Page 105 of Never the Same

I’d been prepared for this moment. My barrel pressed against his temple in a single motion, stopping him from drawing his weapon.

His chest heaved, his eyes cutting sideways to me. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he growled low.

The door behind us opened. Julian came out with his laptop open. He didn’t speak, and he probably had no words, given what he’d found out. He spun the screen around and hit play.

On-screen, Gideon carried Hollis’s limp body into a black windowless van. Her head lolled against his shoulder.

The footage was crystal clear, not blurred. It was him.

Gideon’s arms dropped, his whole frame going rigid. He was either a hell of an actor or truly shocked. “That can’t be me.”

Julian zoomed in, frame tight on Gideon’s face to confirm the truth.

“There’s no way. This has to be AI deepfake shit. Someone planted it for you to find, knowing you’d try to undo your own source code. You of all people should know it’s bullshit.” Gideon’s voice cracked, but his eyes stayed hard on the screen.

“It’s not fake,” Julian shared, nostrils flaring, eyes on his brother.

Gideon let go of a deep breath and raised his palms slowly, forehead tightening. He stared at Hollis, then back to the damning video. Finally, he sank to his knees.

She’d surely seen her brother standing unflinching before kings and killers—not that she could currently remember that—but something told me she’d never witnessed him bowing to the ground in submission.

I kept my gun trained, finger hovering near the trigger, every nerve alive to his slightest movement.

“Lock me up.” Gideon slowly interlaced his hands behind his head. “In tempore veritas,” he added under his breath.

Tears spilled down Hollis’s cheeks as she translated: “In time, there is truth.”

“Find out who the hell made me do that,” Gideon said, his voice rough. “Because if that’s really me, the only way I’d ever do that is if someone else was in control of my own damn mind.”

Chapter Forty

Hollis

My brother was locked in a windowless suite on the service level, built for this very purpose: a holding cell. Soundproofed walls and a reinforced steel door. Security inside and outside keeping tabs on him.

It’d gutted me to watch such a strong man walk himself into a cage, when I knew deep down in my soul he was innocent.

Jason was giving me time to process what had happened, and I was taking that moment with Julian before regrouping with the others. Outside on the balcony of Ryder and Alex’s suite, Julian hugged me.

“I believe him,” he said into my ear. “If he says someone made him do it, then he’s telling the truth. He clearly doesn’t remember it happening.”

“They stole only his memory of being there that night with me in Rome. How?” I stepped out of his embrace, swiping away tears. “How could they selectively delete just a certain memory?” I thought back to Trevor’s cousin, Tessa . . . I guess it is possible. She’s proof of that. But not with this drug. This one only works on us, so it couldn’t have been used on her.

“I don’t know, but I do know there were other experiments in that book, not just the identity-wipe one that only works on our bloodline.” Julian rested his back against the railing, eyes set on the room, and I looked back to see where his focus was: Gwen and Easton talking.

“Why didn’t you bring this up before?”

“I sort of told you, didn’t I?”

Honestly, everything was becoming a blur at this point. Not good, since I didn’t have that many memories to hang on to. “You said he created weapons during the Cold War. I think?”

“Yeah, the kind used to get people to ‘conform,’ and do shit,” he said with air quotes. “I’d always thought it was the same weird science shit as the memory drug and didn’t believe it. But that stuff was never my thing. Just”—he winced—“Tristan’s.”

Which brought us back to the brother who was probably truly guilty. He’d used an innocent man and set him up. “Where was Gideon before you two flew to Charleston, when you called to tell him my tracker went offline in Rome?”

“I checked the flight logs on your way back here. I never thought to ask him, because why would I?” He shook his head. “But he was in Monaco, which is a short plane ride to Italy. I met him in Charleston since I was already Stateside, then we flew with Delta Shield to Rome.”

My stomach pitched, cold and sour. “Gideon is the one who talked to all the ravers and Putcheski’s son. You were with him for that?”