“It was a fake. Theonlyfake,” he corrected as I grew angrier. “I needed to stall while I had the situation assessed—”
“Listen to me you fucking prick,” I spat, pressing him into his chair with my fist around his throat in the span of a blink. “We had a deal, and as far as I’m concerned, you just broke it.”
Alexander swallowed against my palm. “Light the plane on fire and you’ll never know where he’s being held.”
Light the—I frowned when I realized I’d withdrawn my lighter, the flame bobbing next to us. Christ. I snapped it shut and pocketed it, keeping my grip tight on his throat. “If there’s a fucking mark on him, I’ll let him kill you.” I released his throat with some reluctance, and Alexander grinned, boiling my rage to a new height.
“Matthias is keeping him company. Whether or not Rafe has a mark on him is a big if. Matty doesn’t take too kindly to threats…or people, in general.” Alexander straightened his lapels.
“Nor does Rafe.”
“Two peas in a pod, then. Fast friends, maybe.”
I slammed up from my seat and switched to one in the back of the plane. “Follow me and I’ll kill you.”
I hated Alexander for chaining me to him, but I also acknowledged that he wasdoingsomethingin a world that had largely done nothing for people like us. I also, despite everything, held a certain amount of respect for him, no matter how infuriating he was. Alexander certainly saw himself as a kind of a god, which explained his neurotic need to haveeverything planned to precision. He had ticks,weaknesses, and I was slowly cataloging them.
“Not a hero,” he’d told me on one of my first nights when I’d asked, “So you’re trying to play hero then?” We’d been in the parlor at the townhouse, somewhere we both seemed to end up at the end of each day, drinking brandy. “Heroes,” he said grimly, “have morals. Chains. After our upbringing, I wouldn’t dare shackle myself with either. S.I.N. will die.” He’d swished his brandy around in his glass, staring into the flames dancing in the hearth. “Even if it means the rest of me dies with them.”
I had to be patient, and in the meantime, I assuaged my guilt by trying to understand everything that the Ravens were. It all stemmed from Alexander, so I knew that the more of his trust I gained, the easier it would be to burn it all down should he choose to cross me. On the nights we weren’t in the parlor, I began to join him in his office, too. The room didn’t match the rest of the townhouse. The bones were old, all dark wood paneling and high ceilings, ornate molding framing the space, but the technology embedded into it was top of the line. Large displays lined one wall, glass screens sunk seamlessly into the wood, glowing softly with live feeds and layered maps. Cities pulsed in muted colors, lines branching like veins, each one representing a node in S.I.N.’s reach or a Raven operation running parallel to it. Some displays tracked movement. Others monitored auctions, routes, and communications.
One screen stayed fixed on people. Names. Ages. Locations. Assets pulled out of the syndicate and placed somewhere safer, marked in green instead of red. Each time a new one appeared, the number in the corner ticked upward. It was hope made digital, and while I’d long come to terms with the fact that hope was a devil in my life, I felt some security in knowing it was Alexander who wore the mask. Sometimes I’d find him at his desk, his fingers steepled, his hair a mess, and papers strewnbefore him. He’d talk to himself not knowing I was watching, repeating words over and over—Calm. Remember. Endure. Escape. Destroy.He’d stop at times on that last one,destroy, and glare at the screen that noted every known location of S.I.N.
One night when I was leaning in the doorway watching him jot notes down and send off texts to Ravens around the world, I finally summoned my courage to ask the question burning on my tongue. “How long?”
He jolted in his chair, whipping around and staring at me with boyish wide eyes. I’d never seen him startled before and it took me aback. He was always so put together. Even when he turned on the charm for Buyers—just as he had that first night with me—he was in utter control of himself. That version of him however was a bit undone, and for some reason, it made me trust him more to see him like that. Maybe it was because that was how I felt without Creed.
My fingers had been itching to light something on fire for weeks by then, and the memories…everything that had happened to me was resurfacing as cruel, paralyzing nightmares. Most nights I found myself curled on the bathroom floor after throwing up, clutching my knees and sobbing. I couldn’t stop the flood of it all, and my mind felt frayed from reliving every fucking tragedy. I’d started carving into my bed frame as I had at Viktor’s estate. Not counting the days until escape but the days until destruction. Alexander hadn’t given me a date, but I knew by the way he responded to my information on Florence that we would hit Halden’s compound as soon as possible.
He’d been livid about Florence, earning another inch of my trust. Emotion. Seeing it, being within it, it was the only thing that ever felt truly real. I wasn’t meant to feel it anymore. I was conditioned not to, but I guess some things never change, no matter how hard someone tries to beat them out of you.
“How long what, Arden?” he asked, his voice scratchy with a lack of sleep. He settled back in his chair and swiveled to the screens, resuming his work.
“How long were you Viktor’s?”
His pen paused mid-sentence, his cursive writing long and flowing across what looked to be a kind of journal. I stepped further into his domain, moving to the stool propped in the corner. I sat, watching his jaw work before he finally answered. “You ask that as if it’s ended,” he said. I could tell he was biting his tongue so I pushed harder.
“Don’t you think we should know each other?” I asked. “It’s been nearly two months.”
“Whether or not you know me doesn’t make you any more or less effective,” he said and resumed writing. “I don’t see a point in rehashing that part of my life.”
“The point is my trust,” I told him, the stool creaking as I adjusted and crossed my legs, kicking my foot impatiently. “You still haven’t revealed why you forced our marriage, so at least give me this.” Part of it was also thatIwanted to talk about things. It was all just bubbling at the tip of my tongue, desperate to be purged from my being. I didn’t want to talk about it with him, but Monty had been mostly nonexistent and I’d yet to meet the other Ravens. It was Alexander or talking to myself in the damn mirror, and while I hadn’t originally been opposed to the latter option, when I tried it, I’d felt the disturbing need to hurt myself. It’d been some time since I wanted to die, but remembering things was taking its toll.
Alexander sighed heavily and sat down his pen, turning fully to me. He rested his arms down on the chair and leveled his gaze with mine. “And I should want your trust?”
I frowned. “You don’t?”
He studied me. “I think trust is often a facade. It’s something we tell ourselves about other people so we have some semblanceof a shield when they inevitably betray us. It’s there, to throw back at them, when the time comes—I trusted you. It makes the betrayer feel guilty, and it gives the betrayed a fraction of power, but in reality it solves nothing. It can’t reverse the betrayal.”
I stared at him. “Wow.”
He scowled.
“That’s really fucking bleak. What about the Ravens? You don’t trust any of them?”
“Of course not.” He lifted a brow. “They’re all like us.”
Like us. That was the part I still couldn’t wrap my head around. We were the same in so many ways, but Alexanderwasn’tCreed. He never would be to me what Rafe, Thorne, and Kane were, and for that reason alone, I swallowed down my need to talk. I would harbor the pain for a while longer.Fuel.
