"There was never any chip."
I stared at him, the words not fully landing at first. "You lied to all of us?"
Vito didn't answer right away. His gaze had already moved past me to where Whitney lay on the ground, her white dress soaked through with blood, the small diamonds sewn into the fabric catching the light like scattered stars. She looked untouchable even like this pure and ruined at the same time, like something precious that had been dropped from a great height.
His voice came out quieter than I had ever heard it. "How could I risk putting something that dangerous inside her?"
It made sense, once I let myself think it through. The chip was controlled by outside forces anyone with access could have used it to hurt her. Vito would never have handed them that kind of leverage over the one person he actually cared about.
