Aubrey’s lips tremble, and for a moment, she looks almost pitiful. But then, she lifts her chin, her mask snapping back into place. “Because you wouldn’t let it go,” she snaps. “You kept digging, kept asking questions. I couldn’t trust that you’d stop. I recognized that boy the moment he showed his face at the cafe. He is the spitting image of his father. I couldn’t trust that he would stop asking questions either.”

Her gaze shifts to me and her voice softens, almost pleading. “I loved Gabriel. I loved you, Teddy. But you don’t understand what it’s like to have everything you’ve built, everything you’ve worked for, threatened. I couldn’t take that chance.”

My jaw tightens, hands curl into fists at my sides. “So your solution was to kill us?”

“I didn’t want to!” she cries, her voice breaking. “But you forced my hand. If you’d just let it go—”

“No.” Mo’s voice is sharp and unyielding, her voice slices through Aubrey’s excuses like a blade. “This was never about us forcing your hand. You made this choice, just like you made the choice to poison Gabriel, to kill George, to silence Walter. This is who you are, Aubrey.”

Aubrey’s composure crumbles, her tears streaming down her face, mixing with the blood from her broken nose, as she collapses onto the blanket. “You don’t understand,” she sobs. “I didn’t want this. I didn’t mean for it to happen this way.”

Selene takes a step closer, her eyes blazing. “You brought us here to kill us. You poisoned the sweet tea, didn’t you?”

Aubrey’s hands shake as she lifts her glass, the liquid inside catching the moonlight. “I did it for Gabriel,” she whispers, her voice trembling. “For us. I thought if I could just—”

“Stop lying,” I snap, my voice cutting through her excuses like a knife. “You didn’t do this for Gabriel. You did this for yourself.”

Aubrey’s face crumples, her sobs turning into a low, desperate laugh. “It doesn’t matter,” she says, her voice hollow. “None of this matters now. You’ve already won, haven’t you?”

She moves suddenly dropping all pretense of subtlety as she grabs the pitcher of sweet tea and downing most of it before we can rip it out of her hands.

“Stop!” I shout, lunging forward, but Aubrey’s already thrown the empty pitcher aside, her breath gasping after almost drowning herself as she chugged the contents of the pitcher. Aubrey wipes at the tea that ran down her face and her neck and chest, as she glares at me and Mo.

“You think you’ve beaten me,” she rasps, her voice trembling. “But I’ll die on my terms, not yours.”

Selene whips out her phone, already dialing. “We need help. Now.”