What the fuck had PI Deverson uncovered?
Aiden should’ve come here last night instead of getting drunk. He should’ve warned the PI about Marcus… Hell, he should’ve probably told the man to drop the case altogether the moment he’d found out about the truth from Sara.
“Mr. Kesley?” Kim’s voice sounded muffled, like she was far away. “I’ve checked if Mr. Deverson left anything addressed to you, but I’m afraid there’s nothing. I think he might’ve taken the files with him last night before he…”
Did it matter even if he’d left something for Aiden here? A locked door wouldn’t have stopped Marcus.
Aiden stared at his fingers, flexing them. Kyle Deverson was dead because of him. Because of digging out a truth no one was supposed to uncover.
Stifling down another rush of suffocating tightness in his chest, Aiden brushed past Kim. “I’m so sorry, Kim. PI Deverson didn’t deserve this,” he said, balling his hands as he stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the cluttered wooden desk.
He’d been here more than a few times in the last two years and with the PI’s help he’d uncovered so much. The man deserved a medal and a fat bonus, not this. Not to be killed for something that had nothing to do with him just because Aiden had dragged him into a conspiracy bigger than the two of them.Bigger than the death of Claudia.
“I have to go,” Aiden muttered, taking a shaky breath. “Please let me know the funeral’s time. I’ll handle all the fees.”
Kim started to say something, but Aiden was already rushing out of the PI’s office. His shoulder throbbed and his head hurt again, the pain persisting through the effects of the meds. He didn’t know what to do, didn’t know where to go from here. He had no real proof Marcus was behind this, but he also didn’t need it, not when this kind of coincidence simply didn’t exist.
So why was he still alive then?Because he’d traded his visit to PI Deverson’s office for a bottle of whiskey? Because his performance yesterday had convinced Marcus that he knew nothing? Or had this been a warning?
Aiden hit the pole in front of the building with a fist. “Fuck!”
Things were getting out of hand and fast. He was walking a thin rope and one mistake was going to cost him more than an unpleasant visit from the man who could end him with a snap of his fingers. Just like he’d ended the last Valrais.
Aiden stared at the time on his phone. He had twenty minutes to make it to the space shuttle or he would be late for work. He contemplated skipping, but he knew it would do him no good. He had to act normal today. He had to pretend nothing was wrong other than an unfortunate accident befalling his PI.
Because all it took was one wrong step, one wrong word to the wrong person, and Aiden was as good as dead.
Despite Aiden’s questionable mental state, his morning lecture went by smoothly. Too preoccupied stumbling to explain marginal analysis, he managed to somewhat ignore the discomfort under his shoulder blade. Or maybe he was too out of it to register it. At any rate, by the time he wrapped up the lesson, Nyle seemed to have noticed something was off, offering him a massage he had to turn down.
Darren’s gaze followed Aiden out of the room just like it had been following him for the entirety of the lesson, but he really didn’t have the capacity to deal with that problem right now, so he headed straight to his office and sat behind his desk. The holographic monitor came to life as it detected his presence, but despite the dozen or so emails and tasks requiring his attention, he simply scowled at it.
He couldn’t concentrate. His brain just refused to work. Frustrated with himself, he reached for one of the clipboards on the other end of the desk, causing the pain in his shoulder to flare. He winced sharply and then winced again when he fingered his way to the slight bump that had formed right below the bone.
What the…? Had he tripped last night and bumped into something? Fallen asleep on the couch after his excessive drinking, then hit the edge of the coffee table when he’d gotten up to move to his bed?
Heaving a sigh, Aiden settled into his chair. He needed to get a grip because he had more pressing matters than a sore shoulder and aggravated emotions. It was difficult to focus though, especially when it was simply too much to deal with all at once. The man who’d brought him so much suffering was still alive and didn’t even feelremorseful, while the one who he’d looked up to had been lying to him since the moment they’d met.
And then there was Claudia keeping such a big secret. Little lies here and there that he couldn’t help but wonder about. And when he wondered, he inevitably ended up questioningher. Them. What they had had. His heart insisted it had been real, yet his mind couldn’t stop analyzing everything, from the stones they’d both been fascinated with at the museum to their first kiss.
Before Aiden’s mind had the opportunity to delve further into those memories he didn’t need to revisit right now, PI Deverson’s untimely death displaced them. It was wrong. It shouldn’t have happened. Aiden shouldn’t have let it. And yet it had and there was nothing he could do now other than pretend he bought the bullshit Marcus was going to feed the public while he figured out what to do next.
Thinking about Marcus reminded Aiden of the memory Sara had shown him. Her words rang in his head, her promise to always be with her brother even if she had known she couldn’t keep it. It ripped Aiden’s heart to shreds. Marcus had done this. He’d destroyed a family and left an orphan to fend for himself. A boy who wouldn’t be a man for a decade, who had nothing but a necklace with a capsule carrying an AI impersonating his sister. And what for? Some rumored legacy that was likely going to make Marcus more money he couldn’t even spend. How was that worth the lives of so many people? How did it justify what he had done?
Aiden’s soul mourned the Valrais siblings, a piece of it dedicated to them just like another would always remain Claudia’s.How had she been okay with this?He’d thought he could accept that. That he would’ve supported her nomatter what had she just told him the truth from the start, but he didn’t know if that was true anymore. He would give anything to sit her down so they could talk one last time, but that wasn’t possible. Just like Sara had been taken away from her brother, so had been Claudia from him, leaving behind a hole and sleepless nights spent in futile wondering.
A beeping notification ripped Aiden out of his thoughts just in time so he could recognize the anger he was trying and failing to push down. Its familiarity settled into him, hijacking his senses one by one, and he let it, knowing it as intimately as he knew the grief and anxiety that lived inside the darkest parts of him. They lived in Darren too, in those haunted indigo eyes that he sometimes wished he could simply drown into.
Aiden opened the last e-mail and scrolled down to the first of the attached directives from Central Management. It was a list for prisoner relocations for tomorrow evening. After inputting the information into the system, he opened the second directive.
A humorless laugh left him as his eyes scanned the contents. Perhaps he should’ve been at least a little surprised, but as he read through the notice of contract termination effective tomorrow that was addressed to him, he found that it made sense. It was the logical next step, an easy way for Marcus to remove an obstacle. To rearrange the board.
The only question was whether Aiden still had a place on it if Marcus had such a roundabout way of getting rid of him, or if what he did next was going to be his last turn ever.
Chapter 31
Darren was confounded whena guard came for him at the warden’s request, considering Aiden had not looked at him even once during class and had just sat on his desk stiffly. It wasn’t particularly difficult to guess as to why, given their conversation the day before, though Darren had gotten the impression that there was more than a hangover and a busy mind torturing that dirty blond head.
Grasping the office’s door handle, Darren paused. He bent down and pretended to be tying his shoelaces, all the while scoping the corridor. There was movement by the gates, Mike and Louis bickering with a few inmates, and voices coming from the field. No spying guards, at least none in sight. He still didn’t know exactly which one had been lurking in the shadows on the night Aiden had tried to kill him, but whoever it was, he was convinced they were the reason behind Marcus’ sudden visit.
