“I’d made a deal…with Louisa,” he says, grinding his jaw.
“I know,” I answer, and his brows dip, so I fill in the gaps, seeing as he’s been out of it most of the time. “She came here after Dawson called her. I found the messages on your phone and knew it was her. She told me…everything.” My voice lowers on the last word.
I’m still conflicted whether my sister is telling the truth. The fact she’s gone into hiding isn’t helping her case. The thing that’s rattling me the most is that she did help us find Saint.
“What did she say?” he asks, pulling me closer and banding his arms around my waist.
My lungs expand painfully, thinking of our last conversation, and I play with the string on Saint’s hoodie. I tell him about everything she said when I was in Conrad’s basement, filling in the blanks from what we would have talked about if he didn’t offer himself up on a platter. Saint sits like a stone-carved statue as he lets me speak. “When she came here, she said that…I was supposed to join.”
Saint shakes his head, muttering a curse.
“What?” I ask.
“The Chief said the exact same thing to me.”
I swallow. I didn’t ask Louisa the ins and outs of it, too caught up in trying to wade through truth and lies. “Even if she did help get you back, my parents and I got caught up in her double life. I can’t ever fully trust her,” I admit harshly. Louisa has built her life on lies.
Snakes might shed their skin, but their origins will never change.
She’ll always have those stains on her soul; they’ll never wipe off because all three of us were innocent.
“Do you want my honest thoughts?” Saint asks, eyes searching my face as he judges my reaction.
I narrow my gaze. “Depends.”
He tightens his hold on me. “I think…Louisa is just as much a victim as everyone else. I don’t fully trust her, but she did trick the Judge into thinking she was on his side. That was fucking risky.”
“So?” I ask hesitantly, trying to figure out where he’s going with it.
“I think that was her olive branch to you.”
I scoff. “More like a twig.” A broken, snapped, and seared-at-the-end twig.
Saint runs his tongue over his teeth. “I’m just telling you what I think, darling. You do with that information as you please.”
My head drops against his chest, and I let my eyes close as the storm brews up in my mind again.
“Theres something else I’ve never told you,” Saint rumbles above me, and my muscles tense. He feels it beneath his hold, reaching up to run his thumb along my jaw. “Before your dad passed away. He…helped us get the people who work for Ultio.”
I hold my breath, waiting for a bombshell to rock my core.
“He didn’t know exactly what my dad was up to all those years ago, just that it wasn’t legal and a group took my mum. He gave a helping hand for Malcolm to build everything we had here. Recommended the people who’d be interested in that kind of work.”
Jesus.
My dad?
If I’d have learned this all those years ago, I’d be horrified.
Now, I see why people are often driven to these motivations. Although, I can’t imagine him doing something like that; he was always so formal. Living by his code. But then if I really think about it, could I blame him?
He had his own wife and daughters. A threat like this so close by, you’d be willing to cheer on anyone willing to take out the vermin plaguing the state. Especially with our knowledge of how the authorities run things around here.
Saint kisses the top of my head, speaking against my hair. “The Judge was the one who killed my mom, and he wanted to know how my dad built Ultio for me. So when he finally got his revenge, that was the last thing he heard before he met his death.”
A sick, wicked smile creeps up my face at that knowledge. The heat of the flames and the amber flickers of light feel like they’re all coming back to me, watching as Saint’s dad blew the facility to the ground as we left.
I thought Malcolm just whispered something to piss him off. Knowing the King to the Omnia’s last thoughts were of both me and my dad? That the two of us helped in our own ways to bring them down?
