I gasp, frantically stabbing at the play button on the remote control. That can’t be it! I need to see him hurt him. I need to see him get revenge. ‘Play, damn it!’ I yell, but after a lifetime of punching the button, nothing happens. ‘Fuck you!’ I scream, hurling the remote control across the room with brute force. I don’t even flinch when it smashes against the front of one of Miller’s paintings, shattering the glass sheet protecting the canvas. I whirl around, heaving and shaking. I feel cheated. ‘Miller,’ I exhale, bolting across his flat and running like an unhinged nut down the corridor towards his studio.
Bursting through the door clumsily, I pull to a halt and search him out. He’s sitting on the edge of his old worn couch, elbows braced on his knees, his face in his palms. But shocked wide blue eyes are revealed quickly. I see life in them. Light and energy, none of which were there in that footage, and none of which were there when we first met. It’s all evolved since we’ve found each other, and I’d rather walk the fiery depths of hell than see it all lost. A painful sob fights past my anger and I start running to him, only vaguely registering him standing through my blurry vision.
‘Olivia?’ He starts forward tentatively, frowning. He’s shocked I’m still here.
I launch myself into his arms. Our naked bodies crash together hard, and would probably hurt if there wasn’t another agony consuming every nerve ending. ‘I’m so fascinated by you,’ I sob, constricting him around the neck, melding myself to him.
Miller accepts my overpowering clinch and holds on just as tightly, maybe even tighter. My rib cage is under incredible pressure, jeopardising my breathing, but I couldn’t care less. I’m never letting go. ‘I love you, too,’ he whispers, sinking his face firmly into my neck. ‘So much, Olivia.’
My eyes close and all of the anxiety from the horror scene falls away under his thing. ‘I wanted to see you do it,’ I admit, reasonably or not. I feel like I need that part of the puzzle. Or maybe I just need to be sure he really did kill that wicked arsehole.
‘Charlie has it.’ He doesn’t ease up on his hold, which is fine because I don’t want him to. He could squeeze even harder and I wouldn’t complain.
My mind settles, allowing me to think clearer. ‘He’ll take it to the police.’
Miller nods a little into my neck. ‘If I don’t play ball, then yes.’
‘And you’re not going to play ball, are you?’
‘I’m not doing it, Olivia. Not to you. I couldn’t live with myself.’
‘But you could live with blood on your hands?’
‘Yes.’ His answer is swift and decisive before he wrestles me from his arms and gazes down at me. ‘Because the alternative is your blood on my hands.’ I lose my breath but Miller continues, saving me the trouble of finding any words. There aren’t any. And I know now, one hundred per cent, that there’s nothing I can do to stop Miller from killing Charlie. ‘I have no remorse for what I did to that man. I’ll have even less for Charlie. But I would never forgive myself if any harm came to you, Olivia.’
My eyes clench in pain at his honest words and I finally allow myself to take some time and evaluate what they did to him. He was young in the video. Amid all the other shit this poor man has endured, when did that happen? How many times did it happen before he flipped? Did Charlie organise it? Undoubtedly. And now he wants to subject him to some Russian woman who wants to degrade him again. Never.
‘I need to get that,’ Miller says as the phone rings. He lifts me from my feet and carries me out of the studio into the kitchen. He doesn’t release me to take the call, instead holding me just as tightly with one arm and answering his phone with the other. ‘Hart,’ he greets shortly, resting his bum on the table and dropping me to my feet between his thighs. I’m still stuck to his front, but he doesn’t complain or ask for privacy.
‘Is she there?’ William’s irritated tone is perfectly clear to me and likely to be, considering my cheek is welded to one side of Miller’s face and his phone to the other.
‘She’s here.’
‘I just took a call,’ William tells Miller. He sounds hesitant.
‘From?’
‘Charlie.’ Just the mere mention of his name sets my panic off again. Why is he calling William? They’re archenemies.
‘So suffice it to say he knows for sure that I’m sleeping with the enemy?’ There’s a touch of irony tickling the corners of Miller’s question.
‘Hart, he has copies of the footage.’
My heart slows down. I feel it, and I know Miller feels it, too, because he clings on that little bit tighter. ‘Let me guess – if anything happens to Charlie,’ Miller says quietly, ‘there are two people with instructions on how to find the copies and what to do with them.’
There’s a long pause, and I see William in my imagination rubbing stressed circles into his grey temples. ‘How’d you know?’
‘Sophia told me. And she told me she destroyed all the footage.’
The shocked gasp that travels down the line cools my skin. ‘No.’ William sounds almost defensive in his counter. ‘And you believe her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Miller,’ William goes on carefully, using his Christian name for a change. ‘Charlie is untouchable.’
‘You almost sound like you don’t want me to kill him.’
‘Fuck.’ William heaves out a sigh.