Chapter 10: I'm Asking

June's POV

I found Roxanne in the garage.

Marcello's men had brought her in from the snow an hour earlier, blue at the lips.

They had put her in the room where they keep the snowcats.

I asked the guard to come with me.

I had made a rule that neither of us went anywhere alone, and I wasn't going to be the first to break it.

He stayed at the door with his arms crossed.

She sat on the seat of a red snowcat in her dark green dress.

A coat three sizes too big hung off her, with a blanket over it.

Her hair had come out of its braid.

"Juney," she said.

"Don't."

"I'm so sorry."

I stood in front of her and looked down.

Years of birthdays were in that face.

She had held my hair back in nursing school.

She had sat with me in the hospital parking lot the week Eli died, and said nothing until I was ready.

"You made the video," I said.

"Yes."

"You gave me a lie and told me it was Eli's."

"I did."

She said it quietly, and she did not look away.

"Why?"

"Because I couldn't let you marry him." Her eyes filled. "I'd have told you the truth, if I could. I couldn't."

"What truth?"

"That you'd be dead before the honeymoon."

"Marcello?"

"His family."

She wiped her face on the blanket.

"I told you it was him because I knew you'd never go near him again. I was trying to save your life."

"By voting me out of my own wedding."

"By getting you out of that room."

"With four women and a QR code."

"With everything I had, June."

I hit her.

I had never hit anyone in my life, and my hand cracked across her cheek.

She did not put a hand up.

She lowered her head, slowly.

Keep reading free with an account. Start They Voted to Replace Me at My Own Wedding from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.