Vesper nodded in the direction of the guard behind Cedar. “What about them, then? And your little job shit? Just fucking let us go.”
“Vesper,” Bellamy hissed, tugging on her shirt. “Why are you bothering with this? Let’s just kill them and be done!”
Vesper shook her head, still refusing to look at Bellamy, her eyes focused on Cedar alone.
“Ves…” Bellamy’s broken whisper killed her. “It’s because it’s true, isn't it?”
Vesper couldn’t say anything. She didn’t even acknowledge Bellamy. Bel would know she was lying if she tried to deny it, and she didn’t want to give Cedar more fuel. Vesper couldn’t trustBellamy to keep quiet, so she ignored her, even knowing it would make things worse between them.
After a few minutes of terse silence, Cedar sighed. “My employers recruited me when I got back to this planet. I’d been sent away for schooling, and when news arrived that my family was gone, I was allowed to come back. Kicked out, rather, I think. But they found me and they said they could help me find her. My sister. And find the people responsible for our parents' deaths.”
Vesper scoffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “What? Out of the goodness of their evil little hearts?”
“I had to work for them,” Cedar snapped. “Invent new potions and shit. It wasn’t hard, but they didn’t give me any information for free. I was allowed to lead my own side project to find out what happened. It took me a while to find your names attached to the deaths of my parents and disappearance of my sister.”
“So, you weren’t going to save Vesper? That was all a ploy?” Bellamy shifted, butting in. A wave of relief crashed over Vesper. Whatever was going through Bel’s mind right now, she still trusted Vesper enough to make the right call about this. She’d wait to get upset until they were alone.
“Oh, no. I would have. She’d have been protected.” Cedar tilted her head from side to side, thinking. “Well, at least until she told me where my sister is. So, V. Where the fuck is my sister?”
Vesper laughed. “Please. Even if I knew, you really think that shit explanation is gonna make me suddenly trust you? You tried to kill Bel! You’re gonna have to do better than that.”
To her genuine surprise, Cedar sighed, taking a half step back. She glared at them for a few minutes, grinding her teeth. Then she sighed.
“I’ll tell you everything.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Vesper
“So, everything just… led you to us?” Vesper asked when Cedar had finished recounting what happened. She explained what she’d been doing off planet—additional schooling to increase her knowledge of poisons, information which Vesper had taken a keen interest in. Then, she described what happened when she got back, and everything she went through in her search for her sister and her parents’ killers.
Cedar didn’t hold anything back. She even admitted to blackmailing Bellamy, again, and that she’d only ever slept with Vesper for information—not that she’d gotten any. Vesper hated to admit that it was all extremely plausible.
The sun had started to dip low in the sky by the time Cedar finished talking. It was messy, but the explanations, well, they worked. Vesper knew Cedar was telling the truth, despite every single bone in her body screaming at her to not trust Cedar. That didn’t mean she didn’t believe her about this.
Cedar shrugged. “Pretty much, yeah. I learned that Bellamy was the one who’d killed my parents and that you claimed not to know what happened to my sister. But I never believed it. I wanted to just kill Bellamy and be done with it, but my employers thought she could be of more use to us alive.”
Bellamy was seething beside Vesper as soon as the words left Cedar’s mouth. Vesper had to hold her back when she tried to move on Cedar. They didn’t need a fight, not yet.
Ignoring Bellamy entirely, Cedar continued, her gaze solely on Vesper. “Getting close to you, V—” She smiled. “Well, that was my idea. I needed you to trust me, and I knew that Bellamy had to be out of the way for that to happen.”
“So, you threatened to kill me if she stepped out of line?”
“Thought it would spur her on to leave you. I was right.”
“This whole thing,” Bellamy said, her voice dangerously low as she glared at Cedar. Her words came out through clenched teeth. “All of it was just petty fucking revenge for us doing our jobs?”
“A little bit,” Cedar replied. She acted unbothered despite her shoulders slumping. “But most of it was to find Cypress. I promised I’d come back for her.”
“Why’d you wait so long? If you’ve been looking for her, and you thought I did something, why did you wait… What? Three years after you found us?” Vesper asked.
Cedar rolled her eyes. Her lip quivered, but her voice remained neutral. She acted like the question was beneath her, like Vesper should have known the answer already.
“Have you ever worked on a large-scale corporation timeline before, V? Everything, and I mean everything, takes for fucking ever. We needed the intel Bellamy was stealing for us. I wasn’t allowed to confront you until they were satisfied—well, until Bellamyfinallyfucked up and they decided to cut her loose.”
“So, you were okay just waiting around for years?” Vesper asked skeptically. If it were her family on the line, she wouldn’t have waited. She’d have killed anyone necessary to get them back. Fuck waiting around for someone else to tell her what to do.
“They would have killed me,” Cedar said, miserably. “So, yes. I had to be content to wait. To play their shitty game. Though, I did try to speed things up wherever I could.”
