I figured I had another half hour before I’d start getting the wedding exit together, so I went on the hunt for Kash. I searched the service spaces without finding him, and with my heart in my throat, I rode down to see if the van was still there, relieved to the point of weak knees on finding it there. Back upstairs I went, into the dimly lit ballroom, scanning the faces of guests and searching the fringes for Kash.

But I found Addison instead.

She stood at the edge of the dance floor, arms folded and gaze hard, focused on the guests as they laughed and danced and drank. I didn’t know why I stopped at her side, struck with some familiarity, a still, unexpected moment of equality. For that brief stretch, I saw us from a distance, good and evil, side by side, her darkness to my light. Or perhaps just a couple of stone-cold bitches ready to rip each other’s throats out.

“I have to admit,” she said, watching the crowd jump around to a Calvin Harris song, “you didn’t do a completely terrible job.”

“Look at you, being all sentimental.”

“Don’t get used to it,” she said without making eye contact.

I spent a moment inspecting her profile, finding her cold and beautiful, the exemplification of power. We should have been friends, I realized. We had more in common than not, but somehow, we’d ended up in this vicious circle, one that ended and began with me pinned at the neck.

“Why do you hate me so much?” It was bravery or foolery that inspired me to ask the question I’d never asked before, struck with a brief, regrettable streak of sentimentality myself.

She turned those hard eyes on me, her expression flat and unchanged. But with my question, she opened the veil, answering with all the cold honesty and unshakable pride I knew her to possess. “Because I’ve worked for a decade for what you’ve gotten in half as many years. I’ve worked my whole life for what is handed to you. Because you’re good enough that someday, my position will be threatened by you. And I didn’t come all this way for that.”

The plain fact and blatant threat hung between us. And in my surprise, I made the mistake of reacting, my face softening and opening.

“And that. That look right there. You, Lila, are by the book. You don’t have a knack for deceit, no skill for deception. What you don’t realize is that good guys finish last.”

I schooled my face, nudging my mask back into place. “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”