I don’t add that Paxton will destroy her when he finds out she’s still alive. That he will deploy every resource at his disposal, burn every favor, scorch the earth if he has to.
He’s built for that kind of revenge. A younger, more brutal version of our father.
I’m not. I’m a wreckage pretending to walk upright.
“Everything about everyone is a lie, child. The sooner you accept that, the easier your life will be.”
“I don’t understand.” I grasp at my head. “What do you even want?”
She takes a step closer, and her security shifts with her, a choreographed adjustment that tells me they’ve done this before. “I’m not here to punish you for Bors, Lance. Soldiers die. That’s the cost of the game.”
She looks around the brownstone, her gaze cataloguing everything the way mine does, exits and angles and the distance between bodies. She learned it before I did. Or maybe I learned it from her. Who knows what the fuck is true anymore.
“I’m here to offer you something better.”
“I don’t wantanythingfrom you.”
“You want freedom, don’t you? I can give you that.”
“So, let me get this straight,” Genevieve interrupts. She takes a step closer, and my shoulders stiffen. I move to block her from Cassandra and her men.
“You work forBrutus? You’re part of Badon Hill?”
Cassandra laughs. “IamBadon Hill, foolish girl. Brutus is my brother.”
Her words hit me like a train, and I physically stumble back.“What?”
At first, what she said doesn’t register, the words echo like they’re muddled and underwater.
But then the pieces slot together, and recognition crashes over me. “Brutus Myrddin is your fuckingbrother?”
She smiles.
“BrutusTroyis my brother. Myrddin is a ridiculous alter ego he insisted on using because he thought it made him sound like a wizard.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “He’s always had a flair for the dramatic. Reminds me a lot of Alex in that way.”
The room is spinning. Or maybe that’s just me.
“I let him have it.” She shrugs. “Small joys, really, in the grand scheme of things.”
The world tilts on its axis.
All this time. All theseyears.
Brutus, the Lye, Freddy, everything that happened to my family, everything that happened to Genevieve—it all traces back toher.
“So what, you want revenge?” Genevieve cuts in again.
“I’m tired of your voice.” Cassandra waves a hand and before I can blink the men with her have Genevieve and her father in their arms, guns to their heads.
My entire world narrows, panic clawing at my lungs, my chest, my heart.
“Revenge is for people who’ve already lost. But I haven’t lost anything,” she says. “I’ve been building. Positioning.”
“For my entire life?” I ask.
“Remember what I told you about chess, Lance. The queen doesn’t announce herself. She moves quietly, positions her pieces, and by the time anyone realizes what’s happening…checkmate.”
“I’m not one of your pieces.”
