Chapter 216

The pavement is cold under my palms and I am halfway through composing a scathing remark about people who run around blind corners like they own the entire lower east side when I look up and realize exactly who ran into me.

“You,” I say, and I am on my feet before Garvin has even finished pulling me up, “have some serious nerve.”

Eli blinks at me, still catching his own balance, one hand braced against the brick wall of the alley he just barrelled out of. “Excuse me?”

“The servers, Eli. My father’s company. Someone broke into a system that took Marcus’s team fifteen years to build, and you expect me to believe that’s a coincidence given everything else you’ve done to this family?”

“What servers?”

“Don’t play stupid with me, it doesn’t suit you.”

Zeke has not let go of the front of Eli’s jacket. His knuckles are white where they’re twisted into the fabric and there is a very specific stillness to him right now, the kind that precedes violence ra