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Storm’s hands shake as he searches through the other drawers for something and comes up with a letter opener, an ornate, gilt affair. Before I warn him not to break the seal, he cuts the envelope o
pen from the side. The opener lands on the desk with a clank, and he pulls out a bunch of folder sheets of paper. He almost drops them, his face twisting. The bandage around his arm is spotted with blood.
I grab the papers before they fall.
“What does it say?” he asks, voice hoarse. His face is pale, beaded with sweat. “Read it for me.”
“We should go,” I say, worried. “You don’t look so hot.”
“I fucked up my arm. What does the letter say?”
I unfold the papers, my heart booming. “My dear Storm,” I begin. “There are a few things you need to know, and I can’t keep them from you any longer. Soon you will come into your inheritance, and you must be made aware of things past which bear on the present. I thought—” I stop and frown. “Was he so formal in real life, too?”
“Worse.” Storm looks terrible, and I hope Hawk comes in soon. I’m not sure Storm can walk out of here without help. “Please read.”
“I thought I’d spare you this knowledge, and the Organization doesn’t want me to tell you. Which is understandable, but I trust you not to take action against them. It would not be in your interest. I will explain in the course of this letter why not and how this organization has affected your life, starting with the death of your parents.”
Well, damn. Storm makes a soft sound in the back of his throat, like a moan.
“You see,” I read on, “the leaders of the Organization take hard decisions to protect its interests. I’m one of them, Storm. And I want to say I’m sorry.”
Chapter Nineteen
STORM
The words still echo, tumbling and crashing inside my skull, when Hawk hauls me up and secures my good arm around his shoulders.
“Let’s go,” he says. He pulls me out of the office, Raylin hurrying along. “More reporters are arriving. I hope you got what you wanted.”
“We did,” Raylin says. She says something more, and he replies as we stumble out of the house, but their voices barely reach my ears.
I’m sorry. I’m one of them.
What the hell. What… I can’t even begin to wrap my head around this. He wasn’t just a bystander. He didn’t only watch my parents get killed. He directed their murder, orchestrated it. He killed my parents, but spared me. Saved me.
Fuck, why? Why? It’s as if the more I know, the less I understand. The pain isn’t helping, and by the time we drive back to the airstrip and board the plane, barely avoiding a mauling from a crowd of reporters, I’m looking forward to a bed in the fucking hospital next to Rook.
We take off the moment everyone’s on board, the letter clutched in Raylin’s hands. She passes it to me once we’re flying high enough nobody is trying to climb up the landing skids anymore, and I skim through it, my eyes blurry.
This is a record of how my parents took the small company inherited by my mother from her own father and turned it into a behemoth worth hundreds of millions with the help of the Organization. The Organization funded new projects, pulled strings and arranged for the untimely demise of dissenters and opponents. Licenses changed hands in favor of Jordan Enterprises. Companies were taken over and land obtained regardless of the cost to people by cultivating long-term relationships with certain organized crime groups.
And Antony ‘Tony’ Jordan supervised it all from within the Organization as one of its top leaders.
“This is so fucked…” I close my eyes. My head is killing me. “My uncle was a goddamn gangster and murderer.”
“What does it say?” Raylin asks, trying to read without climbing into my lap. Which I appreciate, because what on any other day would have been awesome is today a bad, bad idea.
“This Organization rules the local underworld, moving independently from gangs and the mafia. It’s apparently a local thing. My parents screwed up. Got the money, never complied with the Organization’s demands. They thought having someone on the inside, a leader no less, meant they could do whatever the fuck they wanted. And that got them killed. Fucking idiots.”
Damn them. It happened all those years ago, and their death still hurts. Knowing they brought it on themselves doesn’t make it any easier.
“Anything we can use?” Hawk asks, who can be practical when not clowning around.
“He had a tattoo.” I frown. “A circle. Ray, I told you about it. He says that’s the ink marking an Organization leader. It’s an ouroboros. A snake biting its tail, a sign of rebirth, just like—”
“—the phoenix.” She nods.
But Hawk is staring at me, eyes too wide. “Circle. Where?”
