Page 13 of One Second After Another

He already knew.

The League still thought he might be able to help them. Somehow. Maybe with Penny, or perhaps with something else. Who knew? Either way, they weren’t about to throw him away like trash when he could still be useful.

It was smart business.

Bad for him, though.

But didn’t they know?

“All I ever tried to do was help Penny,” Luca said at Cree’s retreating back as the man left the room, the beep resounded again over top the door, and they started to close him back in. “It never worked.”

That didn’t mean he would stop trying. It wasn’t his style.

• • •

“WHERE ARE YOU TAKING me?” Luca demanded.

His captor—face hidden by a black mask—said nothing as he continued shoving the barrel end of his rifle into Luca’s back. The action forced him to keep walking through the many corridors of the compound. All in silence, too, because other than the man’s gun driving into his spine every time the guy wanted him to speed up, shut up, or otherwise, he wasn’t getting anything from the man.

Fucking hell.

The long, empty hallways of The League’s complex still felt cold and impersonal. Like the walls and every closed door had secrets to tell—ones he wasn’t privy to. The entire place seemed full of ghosts that he couldn’t see, and there wasn’t a single part of him that liked it, either.

Luca didn’t recognize the path he was made to take with the armed guard still at his back. They didn’t pass a soul on the way as they climbed two stairwells to an upper level of the building where finally, he started to hear something. Low, murmured voices that he couldn’t discern well enough to distinguish between the number of speakers let alone the conversation as a whole.

He didn’t know what it was until he was walked right into the middle of it, though. One last jab of the rifle to his back, right between his shoulder blades, and Luca stumbled—still tied at his wrists—into a large room.

Walls of screens stared back at him. The handful of men inside the space stopped talking just long enough to turn his way. They—including Cree, and four other men Luca didn’t recognize—turned their attention back on the man standing behind the massive metal and glass desk that dominated the space.

They were still talking.

Luca just wasn’t interested.

The screens had his attention now. And the shit plastered on them. Images of faces—people—made up a pyramid. Some faces had been crossed out with large Xs while others were left untouched. It was the two faces at the very top that had Luca starting to see the bigger picture.

The Elite, he knew.

Who else would it be?

Some of the images with Xs were recognizable faces. Murders that Luca could easily connect back to what he knew about Penny’s business over the last few years. But only because he had been looking for her. Someone else might not see it, but he sure as fuck did. She had been taking them out one by one.

Then, he happened.

Or rather, he caught up to Penny.

What changed?

Allegra and the woman’s father sat at the very top of the pyramid.

That was the thing he missed ...

Allegra Dunsworth stared back from the screen. Her image held so much similarity to Penny that at first, it was shocking. It wasn’t the first time he saw the woman, but it was the moment that he realized what Penny must see every time she stood in front of a mirror.

Her mother.

A monster.

Staring back at her.