My wife has this thing she does. It’s a smile I hate. A smirk really. I hate it when she gives it to me. It’s one that tells me she knows I’m full of shit. While I sit here, staring at this asshole, I can feel the corner of my lips tug up into that sarcastic smirk. It doesn’t stay there for long, though.

“Did you know the coke was laced?” James asks me and it takes a moment for the question to register.

The coke I gave Tony.

That doesn’t make sense. Our shit is clean and pure and the best there is.

It’s also provided to us in the recreation room by the company.

“I wouldn’t know a thing about that.” It’s the only answer I can force out. Keeping a hard stare on my face even as my blood heats hotter and hotter.

Is he serious? It was laced?

I know the laws in and out. I can’t admit to any knowledge that could lead back to me. I can accuse him, but not admit to participation or any foresight of drugs being gifted so freely when asked.

I raise my hand as if I’m the one in the wrong. The one who misspoke. “None of it matters anyway. I told you, I quit.”

“And I told you, that you—”

“I’m done,” I say and my words come out hard as I stand up and tower over the desk. James is quick to get up, tugging at one sleeve and then the other on his suit. “I thought you had something to tell me. Something useful and not some delusion that you could use to blackmail me.”

His eyes glint with a darkness at my words. “It’s not blackmail. I haven’t—”

“Fuck you, James,” I say, cutting him off as I turn my back to him to stalk out of the room. It’ll be the last time I come here.

“You know what I can do to you,” James says the threat to my back.

“I’m calling your bluff,” I respond out of anger and instantly regret it, but I don’t stop. All the weeks of not knowing if him or Samantha would tell the cops what happened, all the guilt and denial rise up in my chest and cause the next words come out without my consent. “Tell them what happened.”

Just the thought of the truth getting out lifts a weight off of me.

“Tell them I gave him the coke. Tell them I set him up to get high and came back to him dead. Tell the press. Tell everyone,” I say and my heart beats faster and faster as my hands ball into white-knuckled fists. I realize what I’ve just done. I realize I’ve said it out loud. But I don’t care. It doesn’t change anything. None of it matters anymore.