Emerald Blaze

Crap. I drank more beer.

“You went to see her. Then you went straight to Albert’s house. Now he wants to apologize. His exact words were ‘beg forgiveness.’”

Technically, all of that was accurate.

“What did she make you do?”

I couldn’t lie and say going to see Albert was my idea. “That’s between me and her.” The less Nevada was involved, the safer it was.

My sister’s eyes blazed. “I told you to stop talking to her. I warned you. I know you think she’s some sort of mentor, but you have no idea how dangerous she is. She told you to do something cruel, and you went and did it. Is that who you want to be?”

Nobody could compare with my sister. She hits the bull’s-eye on the first try. Right into the knot of guilt and doubt.

“It’s not that simple.” I sounded lame, even to myself.

Nevada locked her teeth and nodded. “I’ll make it simple. Tomorrow I’ll go and tell her to leave you alone.”

Panic smashed into me in a blinding explosion of white. My fingertips went cold. Victoria let Alessandro’s stunt go because she found him amusing. If Nevada marched in there tomorrow and started issuing ultimatums, Victoria would punish her. She viewed Alessandro as my teenage crush, ultimately harmless. But Nevada wielded a great deal of influence over me. Victoria already saw her as a rival. She would act to consolidate her grip on me. She would retaliate.

She would hurt the baby.

“Please don’t do this. I’m begging you.”

Nevada’s eyes were clear. “You’re my sister and I love you. You’re trapped, but I’ll get you out.”

No, no, no.

Nevada turned away from me. She’d made up her mind. I had seconds to stop her. I needed a lever, a gap in her armor, something to make her listen.

“You always took care of us when we were kids. But now I’m an adult. You taught me that being an adult means making informed decisions. I want to tell you something, and if, when I’m done, you still want to confront Victoria, I won’t fight you.”

Nevada turned around and sat at the table. “Okay. I’ll hear you out.”

I would regret this conversation for the rest of my life, but I had to keep her away from Victoria. I pulled out a chair, sat, and took another swig of my beer. It tasted bitter. My adrenaline was through the roof.

“Do you remember when you gave up being the Head of our House?”

Nevada narrowed her eyes. “I remember.”

“I told that story to Alessandro. The whole thing. How you were working yourself into the ground trying to earn money for us and to deal with the threats against Connor, how you wouldn’t rest, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t let anybody help, until you collapsed and we had to call an ambulance. I explained that we begged you to slow down and recover, and you promised to do it, and then less than twenty-four hours later, I found you back in the office rummaging through files. How Arabella and I had inherited shares of the business from Dad, and we voted to ban you from making money for the business, forcing you to keep everything you earned, and then you freaked out and declared that we didn’t trust you anymore and you couldn’t be the Head of our House.”

Nevada’s mouth thinned. She didn’t like remembering that any more than I did.

My sister waved her hand at me to keep going.

“Something Alessandro said stuck with me. He said that you knew we were right, but you didn’t think you were wrong. The more I thought about that, the less sense it made. You rebuilt the business from the ground up after Dad got sick. You put your life on hold and sacrificed for it. You loved the business. It was Dad’s legacy, and you honored it.”

Nevada shrugged.

“You also loved us. You worked sixty-hour weeks and then still found time to be our big sister. And you are the most grounded, levelheaded person I know. Tantrum isn’t even in your vocabulary. But somehow you threw one, and then you got so butt-hurt, you quit the business and almost quit the family. You didn’t speak to me for three weeks.”

Nevada’s expression softened. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“At the time I felt so guilty. I came up with this wonderful idea to get you to work less and stop you from driving yourself into the ground for us, and it all went horribly wrong. I didn’t know what to do. And you were so angry. That same day you went down to the Keeper of Records and officially abdicated leadership of the House. That put me in charge of the family. I was twenty years old. I knew nothing about running a House. Here we were, less than a year away from emerging from the new House grace period, and you dropped it all in my lap. My big sister wouldn’t have done that in a million years.”

Hurt flashed in Nevada’s stare. She hid it instantly, but I saw it. I wanted to throw my arms around her, but I had to get through this.

“I’m so sorry,” she said again. “You hurt my feelings, I was overworked, and I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

I shook my head. “No, you were thinking very clearly. What Alessandro said was true. You knew we were right, but you didn’t think you were wrong. You made the best possible decision under the circumstances. It wasn’t emotional. It was calculated.”

Nevada frowned. “Where are you going with this?”

“About two months before you collapsed, Connor was still dealing with the fallout of exposing the Sturm-Charles conspiracy. Friends and allies of the people whose Houses fell as the result of that investigation were gunning for him. You received a USB drive with a series of recordings showing Connor engaged in human trafficking.”

No reaction. One day I would be as good as her.

“The recordings were graphic and horrible. Girls, barely teenagers, transported in cages, tortured, and raped. You started digging and found a wealth of supporting evidence. Bogus shipping records that couldn’t pass even the slightest check. A secret account Connor didn’t know he had with deposits from a known human trafficker who had been conveniently murdered, so it would look like Connor tried to cover up his sins. But all of that wasn’t sensational. The recordings, however, that was the glue-you-to-your-screen evidence. Except the recordings alone weren’t enough, not when a powerful illusion Prime could duplicate Connor’s appearance. Someone had to validate them.”

My sister leaned forward, focused on me. I could practically feel the wheels turning in her head. She was trying to figure out how I knew.

“Robert J. Merritt,” I said. “Forty-one years old, born and raised in Sycamore, Illinois, white, married, two children, one golden retriever, a war hero. Also, one of the sixteen people who walked with Connor out of the jungle in Belize.”

Again, no reaction. If someone watched us from a distance, they would think we were discussing buying kitchen towels.

“Merritt called and told you he intended to vouch for the authenticity of the recordings. The bond between Connor and the Sixteen is unshakable. They’ve been through hunger and captivity and torture, and they would literally die for each other. Any of the remaining Sixteen would say so on the witness stand. If Robert Merritt testified that the recordings were authentic, he would be unimpeachable. He was a bulletproof witness.”

“He was a liar.”

“Yes. But it didn’t matter. This had all the makings of an incredible media blitz: a war hero, torn between loyalty to his officer and friend and his conscience, chooses truth and decency over keeping his savior’s disgusting secret. Connor would exist under a cloud of suspicion for the rest of his life and so would you. You knew that he was innocent, because every time stamp on those recordings corresponded to times when you and Connor were away together. You were his only alibi.”

Her eyes were clear, her voice steady. “He didn’t do it.”

“I know. That’s not who Connor is. But you couldn’t prove it. All the elements of his alibi depended on his employees and you. They owed their livelihood to him. He held all of their loans, every mortgage, every credit card account, because he likes to make his people secure from outside manipulation. And you? You loved him. You would do anything for him, even lie. You knew you wouldn’t be believed. You tried to find Robert Merritt but he’d disappeared into thin air. He would call you occasionally, to taunt you and to hint at compensation, but there was never anything concrete. No demand for money. No explanation why.”

“He was a ghost,” Nevada said. “I threw everything I had at him. Rogan’s entire force searched for him. Nobody could find Merritt, not even Bug.”

“On the day you collapsed, he called you and promised to release the first video in a week. You knew you couldn’t stop it. You knew that if you stood by Connor, the press would paint you as a vile, awful woman who supported a monster. Merritt told you that he would implicate you during his testimony. He would tell everyone that you were aware of what Connor was doing and you encouraged it. You would be a pariah. Our society despises male criminals, but it rips the female ones to pieces. As women, we are supposed to nurture, care, and defend children, not enable others to prey on them.”

Nevada’s face turned haggard and exhausted, as if the ghost of some other woman had settled onto her face. It was there for just a fraction of a breath, but seeing it was like being cut. It must’ve been so awful, and she’d kept it all inside and kept going, trying to save him, trying to keep us out of it. It’d been over a year and a half and still that wound hurt, and now I’d reopened it. I was a terrible person.