Chapter 128: False Friend: The Set-up

[Thank God. Thank you Stan. It’s such a shame that people like this exist, if not this world would’ve been a better place..]

Sighing, he pocketed the phone.

From inside the room, he could hear Zoey crying, the specific, releasing kind of crying that only happens when the danger is genuinely over and the body finally believes it.

He could hear Zack’s voice, low and steady, saying the same few words over and over. He doesn’t know what else to say but understands that saying something is what matters.

Stan stayed in the corridor.

Some moments weren’t his to be inside. This was one of them.

Stan didn’t leave. He waited for the police.

He found a chair in the corridor outside the room where the police were conducting their initial assessment, leaned back against the wall, and waited.

The hotel’s security staff moved efficiently around him, logging footage, securing the scene, coordinating with the officers who had arrived within twelve minutes of the call. Stan answered the questions directed at him clearly and completely, then stepped back and let the process run without inserting himself into it.

Zack stayed with Zoey. Stan could see them through the open doorway, Zack seated beside her on the edge of the room’s small sofa, not talking much, just present, his hand over hers on the cushion between them.

Zoey had stopped shaking, but the color hadn’t fully returned to her face, and every few minutes her breathing would catch and she’d have to reset.

When the officers indicated they were ready to take her statement, Stan signaled to Zack with a small nod. Zack squeezed Zoey’s hand once and stepped back to give her space.

Stan waited in the corridor.

It was almost an hour before Zoey emerged, composed now, or doing a reasonable impression of it, her jacket replaced with one of the hotel’s spare towels draped around her shoulders. She looked at Stan with the expression of someone who had been through something genuinely frightening and was still sorting through the details in real time.

"Are you okay to talk?" Stan asked.

She nodded. They found a quiet alcove at the end of the corridor.

"What happened?" Stan asked. "Start from when you left."

Zoey took a breath.

"I know Zack told me not to go," she said. "I know. But I thought, if I didn’t go completely alone, it would be okay. So I took Hailey, I went with her, I trusted her."

Stan was quiet, but he couldn’t help but frown upon noticing where this was going...

"She was the one who told me about the deal in the first place," Zoey continued, her voice tightening slightly. "She said she had a contact in the industry, that this manager was legitimate, that it was a real opportunity. I thought, if she was the one who introduced it, she’d have my back. That it was safe."

Stan said nothing, but something settled in his chest, a cold, clear recognition.

’Of course it was Hailey.’

He hadn’t forgotten the barbecue. The night Zack had taken them all out to celebrate his new relationship, and Wade Hollis had shown up trying to humiliate everyone at the table. Hailey Yates had spent that entire evening calculating angles, siding with whoever she thought was winning, cheerfully insulting her best friend’s boyfriend when Wade seemed like the better bet, then pivoting the moment Wade’s card was declined and the power in the room shifted.

She’d asked Stan for his Snapchat ID thirty seconds after watching him pay a hundred and thirty thousand dollar bill. He’d told her she didn’t qualify, and she’d sat in tight, embarrassed silence for the rest of the night.

She wasn’t a bad person in the way some people were bad, with intention and ideology behind it. She was bad in a far more corrosive way, the kind born from seeing other people as resources to be managed rather than relationships to be valued.

She was worse than any ordinary gold digger, because there was seemingly nothing she wouldn’t do for money. Stan had suspected it before, but he hadn’t realized it went this deep.

She had technically sold Zoey’s dignity to Damien through her betrayal. Every friendship, every connection, every social interaction between the two of them had apparently been weighed against what it could provide her.

And on this particular night, what Zoey could provide was enough money from Damien for her to disappear and leave her friend alone in a hotel room with a drunk predator.

"She left," Zoey said, her voice dropping. "The moment we got to the room and Damien’s people were there, she just... she made an excuse, said she’d get us drinks from the lobby, and she didn’t come back." A pause. "She had already been paid. I figured that out later. She knew what she was walking me into."

Zack’s jaw was working silently beside her. He was making a visible, sustained effort not to say the things that were going through his head at that moment.

If only Zoey had listened to him...

Stan kept his voice level.

"You called Zack."

"The moment I realized what was happening. Damien was drunk, really drunk, and the way he was looking at me..." She stopped. Steadied. "I got to the door but two of his guards blocked it. I screamed. I don’t know if the call even went through properly."

"It went through," Zack said quietly. "I heard everything I needed to hear."

Zoey looked at him. Something passed between them, a private exchange that didn’t need words.

"Thank you," she said, to both of them. "Both of you."

Stan nodded once.

"It’s done now. Let’s get you home."

The Huracán was quiet on the drive to Zoey’s apartment. Zoey sat in the back with Zack, her head against his shoulder, the city sliding past the windows in long, blurred ribbons of amber and white. Nobody spoke much. There wasn’t much that needed to be said.

Stan pulled up outside her building and kept the engine idling while they climbed out. Zack walked her to the entrance, and Stan watched through the windshield, Zoey pausing at the door, turning back to look at the car, giving him a small, sincere nod of acknowledgment before going inside.

Zack returned to the passenger window.

"Thank you, brother," he said. "Seriously. I mean it."

"Make sure she’s not alone tonight," Stan said. "And Zack, Hailey."

Zack’s expression hardened.

"I know. Zoey knows too, She should. She just hasn’t let herself fully process it yet." He exhaled. "I’ll handle it."

"Don’t be angry about it in a way that makes things harder for Zoey. She needs to arrive at her own conclusions."

Zack looked at him for a moment, then nodded slowly. "Yeah. You’re right."