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He knows me too well, but his joke doesn’t lighten the atmosphere. During our last conversation, I made it pretty clear where I stood on Ivy, and how we needed to talk.
Freddie enters the room, making Ivy’s shoulders tense.
“It’s time for you to leave, Ivy,” Freddie addresses her firmly. I want her to stay, but I’m too tired to start another argument. “Seb will escort you out.”
To my surprise, Ivy jumps up in compliance. Since when has she been a woman who follows orders?
“I’ll see you soon, Bram,” she promises before she and Seb leave together.
Our time in the dungeon made me feel like we could get through anything. Now we’re back to reality, I sense that everything is about to change.
Freddie takes Ivy’s empty seat.
“Are you ready to answer some questions?” he asks.
I groan and allow my head to sink into the plush pillow, hoping that it’ll let me melt into it and disappear.
“You’ve been asleep for days,” he says. “I—we—need answers. Do you think you can do that?”
Slowly, I nod. The longer I put it off, the worse it’ll be.
“Good,” he says, taking the tone of a police officer. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
He hands me a phone with the text-to-speech app ready on the screen. I hesitate as I take it from him. I’ve kept Ivy’s secret for years, but the time has come for me to tell the truth…
“I need you to tell me what happened, Bram,” Freddie prompts softly. “You can take as long as you need, but I’m not going anywhere.”
Where do I start? Freddie wants to hear about my time in captivity, but my history with Alaric and Ivy goes back beyond that. For him to truly understand what happened, I need to go back to the beginning, or he’ll never understand why I risked my life for her.
I type, and the phone speaks in a robotic voice, “I knew Ivy before I joined the Dukes.”
Although it doesn’t resemble what my real voice used to sound like, it’s better than some of the alternatives. Callen favoured the Cookie Monster option a while back, which drove everyone insane.
Freddie sighs. “Maybe we should do this later after you’ve rested more.”
Naturally, he doesn’t believe me. But I need to make him listen. He has to know what I did and why I’m the reason she became a killer, otherwise, he’ll never accept her or give her a second chance. Even if that means admitting that I’ve been keeping a secret from him all this time.
It takes effort for me to type. “I used to work for Spencer Bexley.”
Freddie’s jaw clenches, but he says nothing, nodding at me to keep going.
“I never told you because of what happened the night I quit.”
“Go on…” Freddie says.
He’s trying to act casual while leaning forward, hanging onto my every word.
“When I left the army, I got a job as one of Spencer’s drivers. I was there the night he ran Ivy and her sister off the road.”
I take a deep breath before sharing the rest because it means truly admitting the mistake I made. Sharing the pain and guilt I’ve been carrying for years.
“After Spencer and his men left, I returned to the crash site to see what happened. It was too late for her sister, but Ivy was still alive.”
The vein in Freddie’s forehead throbs wildly like he’s trying to keep his cool.
“When I found Ivy alive, I rescued her. I took her to someone I thought would keep her safe, a man I knew from my army days.”
“The Killers Club?” Freddie can’t contain himself any longer. The words burst from his mouth in an explosion of disbelief. “You knew about them?”
