AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He slanted her a look. “I went back after a few years, once I knew they wouldn’t be expecting me. Every year, all kids were taken to a different site for inspection while the adults stayed back.”
“You went that day,” she deciphered, knowing he would’ve wanted the kids to be out of his way. “What did you do?”
“I burned it all down,” he stated. “Every inch of that ground, every brick of that house, I set it on fire. And I stood outside, enjoying the flames as they took everyone who had been inside. Alive.”
She shuddered slightly at the vivid imagery she could see in her mind, yet no sympathy hit her for those who had burned away. They had deserved to burn in the hell they had created.
“That’s when The Syndicate came to you?” She put the pieces together from what he’d told her. “And you worked for them for some time. But why go after them afterward, when you’d already destroyed those who’d hurt you? I don’t understand.”
He stayed silent for a long minute, simply staring up, his fingers lazily moving up and down her spine. She almost thought he wouldn’t answer when he spoke up again.
“I began to collect information within the organization. I got to know about how many operations they had in how many locations, about the different trades they were in, about the powerful people on the outside who were involved in some way or the other. I took all the information, and I kept saving it. Knowledge is power after all.”
Okay. That still didn’t answer her question.
“It was in my last year working for them that I understood the structure of the organization. It’s like a pyramid, with handlers at the bottom, their managers above them, then their bosses, and finally The Syndicate leaders themselves. None of the lower levels know anyone above beside their own contact. That’s how the organization has worked for decades and kept everything secret.”
Lyla stayed still, twining her legs with his to let him know she was there without breaking his flow.
“There are—or were—five leaders. The Syndicaters.”
“Is that what they call themselves?”
A dark chuckle left him. “On the nose, isn’t it?”
It was. But people like that with that high up the organization had to be full of hubris, so she wasn’t surprised. “What do you mean there were five leaders?”
“Four of them are dead,” he turned to look at her. “Now there’s just one.”
Her heart began to race at his words, at the implication. No way. She went up on her elbow, looking down at him in shock. “You mean if he is removed, the organization can... end?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” he explained, his eyes on her. “If he’s removed, someone else would rise and fill the void. And organization such as this, that’s existed for over five decades, it cannot be taken down in one strike.”
“But you’ve been working on it for almost two of those decades, haven’t you?”
“I have.”
Why though? She didn’t get that. It wasn’t because of some kind of moral compass that he had—she knew his morality was as good as null when it came to anyone but her. Even the kids, he wasn’t attached to but rather their helplessness made him step up. But a man like him, obsessed with taking the organization down, had to have some motive.
She didn’t voice any of her thoughts, waiting patiently for him to elaborate.
His jaw worked.
“That last year I was there, amongst the data I had collected, I found my own file.”
Oh.
Oh.
“I’d been bred to an underage girl by a man in his thirties,” he stated matter-of-factly. “She killed herself after giving birth to me, and I was put into the home. My sire—”
She held her breath.
“—was a Syndicater at the time.”
Speechless.
She was stunned speechless.
At her shocked silence, another dark chuckle left him. “I am the prince of this hell in every way. Fitting, isn’t it?”
She couldn't say a word. She didn't know what word to say. So she lay her head on his chest, her heart thudding as his beat at a steady pace, pieces of this man falling into place.
