Chapter seven - Look Around You

Spencer’s POV

I watched her try to push past Vincent, face twisted with panic and fury.

“You belong by my side.” I walked toward her, each step deliberate, unhurried. “Not in front of me. Not behind me. Beside me. We’re a couple, after all.”

The hatred in her eyes was pure. Blazing. I drank it in.

She was still performing. Still committed to this pathetic little theatre about a dying mother. I was already certain of what we would find inside that apartment: an empty room, maybe a planted prop or two, and whatever sad accomplice her father had paid to play along. Nothing more. Ruby had underestimated how thoroughly I intended to dismantle this stunt.

“I need to see my mother.”

“And you will.” I stopped beside her, close enough to feel the heat of her anger. “After you remember your place.”

She stared at me—and I saw it, the desire to kill me, to hurt me. It was in the clench of her jaw, the tension in her shoulders, the way her hands curled into fists at her sides.

“Ma’am.” Vincent’s voice was calm but firm. “Do what the boss says.”

For a moment, I thought she might actually attack me.

Then, something in her deflated. Not surrender—she was too stubborn for that—but a strategic retreat. A recognition that she had no choice but to play my game.

She walked back to my side, her movements stiff, her eyes fixed straight ahead, still burning with that same murderous hate.

I didn't let her settle.

My hand shot out and closed around a fistful of her hair. I yanked her head back, hard enough that she gasped, hard enough that tears sprang to her eyes.

"This is your funeral," I hissed, my mouth close to her ear. "If you think you can waste my time with whatever little stunt you've prepared in there, you're going to learn exactly what happens to people who play games with me."

"Let go!" She clawed at my wrist, her voice cracking. "Please—let go—my mother is really in there—how many times do I have to tell you that?"

I held her there a moment longer, letting her feel the pain, letting her understand exactly how little control she had over her own life. Then I released her.

She stumbled forward, one hand flying to her scalp, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

I reached into my jacket and drew the gun in one smooth motion.

“Hands up.”

She went rigid. Her head turned slightly, just enough to catch a glimpse of the weapon, and I watched the colour drain from her face.

"I said, throw your fucking hands up."

She raised them, shaking so violently I could see it even in the dim light.

I stepped behind her and pressed the muzzle firmly on her back.

“Move.”

“You’re going to regret this,” she whispered, voice cracking. But she still stepped forward when I pushed.

Vincent led the way, his own weapon drawn, his footsteps silent on the creaking stairs. I kept the gun pressed to her back, close enough that she could feel the cold metal through the thin fabric of her dress. She climbed the stairs like a woman walking to her own execution—each step hesitant, each breath a shudder.

The building was a dump. Peeling wallpaper, stained carpets, the smell of decay and desperation seeping from every corner. I couldn't imagine anyone choosing to live here—but then again, I couldn't imagine anyone choosing to pretend this long. Yet here we were.

Vincent pressed his ear to the door, listened for a moment, then shook his head. No sounds from inside.

"If this is a trap," I said quietly, pressing the gun harder against her spine, "you'll be the first one to die."

She didn't respond. She just closed her eyes and waited.

Vincent turned the knob, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

I shoved her forward.

The sitting room was small and cramped—a worn couch, a television that looked older than I was, a coffee table covered in pill bottles and medical supplies. The air was thick with the smell of sickness and something sour.

An empty wheelchair sat in the middle of the worn carpet, angled toward the window as if someone had been looking out and simply vanished.

Her hand flew to her mouth.

“Where did she go?” The words came out broken, panicked. “She must have fallen by now—Mom—”

Something in my chest shifted. Just slightly. The first unwanted rearrangement of certainty.

I turned my head toward the dining area.

A woman, slumped on the floor near the dining table. Grey hair, thin limbs. She was on her side, one arm stretched out as if she'd been reaching for something—help, maybe.

"Mom!"

Ruby screamed. The sound tore through the apartment like a blade, raw and animal, and she was running before I could stop her, dropping to her knees beside the fallen woman, her hands hovering and trembling.

"Mom, can you hear me? Mom, please—please—"

I stood there, gun still in my hand, watching as she gathered the woman into her arms. The woman's face was pale, her lips tinged blue, her breath shallow and irregular.

"I need to call an ambulance," Ruby said, her voice high and frantic. "I need—my phone—where's my phone—"

She looked at me, and for the first time, I saw something other than hatred in her eyes.

I saw desperation and fear. Genuine fear.

“Chloe… Chloe…” The old woman muttered.

The air in the room changed.

Did she just call Ruby—my wife, Chloe?

I went completely still.

The woman who claimed she wasn’t my wife was trying to lift the frail body with shaking arms.

“Mom—Mom, I’m here, I’m so sorry, I’m here—”

I didn’t remember giving the order.

“Vincent. Help her.”

He moved instantly. Lifted the woman with careful strength and settled her back into the empty wheelchair. The smell hit me then—urine, sharp and unmistakable. She had wet herself. The entire corner of the small sitting room reeked of it. A horrible, undignified sight.

The girl—Chloe—Ruby, or whoever the fuck she was—scrambled into another room and came back with a blister pack of pills and a glass of water that trembled in her hand. She held the glass to the woman’s lips.

“Drink, Mom. Please. Just a little. I’m here now.”

The woman drank. "I told you," the woman continued, her voice cracking. "I told you not to leave. I told you… something bad…" She trailed off, her eyes drifting to Ruby. "My baby… my baby girl…"

Ruby was crying again—silent tears streaming down her face as she pressed her forehead to her mother's hand.

"I'm here now, Mom. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

The woman's hand found Ruby’s hair, stroking it weakly.

"My good girl… my sweet girl…"

The woman’s cloudy eyes drifted past her daughter and landed on me and Vincent. Fear flickered across her ruined face.

“Bad men,” she whispered. “Bad men…”

I watched in silence.

The wheelchair. The smell. The medication. The way this woman looked at her—like she was the entire reason she was still breathing. It was real. All of it was real.

Which meant the woman I had dragged here by the wrist, the one whose throat I had pinned to my bedroom wall…

Might not be Ruby.

I closed the distance in three strides, grabbed her upper arm, and pulled her a few steps away. The woman in the wheelchair immediately started crying for her to come back. A weak, desperate sound—but I didn't care. I didn't care about her tears, her pleas, her outstretched arms.

I cared about answers.

I shook her once, hard.

“What is this?” My voice came out low and dangerous. “What stunt is this? What fucking game are you playing? You think I’m going to fall for a rented wheelchair and a paid actress? Cut the crap. Now.”

She didn’t flinch. She stared up at me with red, furious eyes and something that looked almost like pity.

"Look around you," she said.

The words stopped me cold.

"What?"

"Look. Around. You." She gestured wildly at the apartment—the wheelchair, the medication, the photographs, the smell of sickness and despair. "Take a good look at where you are. At what's happening right now. And then tell me—do you still think I'm Ruby?"

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

"If you do," she continued, her voice dripping with contempt, "then you must not be as smart as I heard Spencer McCartney was. Because this—" she gestured at her mother, at the apartment, at everything "—this is not a game. This is my life. And you nearly killed my mother because you were too arrogant to consider that you might be wrong."

The fury that surged through me was blinding.

I raised my hand—

"Boss."

Vincent's voice cut through the red haze.

I turned, my chest heaving, and found him standing by a small bookshelf in the corner. He was holding something—a photo album, old and worn, its cover cracked with age.

"You need to see this."