Page 59
“Do you blame me?” she asked suddenly, her eyes searching mine. “If so, I really am sorry. I did what I thought was right, and I understand if you do. I’m never the one to hide from the consequences of my actions, even if it was from a place of good intention.”
“I don’t,” I answered, truthfully. “It wasn’t your fault. Harvey Walters didn’t deserve to live. And I believe Timothy Walters’s plan would’ve happened either way. Yesterday, one interesting piece of information emerged. All this time, I thought the traitor was only against us, but they were willing to use Killian to get me, so it means the Covent is not really the one calling the shots or not all of the Covent, just the five men.”
Bella nodded. “I think your inside man is working with Heath Glen.”
I narrowed my eyes. “How did you come to that conclusion?”
“Because Heath Glen is the leader of the five men.”
I paused. I didn’t know Heath Glen was there that night at her house. I knew he only stayed this long to avenge his family, mainly his sister, whom he loved very much. But his alibi that night of the Queen’s attack was bulletproof, which is why I always thought he roped in five of his friends instead. But if he himself got his hands dirty, then he must’ve had some personal vengeance with Lylah Queen or was desperate.
“I believe he was the one who orchestrated the Rose Ellen plan, and Timothy Walters was simply following his orders,” Bella continued. “He’s planning something big if he wants Invictus. Were you able to find it?”
I shook my head. All the Surman activity, the weapons deal with the Serb, and now the theft of Invictus meant they were planning something big for the city. Invictus was a double-edged sword. We couldn’t track it because it was an invisible system that no tech could detect. At the same time, it was a complicated system that needed precision to handle. And only three people in the entire world knew how to use it. One was me, then our R&D head, Paul, and Timothy Walters. Unfortunately, he was chosen as the head of this project, which granted him the level of clearance. Unless he told someone else, we’d bought ourselves some time.
“What can it do?” Bella asked, a curious glint in her eyes.
“A lot. The system can send undetectable nano bugs within a city’s radius. Once it latches on to something, the user can simply use the complicated launch software and blow up the entire thing or… a man.”
Her eyes widened. “So you’ll never know it’s coming for you.”
“Yes.”
“If Heath Glen wants to take over the city, he knows he can’t touch the Alacteon with just the Covent. So it’s possible that he turned one of your own against you.”
I thought that to be the case. But what if it was something else… something I feared. And that it was actually the other way around, and the traitor was the one who really wanted the city.
My eyes shifted to the crash of the waves outside the window. “The traitor is either Grayson, Jon, Marcus, Lucien, or Karl.” I didn’t know why I admitted that to her, but it felt oddly good to say it out loud. It killed me to know it was one of them—then what else could I do but play this game along with them? It was my curse of being the eldest of this family.
BELLE
“How sure are you?” I asked.
There was something sad about Arakne’s expression. It made me want to wrap my arms around him and never let go. I didn’t know what I was thinking when it came to him, but I was slowly losing my grasp and blurring the lines, thinking this was something that wasn’t. And my heart was melting more and more with all the time I spent with him. Even though it shouldn’t, I was letting it. Letting him get to me.
“Very,” he muttered. “They are the only ones who have the level of knowledge or the access to pull this off.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know.” He laughed, only it came out more like a dead, hollow sound. “I would’ve given them my life if they asked for it. But they chose to put a bullet in my mother’s heart instead.”
My hand grasped his before I could stop myself, and he looked at our joined hands for a long moment before his fingers laced with mine, and a somber smile spread across his lips. “It’s okay. I’m used to this sad, pathetic life of mine,” he murmured.
“What good would it do to think of your life that way?”
His eyes met mine. “Then what other way should I think? My brothers at least had the liberty to grow, to make mistakes, to fucking live their lives the way they liked, while I live in a carefully constructed box my father built for me. Even if I fucking sneeze, I have to think of my family.”
Even though his voice showed his usual resolute composure, his eyes told another story. That underneath the formidable man was a lost boy craving love. Only he didn’t even know that he needed that kind of love. “You and I are nothing,” I said instead.
He frowned. “What?”
“It’s hard to accept, but once you understand that you and I are nothing, your family is nothing, mine is nothing, all this”—I gestured to the space around us—“your home, your money, your power, your city, it’s all nothing, and we’re all simply the creator’s play dolls, you’ll start to see life differently. What’s meant to happen will happen, and everything will happen for a reason, Arkane. Even the tragic incidents. It could be a lesson or simply karma from another lifetime. You can’t control everything.”
“So what?” Something hard crossed his dark eyes. “I should send a thank-you note to the man who put my mother in the hospital for teaching me a lesson?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Instead of destroying yourself over what you could’ve done or what you could be doing, just accept that it has already happened and there is nothing you can do about it. The hatred and anger you hold are simply an illusion. Instead of killing the enemy, it only kills your mind.”
He scoffed. “Sadly, the real world doesn’t work that way. There would be a bullet in my skull right now if I didn’t live the way I did.”
