Page 199 of Villainous Intent

“Dennis Reeves,” I finally said, needing to know everything. “Did you give Dread his name too?”

Something shifted in Cipher’s expression. The desperate emotion drained away, replaced by something detached, the face of a man retreating behind walls.

“Yes.” His voice flattened, all inflection gone. “The data I decrypted from Dread contained two Warden names. Dennis Reeves was the first. The second was encrypted more thoroughly.”

“You knew what Dread would do.” My voice broke. “You knew he’d kill him.”

“Yes. I wanted him dead too.”

I stared at him, searching for any hint of remorse, any flicker of humanity behind those silver eyes. There was nothing. Just cold calculation.

A chill spread through me. The man hovering over me, his hands still gentle despite the horror of his words, was a stranger. This was the real Cipher, the one who could reduce human lives to numbers and probabilities. Who could hand over names knowing they were death sentences.

The physical agony of my injuries was almost welcome. It gave me something to focus on besides the emotional devastation.

“You knew he was the rogue.” My voice sounded hollow, distant, like it belonged to someone else.

“Yes.”

Something inside me shattered and a sound escaped me, a broken sound for a broken thing.

This final betrayal was worse than the others somehow. I could almost understand him not knowing I was the Warden, not connecting the dots between Annie Bishop and some encrypted name. But this? Knowing Dread was the monster I was hunting and saying nothing?

I turned my face away, unable to look at him. The night sky stretched above us, the stars cold and distant, indifferent to my pain. Blood pulsed around the knife in my shoulder, a steady reminder that I was still alive despite everything. Still here to feel every excruciating second of his betrayal.

When I finally looked back at him, his expression hadn’t changed. He waited, patient and still.

“How long?” I whispered. “How long have you known?”

Cipher tilted his head slightly, studying me with those eyes that suddenly seemed as cold and empty as the sky above him. “Does it matter?”

“Yes.” I forced the word past the lump in my throat.

For a moment, I thought he might refuse to answer. His jaw tightened, a muscle in his cheek jumping as he clenched his teeth. When he finally spoke, his voice was emotionless.

“Since the night at the penthouse.”

The night in his bedroom. The night he’d first fucked me and everything between us had started.

A lie. All of it had been a lie.

I closed my eyes, tears rolling down my temples and into my hair. My body trembled from the effort of containing the scream that wanted to burst out of me. A scream that would shatter me if I let it out.

All this time. Every moment we’d spent together. While I was hunting for the rogue, Cipher had known exactly who it was. He’d been working with him.

When I opened my eyes again, Cipher was still watching me, his face unreadable. Blood continued to seep from the wounds in his chest, wounds he’d taken protecting me. Another contradiction I couldn’t reconcile.

“You let me search.” My voice cracked. “You gave me access to your systems. You pretended to help me while you were helping him kill people.”

His head snapped up, attention shifting to something beyond me.

“I sent a distress call,” he said. “Right before I killed Dread. The emergency response team is on their way.” He pushed himself to his feet with a wince. “I can’t be here when they arrive.”

He turned away, moving toward what was left of Dread’s crumpled body. He knelt beside the corpse, searching until he found what he was looking for.

The Tinkerer’s Hammer. Cipher examined it briefly before sliding it into his armor.

“Dread said you did all of this for the Hammer.”