Backstabbing Friend's Self-Inflicted Shame novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Note

Valeria's video had two million views by the time we reached the hotel.

It was a short, dramatic clip.

It showed Tate's split lip, close up, and Rafe's knuckles, and a caption in her soft voice.

"I'm so scared," she said. "I don't know who to trust."

I shut the laptop in the middle of the second viewing, and I sat down on the end of the bed.

Rafe stood by the window with his bandaged hand held against his chest.

He had been silent in the car, and he had been silent in the elevator.

"Say it," he said.

"Term one."

"I know."

"You wrote me a note so that I'd wake up and find you gone.

Then you told me not to be angry."

"I didn't want you in that room."

"You didn't want me there so you could be the one in it." My voice rose, and I let it.

"Greer."

"You took the key out of my coat, Rafe, and you went to do it alone."

"He photographed us through a window."

"I know. I was in the window."

"He had a man watching you."

"Then you tell me, and we decide together, and we do it with a lawyer and a dealer and two hundred witnesses."

"I couldn't wait for that."

"You're the one who told me you waited two years."

He turned from the glass.

His face was open, and for the first time since I'd known him I could not see a single thing he was holding back.

"I stood still for two years," he said.

"I know."

"I let her walk out of my house with my money, and I called it being careful. Then I saw him on the bridge with that camera. I thought, he's doing it to her now, and I'm standing still again."

"You gave him exactly what he wanted."

"I know."

"He now has footage of a violent man in my life, two days before the vote."

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