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Hayden pulled a chair over from the seating area and sat in it. “She’s okay. She showered, barely ate, but she’s sleeping now. Hopefully a full eight hours will help her feel more ready to deal with this tomorrow.”
“What’s there to deal with?” I muttered. At their looks, I let out a rough breath. “He’s got us, doesn’t he? He knows that we can’t move against him, not as long as he threatens Kenz. We’re stuck.”
“He can’t move, either,” Hayden pointed out. “Now that we know who he really is, he can’t attack her directly or we tear apart his life.”
My phone buzzed, and just like Hayden and Vance, I pulled it out to peer at the screen.Even if we don’t have proof to turn him over to the authorities, we know plenty of enemies of his who would love to get his real name.
“That doesn’t help,” I snapped. “It means we’re both stuck right here, at a place we can’t stay. Kenz is still in the middle, and no one can move, can do anything. We can’t get our revenge, he can’t get Kenz, so what? We just stay like this until we die?” I carded my fingers through my hair, pushing it out of my face so roughly that I accidentally yanked at least a strand or two.
I made my life by reading others, by tricking them, by creating plans that got me what I wanted, but I couldn’t figure out a plan right now.
I couldn’t see a way forward, a path to what we wanted most. Each time I went down another rabbit hole, each time I explored some new method, it led to the same.
Kenz paying the price for our revenge.
I rubbed my palm over my face as I let out a humorless laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Hayden asked.
“I was thinking about that first night Kenz got here. Remember how scared she was? I took one look at her and was ready to do whatever it took to get what we wanted. The idea of using her didn’t bother me at all, and if she got hurt because of it?” I shrugged. “Funny how that changed, how now the idea of her left holding the bag just isn’t acceptable.”
“I know what you mean,” Vance said. “I’ve spent five years wanting nothing more than revenge. I wanted to make Lorien pay for what he’d done, and each time I saw my mangled hand, it only made me more desperate for that. Now?” He shook his head. “I go days without thinking much about it. Even when I look at that hand, I don’t feel the same hatred I did before. Hell, sometimes I wonder if I couldn’t just walk away from it all, if I couldn’t move on.”
I nearly scoffed and said there was no way that was possible.
However, I couldn’t quite get that out.
I used to see my wife’s smiling face in my dreams. I used to dream of her almost every night, waking up panting, having to remind myself she was gone. The anger and sorrow that would overcome me at times like those had only been soothed by my thoughts of revenge.
However, those dreams had slowly been replaced by something else, something calmer. I’d started to dream about Kenz, to see her sweet face, to hear her laugh in my mind, to think of her. Worse, a part of me even had fantasized about a future, about what could occur in the future with her.
It wasn’t that I’d forgotten my wife so much as Kenz had built a foundation beneath me, had allowed me to stand instead of drown, and I wasn’t sure what that meant.
“It doesn’t matter if we’d be willing to give up our revenge,” Hayden pointed out, his voice soft. “Lorien wants her, and he’s willing to get her killed if he can’t have her. Even if we were willing to walk away from this all, we can’t. We started on this path and the only way Kenz can be safe anymore will be to deal with Lorien and the threat he poses.”
Nice idea, but we still don’t know how to do that,Tor wrote.
“I have an idea,” Vance said.
I lifted an eyebrow in his direction. Of all the people who might have an idea on what to do, I sure would have placed Vance last. He was smart, of course, and his network of information was impressive. His connections due to his art and family meant if we needed to know someone, if we needed to get close to someone, he could manage it. Still, he’d never been the type to plot much, especially when it came to situations like this. “Oh yeah?” I asked, not expecting much.
He snorted softly, the sound implying he could guess my line of thought. “Yeah. Why does Lorien’s threat matter?”
“Because of Kenz,” I said.
Vance shook his head. “No. I mean why specifically does it matter if he threatens Kenz?”
Because he can carry it out,Tor wrote.
“That’s right. See, Lorien has the backing to do what he says. Grisham doesn’t have much power, but Lorien does, and he has that because of his family. He’s dangerous as an individual, sure, but he’s only dangerous the way a man is. It’s his family that gives him the power to threaten Kenz, though. His leverage is there because of his mother, because she’ll follow through on his wishes if something happens to him.”
It hit me then, and I cursed at myself for not having thought about that before. Worse, the fact that Vance had beat me to such an obvious solution bothered me. “The way to deal with an enemy is to cut off their resources.”
Vance nodded. “That’s right. If we can strain that relationship, if we can sow doubt between them, it lessens his ability to carry out his threat.”
“She’s his mother,” Hayden said. “Mothers don’t just abandon their kids, no matter how terrible those kids are.”
“Are you sure about that?” Vance asked. “Because as someone who constantly gets threatened to be disowned, I can assure you that parents aren’t quite as perfect as we like to pretend. Besides, we don’t need her to throw him to the wolves, exactly, just to withdraw her support of him. Without her backing, his threats mean nothing. He’s made his life on his own, worked on his own, only using her connections, so without her, he’s got no one to help him carry out his plan. If we want to take him out and not risk Kenz, we’ve got to split him from his mother.”
