“You were working against me again.” It wasn’t a question.
Zaria didn’t bother denying it. “I have no interest in being a pawn between kings.”
Kane let his hand drop from the bookcase, watching her coolly from beneath his lashes. “So that’s why you offered yourself up in exchange for Julian’s freedom. Vaughan was the reason you came here in the first place, wasn’t he?”
“I came here because youkidnappedmy best friend.”
“That’s not an answer.”
She didn’t want to tell him the whole truth. It felt too dangerous. Like taunting a wolf as it circled you with teeth bared. At the same time, though, it was becoming increasingly clear that she couldn’t afford to keep lying. “Yes, Vaughan is part of the reason. I thought it would be a good opportunity to search for the ledger. But that wasn’t why I sought you out in the beginning. My main concern was always Jules.”
Kane’s face was dangerously impassive. Beneath the facade, though, was a flicker of a wholly different emotion. “I should have known better than to trust you twice,” he said. “Then again, you’re only good at keeping secrets until you’re asked a direct question. That’s always my misstep, isn’t it? I never ask enough of the right questions.”
Zaria didn’t know what she’d been expecting him to say, but that wasn’t it. She’d been prepared for Kane to rage and threaten her again, and didn’t know what to do with the cold, reticent boy in front of her. He was more angry athimself, she realized belatedly, than he was at her. She wished she knew what he was thinking. She wondered why she cared.
“What are you going to do now?” she dared to ask.
Kane thrust the door open, one hand splayed against the wood, the tendons standing out in stark relief. His eyes looked entirely black. “I’m going to find Vaughan.”
KANE
Kane had always been adept at compartmentalization.
Perhaps he was a littletooadept at it. There were things he ought to have remembered that he simply couldn’t. Then there were the memories he played in his mind like a distant observer, feeling nothing in particular. Half the time he felt more machine than man. An insentient creature relying on chemical reactions and rotating gears. From the very first day he’d met Zaria, Kane had known to be worried—he didn’t want her to bring him to life.
In the hours after he’d discovered her in his office, he had fallen asleep sitting at his desk. Then he’d dreamed of the day his parents had died.
The weeks after their deaths had been nightmarish, of course. Both of them dispelled from the world in one fell swoop, with Kane forced to adapt to his new life in their absence. Still, he’d managed to push it all from his mind rather quickly. Or at least, that was how itfelt looking back. He’d clung to Alexander Ward like the kingpin was a raft in choppy waters. His parents’ faces had begun to fade.
In the dream, though, they were as clear as the day Kane had last seen them. His mother, blue-eyed and auburn-haired, with the kind of smile that made strangers mistake her for naive. His father, with his dark curls and equally dark gaze. Cristian Durante’s smiles had been rare, hard-won things. Kane didn’t quite take after either of his parents, though his coloring was closer to his father’s. He’d almost forgotten how young they’d been at the time of their deaths. They’d seemed so much older through the eyes of a child.
Kane hadn’t forgotten being there, though. The way Maria and Cristian had been preparing to leave, shoving their meager belongings into sacks and murmuring to each other in soft, anxious Italian. He hadn’t forgotten being ushered out the door at nightfall, or the men who waited outside for them, or how all the color drained from his mother’s face. He hadn’t forgotten the three of them being led to what he realized now must have been Ward’s office. The confrontation that ensued as his parents were forced inside, and the twin shots fired a moment later.
He remembered his mother’s blood when he was finally ushered through the door. How it pooled around her body and trickled across the uneven floor. Blood, blood, blood.
Then nothing.
When Kane awoke, the barest light of dawn slanting through his window, he had the urge to retch. He didn’t. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, breathing hard. What had his parentsdone?
There were so many things he should have dragged from the kingpin before pulling the trigger. So many questions Kane still needed answers to.
And it was too late.
He sat in silence as dawn bled into day, his parents’ dead faces behind his eyes and the taste of bile in his throat.
“Durante?”
Kane lifted his gaze to see Tom in the doorway. The man’s expression was unsure, and Kane wondered if it wasn’t the first time he’d tried to get his attention. “Yes?”
“Master Collins is here for you, as is Master Zhao.”
That was enough to command Kane’s focus. He lifted his gaze from Ward’s notes, frowning. “Together?”
Tom shrugged.
“Fine. Send them up.”
Fletcher appeared a moment later, Jules a step behind. They wore matching expressions of solemnity. Kane straightened, indicating for them to close the door. “Dare I even ask?”
