Page 49 of Barinov

“He didn’t keep me locked down there the whole time.” I explain, my fingers stilling on her spine. “He needed me to set up the surveillance system on you and your friends, remember? But every time I would see you through those feeds, you were worse.”

I clear my throat, trying to clear the sound of her screaming at the walls at Rosethorne from my memory.

“I wasn’t going to let the darkness take you,” I say softly. “So I pulled back.”

“You what?”

“Anytime Knox found a lead that would even remotely seem like I was alive, I forced myself to bury it. I hacked into the search from this side and killed any breadcrumbs. Made sure every single trail led to a graveyard.” I suck in a deep breath, exhaling hard through my nose. “I had to get you to stop looking.”

Her elbow digs into my side as she bolts upright, staring down at me in the dark. “Why would you do that?”

“Numerous reasons to be honest.”

“Which are?”

“Because you weren’t okay, sis. Not even by a little bit.” I sigh, taking her hand in mine. “And giving you that intel would’ve led you right into his trap. You would’ve come runnin’ and he would’ve caught you.”

Bella sniffles, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “I was dealing.”

“You weren’t dealing,” I counter flatly. “You were dying.”

Her mouth opens, but I don’t give her a chance to argue.

“You stopped eating. Barely drank anything. You refused to dance and pushed everyone away except Knox.” I swallow hard. “Every time Luca would let me see you, I had to sit there and watch as another piece of you disappeared. So I made sure you thought I was dead. That way you’d stop digging your own grave trying to find me.”

Her chin trembles. “What other reason?”

“What?”

“You said numerous reasons earlier,” she whispers. “Me not being okay, and what else?”

“Because I needed to stay a little longer.”

“Why would you want to stay here any longer?” she gripes, her voice rising in frustration.

“My parents,” I breathe.

“Your parents?” she asks, entirely thrown. “What the hell do your parents have to do with any of this, Zeke? You’re not making any sense.”

“He dangled my parents’ plane crash in front of me, Bells. Had me convinced he knew who caused it.”

“And did he?”

“Oh he knew alright.” I rub the back of my neck. “Because he was the one who put them in the ground. But back then, every time I’d set up a new surveillance for him, he’d feed me a file pertaining to their crash.”

“And…” Bella prods.

I don’t respond right away. My jaw clenches so hard my teeth ache.

“Zeke…”

“It was all bullshit,” I finally spit out. “He fed me just enough truth to keep me hoping. Just enough lies to keep me obedient. By the time I realized he was the fucker who caused the crash…” I exhale shakily, the anger burning hot in my throat. “…Knox had finally got you to breathe again. So, I snapped out of it and came up with a plan. Took a little longer than I hoped but I made it work.”

“What plan?”

“Fucker needed some intel off of the Project Dylan servers. I had him convinced I couldn’t bypass the encryption remotely. Told him I needed physical access to the mainframe.” I scoff, laughing at the memory. “Luca’s dumb as shit with tech, so he actually bought it. Sent me on a little road trip to our penthouse with one of his lackeys. I changed our password in the penthouse, hoping that when the system locked you out, one of you would realize that I was alive.”

“Oh no,” she sobs as the tremors start all over again when the pieces of this mangled puzzle click together. “I’m sorry. I… we…” she stutters, her voice brittle. “I couldn’t go back there after—”