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What?I mouthed at him when I looked at him, taking a step away from Lazarus as he spoke to Judah.
Whatever it was that Judah needed obviously didn’t sit well with Lazarus, and that was saying a lot, considering that he wasn’t above doing whatever was needed. But I had a feeling that it wasn’t about the act that he needed to do itself, but the fact that he didn’t want to help Judah.
Keeping him close obviously also meant keeping an eye out on the man in question, but that didn’t mean that he was going to do what Judah needed. It only meant that he was going to keep him on a tight leash while Judah thought that he was pulling all the strings.
“Can I talk to you?” a voice from my right suddenly said. As I turned, looking away from Lazarus, I saw Gabriel’s pleading eyes and the years of regret reflecting in his eyes. He was worried about me, and I could understand that. But if he wanted to apologize to me for the last year, there was no need.
I didn’t hold grudges against any of them.
The reason why I despised Judah had nothing to do with the night when my eyes finally opened after so many years of darkness and sorrow. No, the reason why I hated Judah and those similar to him was because they always thought that they ruled the world. They thought they could get whatever they wanted just because they held the power they didn’t earn.
All these men sat in their ivory fucking towers, looking down on us mere mortals, controlling every single aspect of our lives when they never knew a single day of hardship. They had no idea what it was like waking up in the morning and knowing that you had nothing to eat, struggling to do anything in life because the jobs you were working weren’t enough to cover all the necessities.
So it was either school or food, and many people would rather choose school because it meant working toward a better tomorrow.
But what a lot of people didn’t know was that the better tomorrow never came, because we didn’t hold the strings of our lives. People like Judah and his family did. People who had no right to all this power were the ones pulling all the strings, and they didn’t give a fuck about those less fortunate.
Gabriel belonged to the same category, and no matter how much he tried to do better, and it was obvious in every single action he made, he couldn’t right the wrongs. He was trying, but it simply wasn’t enough. He was still listening to Judah, following him, when he should’ve done something to stop this all from happening.
I had a feeling that the candidate Judah mentioned was just another poor girl, just like me last year, that was optioned to be a part of the Red Maidens he was creating.
“We have nothing to talk about,” I simply said, my eyes automatically finding Lazarus who was just a couple of feet away from me, his arms crossed over his chest, still talking with Judah.
“Danika, please.” Gabriel’s soft voice grated on my nerves. “I know you don’t owe me anything, but I really need to talk to you. I need to tell you—”
“Gabriel!” Judah suddenly bellowed, stopping Gabriel mid-sentence. “Bring her up.”
“Fuck,” Gabriel muttered. “Please let me talk to you later. It’s important.”
“I have nothing—”
“Five minutes, Danika,” he whispered. “Just five minutes and then I’ll leave you alone. That’s all I’m asking. Five fucking minutes of your time and you won’t ever have to talk to me again.”
He sounded… desperate. Almost afraid. Whatever it was that he needed to talk to me about had nothing to do with last year or the fact that I was with Lazarus. Judging by the constant flickering of his eyes toward Judah, I had an inkling that it had everything to do with him.
“Okay.” I nodded. “Find me later.”
The relief was evident on him, in the set of his shoulders, in the way he smiled. As he disappeared through the crowd, leaving me with Judah and Lazarus next to me, my mind started running wildly, trying to figure out what he needed to talk to me about.
My eyes flicked toward Judah, and he was already looking at me.
The smug look on his face wasn’t something I wanted to see. Especially not right now after the cryptic words from Gabriel.
I didn’t like it at all.
The muffled sounds comingfrom the girl tied to the same bed where Danika was last year were getting on my nerves. The stench of fear penetrated the little room I used for my experiments, seeping into every crevice on the floor, every single hole in the walls. I knew it would be days, if not months, before I’d be able to eradicate the dark stain of her fear from this place.
Her body thrashed and turned, trying to get out of her restraints, but there was no use. She should’ve known that there would be no use fighting anymore. What Judah Blackwood wanted, he got, and she was the shiny new toy he wanted to play with.
I didn’t care much about her or whatever was going on in her mind, but I hated the fact that I still helped him, that I still had too much to lose now that Danika was back. But if everything went well tonight, he would have no more power over us.
His family might have had influence over many people in Winworth, but there were others who wanted to see them gone. There were others who salivated at the idea of the Blackwood family completely disappearing from this world because they posed a threat to their own organizations. It was true what people said—the enemy of my enemy was my friend, and Judah wouldn’t know what hit him once I delivered that final blow.
I had to listen to him going on and on over the past year about how he still wanted to catch Danika. I had to listen to the plans he created for the two of them. I knew what an obsession was when I saw one. I knew where my obsession stemmed from, but his… It originated on that night a year ago, when she slipped through his fingers, and predators like him, like me, didn't like our prey getting away.
“Please,” the girl on the table begged, her voice barely muffled by the cloth Gabriel pushed into her mouth.
Stupid girl.
