Page 186 of Obey

Jace lunges toward the tech booth, eyes wild. "Shut that goddamn feed down!"

“We’re trying, sir!” one voice says in my headset. "The server isn’t responding."

“Then pull the fucking cords.” Elias's voice is flat and harsh, every word a period. He reaches behind the audio rack and yanks its main power cable free.

The speakers die mid-moan, leaving the ballroom in stunned silence.

But it's too late.

Someone knows it’s my voice. I can see it in the way their attention shifts to me. Not the stage manager. Not the assistant scrambling to contain a technical disaster.

Me.

There are cameras everywhere, phones everywhere, hundreds of strangers who just heard something that was never supposed to get out.

“You swore no one else would hear it.” The words rip out of me, raw and shaking.

Nate is off the stage and in front of me, hands raised. “Sloane. We did not do this.”

I look at him, then Elias, then Jace. “You said we could fix this.” No one answers fast enough, and a crushing weight settles in my chest. “You said after tonight we’d talk.”

Jace takes a step toward me. “Sugar—”

“Was this what you meant?”

His face falls. “No. God, no.”

I shake my head, trying to make any of it make sense. “Then why was it there? Why would you keep it where someone could steal it?”

“It was secured,” Nate says. “It was never supposed to leave the server.”

A laugh breaks out of me, thin and ugly.

“Secure?” I gesture toward the ballroom, toward the phones now pointed in our direction. “Half of San Francisco just heard me, Nate. You thought I betrayed you. You had me followed. You investigated me. You looked me in the face and decided I could destroy everything you built.”

Tears spill before I can stop them. “And now the one thing I trusted you to keep private played through your fucking ballroom.”

“Sloane,” Elias says, “this is part of the breach.”

I look at him and that somehow makes it worse. “The breach you thought was me.”

He has no answer for that.

Nate’s voice breaks. “We were wrong.”

“Yeah. You were…” My eyes burn as I look between them. “That was supposed to be just ours.”

The crowd starts to murmur: reporters and PR staff rushing the stage. I look around, and everything feels like it’s closing in. Like I can’t breathe, not here, not in front of them.

Maybe not ever again.

Turning on my heel, I stumble through a sea of frozen bodies as the three of them call my name.

Someone reaches for my arm but pulls back as I pass. The mirrored walls reflect a hundred versions of my horror. I push through the great glass doors, high heels catching, almost falling, but I don’t stop until the concrete dark of the parking structure closes around me.

The air in the garage is cold enough to burn my lungs. I press my palms into my eyes, trying to force back the sound building in my throat, but a strangled sob escapes anyway. It’s a raw, animal noise in the echoing dark, and it’s not enough.

Footsteps pound against the concrete behind me.