Chapter 36: Maggie’s end.
The great room swallowed them whole.
Vaulted ceilings stretched toward exposed wooden beams, dark and heavy as the silence that followed Caron's words. A stone fireplace dominated the far wall, cold and empty, its massive hearth big enough to walk into. Leather furniture clustered around it like animals huddling for warmth that would never come. Everything smelled of cedar and money and something underneath, something metallic and old.
Emma's bare feet pressed into the cold tile. The micro mini dress they'd given her barely covered her ass, the fabric so thin she could feel the air conditioning prickle her skin. Beside her, Maggie stood rigid, her jaw clenched so tight the tendons in her neck looked like cables.
Hector's arm stayed draped around Caron's waist. His thumb moved in slow circles against her hip, possessive and casual, like he'd been doing it for years. Maybe he had.
"You're lying," Maggie said.
Her voice came out flat. Not angry. Not yet. Just flat, like a blade before it cuts.
Caron tilted her head. Her blonde hair caught the light from the chandelier overhead, a cascade of gold that Emma had once watched Maggie run her fingers through at three in the morning, both of them laughing about nothing, high on coke and each other.
"I'm not," Caron said.
"You fucked him."
"I did."
"For two years."
"Two years and four months."
Maggie's hand twitched at her side. Emma watched her fingers curl and uncurl, curl and uncurl, a nervous habit she'd never noticed before. Or maybe it was new. Maybe betrayal did that, rewired the body into something unfamiliar.
"You shot him."
Caron didn't flinch. Didn't look away. Her blue eyes held Maggie's green ones like she was daring her to blink first.
"I did."
The words landed like stones in still water. Emma felt them ripple through her chest, through her stomach, through the hollow place where fear had been living for weeks. Jim was dead. Jim had been dead. And Caron—
"You cooked for him," Maggie said. "You sat at his table. You let him—" She stopped. Swallowed. "You let him think you loved him."
"I never said I loved him."
"You didn't have to."
Hector shifted his weight, leather creaking beneath him. He was older than Emma had expected, maybe sixty, with silver threading through his dark hair and a face that had seen too much sun and too much violence. His eyes were brown, almost black, and they moved between Maggie and Emma with the patience of a man who had all the time in the world.
"Your friend Jim," he said, "was not a careful man."
Maggie's head snapped toward him. "Don't."
"He trusted people he shouldn't have trusted. He made promises he couldn't keep. He thought his empire was untouchable." Hector shrugged, a small motion that somehow conveyed everything. "Nothing is untouchable."
"You're a fucking drug dealer."
"I'm a businessman. Same as Jim. Same as you." His gaze flickered to Maggie's clutch, to the bulge that betrayed the syringe inside. "Same as her."
Emma felt the weight of his words settle over her. The heroin was still singing in her veins, warm and soft and forgiving. She wanted another hit. She wanted to disappear into that warmth and never come back out. But Caron was standing right there, perfect and composed and utterly unrecognizable.
"Why?" Emma asked.
Her voice cracked on the word. She hated how small it sounded, how weak.
Caron's expression shifted. For just a moment, something flickered behind her eyes—something that might have been regret, or guilt, or maybe just the ghost of the woman Emma had known.
"Because Jim was going to get us all killed," Caron said. "The ATF raid wasn't random. He'd been running his mouth to the wrong people, making deals he couldn't back up, thinking he was untouchable. I tried to warn him. I tried to redirect him. But he wouldn't listen."
"So you killed him."
"I saved us."
Maggie laughed.
It was a terrible sound, hollow and sharp, like glass breaking in an empty room. She laughed and laughed until she had to press her hand against her mouth, until tears streamed down her cheeks and smeared her mascara into dark rivers.
"Saved us," she repeated. "You saved us."
"I did."
"You put a bullet in the man who loved you—"
"He didn't love me. He loved what I could do for him. Same as you. Same as everyone." Caron's voice hardened, the softness bleeding out of it like color from an old photograph. "You think I don't know what I was to him? A pretty face. A warm body. A blonde trophy he could show off to his friends. He never asked me what I wanted. He never cared."
"And Hector does?"
Caron turned to look at the man beside her. His hand tightened on her waist, a small gesture that could have meant anything. Protection. Possession. Love, even. Emma couldn't tell anymore. She didn't know if she'd ever been able to tell.
"Hector sees me," Caron said. "He knows what I'm capable of. He doesn't try to make me smaller so he can feel bigger."
Maggie wiped her face with the back of her hand. Her mascara was ruined, black streaks cutting through her foundation, making her look like she'd already been crying for hours.
"You could have told us," she said. "You could have—"
"Told you what? That I was planning to kill your boyfriend? That I'd been working with his enemies for years?" Caron shook her head. "You would have killed me yourself."
"Maybe."
"Definitely."
The two women stared at each other. Emma watched something pass between them, something old and complicated and jagged at the edges. History. Shared secrets. Nights neither of them would ever talk about. She felt like an intruder, like she was watching a conversation that had started long before she'd arrived and would end long after she was gone.
"The assets," Maggie said finally. "What assets?"
Hector leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The movement made the light shift across his face, illuminating the deep lines around his eyes, the scar that ran from his temple to his jaw.
"Everything Jim owned," he said. "The properties. The accounts. The operations. It's all been transferred."
"Transferred where?"
"To me."
Maggie's hands were shaking again. Emma could see it from where she stood, the fine tremors that ran through her fingers, the way she pressed her palms flat against her thighs to make them stop.
"How?"
"Very carefully. Very slowly. Over two years." Hector smiled, and it was not a pleasant expression. "Jim was generous with his trust. Too generous. It made things easier than they should have been."
"You're going to kill us."
It wasn't a question. Maggie said it like she was stating the weather, like she was commenting on the color of the sky.
Hector laughed. The sound was rich and warm, completely at odds with everything else in the room.
"If I wanted to kill you, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You would have died in that apartment. The man who came for you—he wasn't there to give you a message. He was there to clean up loose ends."
Emma's stomach dropped. She remembered the man's face, the way he'd looked at her when she opened the door. Blank. Professional. The face of someone who had done this before.
"Caron stopped him," Hector continued. "She convinced me you were more valuable alive."
"Why?"
The question came from Emma's mouth before she could stop it. She didn't know if she was asking Caron or Hector or the universe itself.
Caron answered.
"Because I'm not a monster," she said. "Because you didn't do anything wrong. Because—" She paused, and for the first time since they'd entered the room, uncertainty flickered across her features. "Because I owed you that much."
Maggie's laugh was softer this time. Not bitter. Just tired.
"You owed us."
"Yes."
"After everything."
"Yes."
Maggie nodded slowly. Then she walked across the room, her bare feet silent on the tile, and stopped directly in front of Caron. They were the same height. Their eyes met, green and blue, and Emma held her breath.
"I loved you," Maggie said.
Caron didn't look away. "I know."
"Do you? Do you know what that means? Do you know what it cost me?"
"I know."
"Then look at me and tell me it was worth it."
Caron was silent. The fire that had been burning in her eyes a moment ago guttered and died, leaving something cold and gray behind.
"I can't," she said.
"Can't or won't?"
"Does it matter?"
Maggie's hand came up. For a moment, Emma thought she was going to slap her, thought she was going to watch these two women tear each other apart in the middle of this beautiful, terrible room. But instead, Maggie just touched Caron's cheek. A soft touch. Almost tender.
"It matters," Maggie said. "It always mattered."
She turned away. Walked back to Emma's side. Her hand found Emma's hand and squeezed, hard, like she was holding on to something that was trying to slip away.
Hector stood up. He was taller than he'd looked sitting down.
"I'll have someone show you to your rooms," he said. "You're welcome to stay here as long as you need. There's a cook, a housekeeper, full staff. Everything you could want."
"We don't want your charity," Emma said.
"It's not charity. It's an invitation." He smiled again, that not-smile that made Emma's skin crawl. "You're valuable to me, both of you. Maggie has connections I can use. You—" He looked at Emma, and she felt like a bug under glass. "You have a talent for survival. That's useful in this business."
"I don't want anything to do with your business."
"You say that now." He gestured toward the door, toward the rest of the house, toward whatever lay beyond. "But the world has changed. Jim is dead. His empire is mine. And you—" He shrugged. "You're free to float. Or you're free to land. It's your choice."
Emma looked at Maggie. Maggie looked back.
Neither of them said a word.