AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The necklace, given to me by Griffin years ago, has been missing since I first woke up in Balthazar’s villa.
As I fasten the chain around my neck, Jacob fixes his sky-blue eyes on Toni in an icy stare. “Are you going to tell us why the hell you worked for that psychopath at all?”
Toni ducks her head, her shoulders hunching slightly. “I’ll do my best to explain, but I don’t expect you to necessarily understand. I know I didn’t always make the best decisions. I’m trying to fix that now.”
“Go ahead,” Griffin says, his peaceful attitude as different from Jacob’s as their looks are similar. “We’ll listen.”
She drags in a breath and lifts her gaze to face us properly. “I’ve been working for Otto Balthazar for fifteen years now. When I was in college, studying business management, I had an unpleasant encounter with a—with one of the things you call shadowkind—and of course no one believed me when I tried to explain what happened. But Mr. Balthazar heard about it and came to talk to me. He was still working with the Guardianship then.”
I raise my eyebrows. “And he decided to hire you?”
Toni gives a small shrug. “I was doing well with my education. He was starting to think about branching out more independently with his… unofficial business. And I can’t imagine that it’s easy to find people who both know about shadowkind and have the right skillset. It made it easier for him, not having to hide what he was pursuing.”
Dominic smooths his hands over a shirt he’s picked out from Pearl’s loot, his attention trained on Toni. “What exactly did he ask you to do for him?”
“I managed everything thatwasn’tpart of his public business ventures: his work with the Guardianship, his individual efforts against the shadowkind, various things to do with his personal life. Mr. Balthazar had a lot going on. He needed someone to keep everything in order, to delegate what was needed, and to alert him to any problems.”
My hands tighten around the hoodie I’m still clutching. “And you did all that for him.”
“Yes,” Toni says. “For him and his family.”
For a moment, as she looks at me, a shimmer comes into her eyes that looks almost like tears. Her jaw works before she goes on.
“I was around a lot. I became close with his wife—Willa—and to some extent with his son. Peter was only seven when I met him, so it wasn’t like we had a lot in common, but he was a good kid. Willa accepted me like I’d been there from the start. She had this way about her… She just emanated warmth. I’ve never met anyone else like her. Mr. Balthazar was steadier back then, but he had moments of frustration, and she could always talk him down.”
Griffin is studying her intently. “And you loved her.”
The flare of a blush that colors Toni’s tan cheeks tells the answer even if she doesn’t admit it outright. “She loved her husband. I don’t think she was interested in women like that anyway. I just liked getting to be around her. That was enough.”
As she pauses to gather herself, I have to stop myself from gaping. It never occurred to me that this woman’s deepest loyalty might not be to her former employer but to his wife.
“She grounded Mr. Balthazar,” Toni continues, her voice getting a bit rough. “She and Peter both did. But then—Peter fell in with a rowdy bunch of friends in high school. There was some kind of altercation, and he ended up shot. Mr. Balthazar always claimed a monster was involved, that they were attacking his family now. I’m not sure anymore if that’s true.”
Zian frowns. “Is that when he got so crazy?”
Toni’s mouth twists. “He definitely ramped up his efforts—working more aggressively, branching off more from the Guardianship with plans they didn’t know about. But it was really… He launched a major offensive against shadowkind in his home city. Had silver and iron embedded around areas they liked to congregate, places where they’d feed in their various ways. Figured out where a nearby portal was and messed with that too.”
Rollick’s head comes up. “I heard something about that, a few years ago.”
“Yes.” Toni sighs. “He must have slipped up somewhere, though. Maybe with the shadowkind contacts he manipulates into giving up intel. A few of the… monsters… realized who was behind the offensive and tracked him down. When they got to his house, he was away, but Willa was there. So they tore her apart. Literally.”
Her voice has gone outright ragged with the last few words. I know without any mind-reading ability that she saw the results of that attack. And maybe I can understand a little why she would have found it hard to sympathize with anyone connected to the monsters who destroyed the woman she loved.
“It broke something in him,” Toni says. “Losing both of them. Knowing it was his mistake that put Willa in danger. He never admitted it—I heard him rant so many times about how incompetent everyone else was to let the monsters continue to threaten us—but he knew. He left the Guardianship and threw all his time, energy, and money into building up his economic influence and political power.”
“So he can take over the world,” I fill in, remembering what Balthazar told me. “He wants to convince or force all the major governments into launching assaults on the shadowkind.”
Toni inclines her head. “That was why he wanted all of you shadowbloods too. Especially after he found out the six of you had escaped and it’d taken the Guardianship so long to recapture you. He didn’t trust them to use you properly.”
Jacob takes a step toward her, his stance menacing. “You stood with him through all of that—through everything he did to us. After youknewhow badly it went before.”
“I thought he was right,” Toni protests. “I hadn’t seen anything from the shadowkind except violence. It seemed like the lesser of two evils. And Willa always asked me to look after him for her when she couldn’t be there… She wouldn’t have wanted me to abandon him after he’d already lost so much.”
She stops and shakes her head. “At least, that’s what I thought for the last three years. But I didn’t know just how cruel he could be. I didn’t know how muchshedidn’t even matter to him anymore.”
Andreas knits his brow. “What do you mean?”
Toni looks at me rather than him. “You’re his daughter—but you’reherstoo. The last piece of her still alive. And he was willing to torture you for not immediately doing everything his way. He put you through so much…”
