crowd."

I can't hide my grimace. "So we're manipulating people?"

"No, you're selling them your version of the truth," he corrects. "If you hit people with nothing but the facts, they'll assume the worst. If you want the truth to go down easy, you have to flavor it with some emotion. You have to give them a hero and a villain—someone to root for."

I look at the pen-drawn rays coming off of the sun and wonder how many of those options end with me in a jumpsuit I may or may not get to choose the color of. "You think I could be someone to root for?"

Hollis smirks. "By the time I'm done with you, they won't have a choice."

Zane calls me thirty seconds after I walk out of my meeting with Hollis. "How did it go?"

I'm not sure who has been sending Zane second-by-second updates, Evan or Hollis, but I don't even care. My head is spinning and Taylor abandoned me to caffeinate. I need someone to talk to.

"Well, he laid out my options."

"Was he an asshole about it?" Zane asks. "I should've been there with you. Hollis can be like that, but he knows what he's doing. I told him not to overwhelm you at the first meeting."

"He didn't. Well, he did. But it isn't his fault; I think I'm just easily overwhelmed right now." I blow out a breath. "He thinks I need more evidence of my abuse."

"What the fuck does that mean?" Zane snaps. "You have evidence. The P.I. found all of those hospital records. What does he want, video footage and a play-by-play commentary?"

I shudder at the thought. "He said the hospital records are a good start, but it might not be enough to prove that my life was in danger, which is what we need to do to prove that I was acting in self-defense."

"Okay, okay…" Zane's voice trails off. "What about character witnesses? That kind of thing matters in a trial. There are so many people who would get on the stand for you. We'll prove that you aren't violent or a threat. I'll get up there and tell everyone that I've seen how scared you are of your brother and?—"

"No!" I say it loudly enough that Evan catches my eye in the rearview mirror. I give him an apologetic smile and lower my voice. "I appreciate that, Zane. Obviously. The fact that you'd do that for me?—"

"I'd do anything for you," he growls.

My chest tightens. That's the problem.

"If I decide to do this, there's a chance it doesn't go well, and I don't want to take anyone else down with me."

"I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

"But you might have to," I argue. "Because you have Aiden to think about. If they charge me with murder and find out you knew about it, you could be charged with aiding and abetting. Hollis said as much."

Zane is so quiet I think the call might have dropped. When he does speak, his voice is soft. "That isn't going to happen, Mira."

I wish I had the luxury of being that optimistic.

"But if it does, I need you to be prepared to tell the police you didn't know a thing about it. You need to tell them that… that you had no idea who I was—no idea what I'd done." I hate that my voice wavers, because I mean every single word. "I don't want Aiden to lose both of us."

"It's not going to happen."

"But if it?—"

"But if it does," he cuts in with a weary sigh, "I'll do what's best for Aiden. I swear."

The weight on my chest eases a bit. I feel like I can breathe. "Thank you."

"When are you coming home? I want to see you."

"Are you at the apartment already?" I check the time on the dash. "Did your flight get in early?"

"Jace and I flew in a few hours ahead of the team. Like I said, I wanted to see you."

There's a promise in his voice that zips straight to the core of me. I have half a mind to tell Evan to turn the car around and take me home.

I groan. "I want to, but I thought you wouldn't be back until this afternoon. Taylor and I signed up for a kickboxing class in fifteen minutes."

"Go ahead. Take the class. But when it's over… come straight home to me."

The woman behind the front desk gives me a tight smile when I walk in. I guess she isn't used to members having their bodyguard sweep the gym for threats before they can enter.

To be fair, I'm still not used to it, either.

I can't help but feel like walking around with Evan puts a bigger target on my back than if I pulled the incognito celebrity move and wore a baseball cap and sunglasses everywhere I go.

I scan the front lobby and the juice bar at the back, but I don't see Taylor yet, so I head to the locker rooms.

As much as I want to get out of here and get home to Zane, I also need to burn off some of the anxious energy buzzing through me.

I don't know why the meeting with Hollis has me so on edge. He told me I shouldn't even consider turning myself in until things with Dante are resolved.

"The way you describe him, I don't think your brother will be on your side," Hollis said. "So, it'd be best to wait until that situation is handled before you start a new one, if you know what I mean."

Maybe that's my problem: I didn't know what he meant. I still don't.

How do I handle things with Dante? What will it look like when that situation is resolved ?

Is it when I sit down with him over coffees and we work out all of our issues?

Or maybe when he's dead?

One of those things is never going to happen, and the other is something I'd like to avoid at all costs. One body buried in my figurative backyard is more than enough.

I punch in the code to the locker room and try to shake off my bad juju at the door. Aside from being with Zane and Aiden, kickboxing is one of the only things that can turn my brain off. I can come here and pretend I'm just like the stay-at-home moms here for the free daycare or the influencers taking mirror selfies. I can be normal. I don't want to ruin it by bringing my emotional carry-on with me.

The locker room is humid and smells like the complimentary seabreeze shampoo they keep in the showers, but I don't hear any movement. The tile walls echo every tiny sound, so it's easy to know if you're alone. Yet another reason I like being here.

I pull out my phone and text Taylor. You're going to be late.

One minute away , she responds immediately.

Yeah, right. She'd text that whether she was actually one minute away or still standing in line at the coffee shop.

I'm going to tell Jordan where you've been. She'll be so disappointed.

The three dots appear and then: Snitches get stitches, Mimi.

Jordan is the only trainer at the gym that Taylor hasn't been able to woo into post-class protein shakes at the bar. Taylor has a weird obsession with proving that she's every trainer's favorite client. Something about paying for their time bothers her, but that's for Taylor and her therapist to work through. The fact remains that Jordan is intense about punctuality and thinks caffeine is an addictive drug. Taylor is definitely not her favorite client.

I drop my phone in my bag and dig around for the key to my locker. After around the twelfth time I showed up to class without my gloves, Taylor rented us both permanent lockers. I resisted the handout, but I have to admit it's been nice.

I'm debating splashing some water on myself before I head out so Taylor will think I've been here long enough to work up a sweat when I pull my locker open and freeze.

I blink, trying to decide if I'm seeing what I'm actually seeing.

Red. Everywhere.

It's coating the walls of my locker, dripping from my gloves.

Blood.

No .

I shake my head, trying to logic this away. It can't be blood. Why would there be blood in my locker?

I lean in and I can smell it—not the metallic tang of blood, but something… fruity.

I swipe a trembling finger across the sludge at the front of the locker. It's thick and cold and—I bring it to my nose—strawberry-flavored.

Someone put jelly in my locker?

"What the fuck?" I mutter, carefully pulling my gloves out. They're absolutely slathered in jelly. This wasn't an accidental jar explosion. Someone meticulously painted strawberry jelly onto every inch of my gloves.

I carry them over to the sink and do my best to wipe the jelly away with a towel before I start rinsing it down the drain.

The whole time, my heart is thundering in my chest.

It's just jelly.

My hands are shaking.

It's just jelly.

I'm trying to talk myself back from the ledge my brain is galloping towards when the locker room door beeps and then careens open.

"I still have three minutes before I'm late!" Taylor screeches. "I can make it!"

Screw the napkins and the gym's pipes—I blast the water and start scraping the jelly down the drain as fast as I can.

"I might pee my pants during class because I absolutely chugged my iced latte on the way here, but I made it!" Taylor skids to a stop in front of her locker… which is right next to mine.

My locker is like a red, gaping mouth next to Taylor, but she's so busy peeling off layers that she doesn't notice.

I whirl around and slam my locker closed just as her head pops through the neckhole of a spandex tank top. She looks me over carefully. "You look pale."

"No, I don't."

"Yes," she insists, crossing her arms, "you do. And sweaty. I think I know why."

How can she know? I'm not even sure I know.

Maybe this was a random prank… that looks like blood… that someone pulled only on me. It's probably a social media trend to recreate crime scenes out of condiments.

But how did they know my locker code? How did he find me?

Taylor nods. "Oh, yeah. I see the truth written all over your face. It's the guilt. It's eating you alive."

"What?" The word squeaks out of my dry throat.

"You feel guilty for betraying your best friend." Taylor slings an arm over my shoulders. "But it's okay. You can make it up to me. I'll let you tell Jordan that I was stopping to get the latte for you, which is why I was almost late."

The sigh of relief I release is audible. It transitions to a choked laugh. "Okay. Yeah. Sure."

She doesn't know.

No one needs to know.

I don't know for sure what even happened. This is probably nothing.

Taylor turns around and frowns. "Why are your gloves in the sink? And sopping wet?"

I scramble for an excuse, something that means my life isn't falling apart and my brother isn't breathing down my neck. Anything that means Taylor won't think twice about what's happening here. Because she'll tell Evan, who will tell Zane, who will throw the life he has earned and worked hard for overboard at the slimmest chance to save mine.

Despite what Zane promised, I know he'll sacrifice everything to keep me safe.

I can't let anyone go down with me.

"There was a spider," I blurt. "A big one. I drowned it."

Taylor looks from me to the gloves and back again slowly. Finally, she wrinkles her nose. "You should've killed it with fire. That's the only way to deal with spiders."