RONAN
There were things I could justify.
The lies, the manipulation, the way I had walked into Kade's life with a plan already mapped out before I even learned his name. I could justify all of that. In this world, survival looked like strategy, and strategy looked like whatever worked. I had learned that young.
But Vera. That was the one thing I could not sit with.
She had inserted herself into everything that mattered. Positioned herself so carefully that by the time anyone noticed, she was already woven in. My blood boiled every time her face crossed my mind.
“So Vera is now part of the huh, after everything she did.”
"She refuses to leave," Kade said from across the room, like he had read my face. He was leaning against the far wall, jacket still dark with dried blood, knife turni
