Chapter 122

Miranda’s POV

Desmond’s words kept hanging in the air, thin and hollow, the kind of lies that were too flimsy to even be believable. He was trying, desperately, to convince me that everything was fine, that I was imagining things. But I knew better. I could feel it in the way he avoided my gaze, in the way his body was unnaturally still, as if he was trying to hold himself together before the storm that he knew was coming.

“You’re the only one I love, Miss Laila,” he repeated, his voice trembling with a kind of insincerity that made my skin crawl. “There’s no one else. No one. I swear it.”

His eyes darted around the room, avoiding mine, and I could see the subtle tremor in his hands. He was lying. He had to be.

I had walked into this house with the clear knowledge that something was wrong. The feeling of unease that had settled in my chest earlier, when I had seen him on the phone with Brenda, hadn’t been a mistake. My instincts had never failed me bef