“What plan?”
“You never stopped taking your birth control. All those years with Senator Dubois and the men before him, and you never stopped taking it.”
“Lila, what are you talking about? I haven’t taken birth control in—”
“Of course, you couldn’t get away with it forever. Mother would start making noise for you to see doctors, perhaps even give you a few fertility shots whether you needed them or not. Maybe she already had, or maybe the senator pushed you to see a doctor? Is that what gave you the idea? You saw a way out by turning him into the sick one? You wanted children too much to risk your own body, didn’t you?”
This time, Jewel did not say a word. She merely cocked her head to the side as if silently asking Lila how much she had figured out.
“You had Cristina Rubio for a TA at Bokington. Freshman biology. You knew what she’d been working on as a graduate student. Maybe you even knew that she transferred to med school. You must have been surprised to see her on the estate last year.”
“Yes, I was.”
“Did you have a nice lunch catching up?”
“She’s not even properly highborn. I never had lunch with—”
“I might not be able to prove that you both ate lunch at the same table, but your accounts were billed at the exact same time at the same restaurants, several times in one month nearly a year ago. You should have paid with cash.”
“You hacked into my—”
“Sit down. I’m not finished.”
“You’re not the chief of security anymore. Stop pretending,” Jewel said as she stood up and started toward the door, her curls bouncing.
Lila lunged, grabbed her sister’s wrist, and dragged her back to the ottoman, ignoring her own sore knuckles and ribs. “You will sit down and you will answer every damn question I ask, or I swear to the oracles, I will drag you to Chief Shaw in a pair of shiny handcuffs. Do you understand me?”
“You’re crazy,” Jewel whispered, settling back onto the ottoman, her knees twisted to the side as though she might bolt.
“I’m crazy? Your name was attached to Dr. Rubio’s application for Randolph General. You pushed her through the hiring committee. You have been cutting her an extra paycheck every month out of our family’s discretionary fund, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs any idiot would be able to find. Dr. Rubio just had to do one small thing to earn the position and the money.”
“What was that? You seem to have made up an entire story. How does it end?”
“With you poisoning the man you claim to love, ruining him so that he’ll never have children. This isn’t the first job you’ve helped Dr. Rubio get. She worked at Grace Medical during her breaks in med school at Alex’s company. Did Mother impress upon you the need to groom underlings and spies? How many more do you have in various nooks and crannies?”
Jewel tried to stand up again, but Lila drew her Colt and placed it beside her thigh.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Nothing would make me smile more. I am still technically the chief of security. I have the power to arrest anyone on the estate, even the chairwoman. So you should sit the fuck down and close your mouth unless I have asked you to open it.”
Jewel eyed the Colt, and her gaze cut to the door.
She chose the ottoman.
“Tell me why.”
Jewel shook her head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Lila. It’s not anything like you’re making it out to be. It’s just birth control. They can reverse it at any time.”
“That’s not true, and you know it.”
“They’ll figure it out. They’re close to a breakthrough right now.”
“He trusted you, and you poisoned him. But you don’t even care.”
“I do care. I had to do something.”
“You could have quit.”