Page 36 of Road to Redemption

Not until I set down my pencil and reached across the gap between us, resting my hand on her thick forearm. “Hey, what’s up? You seem stressed.”

The crease between her brows lightened just a fraction as she lifted her deep brown eyes to meet my gaze. “Stressed is one way to put it.”

I tilted my head, prompting her to shake her head with a sigh. “I’ve been doing some research on my parents. Still trying to figure out how they could be involved in the Zeus shit. If they are…”

I nodded, peeking at her laptop screen: a gray and white database with the header ‘U.S. Office of Government Ethics.’ The only search term she’d entered was her father’s name, and somehow, there were hundreds of entries from the last seven years.

“What is it?” I nodded to the screen.

“Financial disclosures. After their military service, my parents took up work in the political sphere — my father in particular. Which means that there’s tons of his financial records available to the public. Maybe if I scrub through enough of them, I’ll be able to find something that links him to Zeus? That’s my current thinking, anyway…”

“Mmm.” I nodded. “Any leads yet?”

“None.” Her fist thudded softly against the arm of her chair.

“And how many more do you have to go through?”

I winced as she flicked her fingers over the mousepad, flying through hundreds more entries.

“Jesus,” I muttered, giving her forearm a squeeze.

The further out we got from our initial conversation on the plane, the more I started to consider Leo’s theory; the Oracle had seemingly brought the rest of us together because of our ties to Zeus, so it would be strange for Leo to be the odd one out.

But as I looked at the endless database of nonsensical form numbers and titles, I feared that this was just an exercise in bashing her head against the wall.

“And this is the only place to find info? There’s no, like… Sparknotes for government corruption?”

“Unfortunately not.” She shook her head with a scoff. “I did find this gem on my mom’s Facebook though.”

She switched tabs, pulling up a grainy old photo of a man and a woman in their fifties. He wore a dark blue mess jacket with gold braided shoulders and a heavily decorated lapel, while the woman wore an evening gown that matched the exact shade of his jacket.

Four stars adorned each sleeve of his coat. A General.

Leo’s parents, I had to assume, though the family resemblance wasn’t clear. It was hard to focus on them for long though without looking at the man who stood between them, an arm looped over either of their shoulders.

“Isaac?” I balked. He looked younger than I had remembered. Although all adults looked old to a little kid, I supposed.

I couldn’t say it ever had before, but right then, the sight of him made me queasy. It would have made sense considering everything I’d learned — what he’d tried to do to me — if the disgust had been personal. And some of it was.

But fresher in my mind was what he had done to my father, to Viv, and to Dom. There was never an excuse for behavior as insipid as his, but usually, men like that had a line. Isaac though… it was clear that he would take and take and exploit anyone for even a single ounce of power.

He was the closest thing to the devil I’d ever seen. And somehow, we planned to crush him in just a few short weeks.

I shuddered as I leaned closer to Leo, peering more closely at the photo. “Where did they even take this?”

“A school fundraiser, I think.”

“Fancy fucking school,” I scoffed, clocking the champagne and caviar in the background. “Did they consider selling off some of the emerald mines to raise funds?”

“But then what would they have forged our class rings from?”

I whipped my head around to take in her deadpan expression, but it quickly broke into a smirk. “I’m kidding, Kiera. But there’s no better way to get a bunch of rich fucks’ guard down than with expensive alcohol. Makes ‘em more generous, or at least easier to rob.”

And I got the distinct sense that she wasn’t joking about that last part.

Her eyes never left the screen as she leaned back, chewing her lip. “Doesn’t look like they’re just casual acquaintances though, does it?”

My eyes drifted from Isaac’s hands squeezing their arms to the caption: “Good old days with the inner circle.”