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“The trouble with loyalty is that once it’s been broken, you can’t get it back. You hurt people those in your inner circle cared about, and that made them turn on you. So yes, Mr Kelly was only too happy to reveal all before he died, leaving plenty of paperwork and evidence in place to support my claims. Because the ultimate power in the Hunting Grounds never came from being a trinity or forming an alliance of three. The distribution of power was always four-fold. Business, political, criminalandroyal. You tried your best but you could never secure that final cornerstone to shore-up your empire. Until me.”
“You can’t prove it’s you.”
“Blood tests, along with the official authentication of myrealdocumentation, already has. I know I’m the granddaughter of the missing princess from the fifties and part of the royal bloodline, and soon the rest of the world will too. It was all on MrKelly’s phone, with hard copies found in his safe. The secret one he hid in his son’s room, not the one in his office he suspected you had a key to.”
“It changes nothing,” he spits. “I still own you. You belonged to my son and he’s dead, so ownership of the child transfers to me, as per the rules of the game. It’s why I killed him once you were married.”
“The problem with your plan is that Axel was always several steps ahead of you, though. Axel was never Rose’s father. Kaiden was. And his family are all dead. Apparently it’s easy to falsify paternity records when you have wealth and influence.”
Mr Abbot stares at me, at a loss for words, and I can’t resist driving the knife in. “We were married a few days before your farce of a ceremony, and I kept my name. What’s more, Axel, Kaiden and Zie all tookmyname too. So if anyoneownedanyone, it was them who belonged to me.”
“You mean…”
“That all three of them married me? Yes. Whether or not it’s legally binding in this country is irrelevant because they all willingly signed their names, the empire they built, all that they were set to inherit, and their fortunes over, before pledging their allegiance to me. You can’t touch me or my daughter, and you’ve got nothing.”
He opens his mouth to speak but I cut him off. “Even The Gods aren’t in your pocket.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, Ares steps forward and cuts my bonds, and the others all train their guns on Mr Abbot.
I grab my own gun from my waistband and point it at him. He gets to his feet, finally realising he’s been outmanoeuvred, and the simultaneous click of five safety catches being released fills the room.
I have no desire to torture this man. As fucked up as everything he orchestrated was, he took no pleasure from it. It was simply business. Unlike The General, Mr Abbot never made it personal. Well, until he killed his own son on his wedding day.
But now I’m ready for this to be over.
I’m done.
I squeeze the trigger. Shots ring out all around me and Axel’s father falls back into his seat.
Finally, I can breathe.
It’s over.
Odi will be The Doe. It’s perfect.She’sperfect. There never could have been anyone else for the role, really. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. Instead of keeping her at arm’s length these last two years, I should have been preparing for her arrival.
I had no idea she was going to apply to Trinity.
But this is perfect.
The high is a placebo, and a short-lived one at that. Once Axel’s father took his last breath I didn’t care to stay and watch The Gods trash his manor or burn it down. I took the limo back to the house alone. Well, Saint was driving, but he kept the partition up and left me to my thoughts.
Returning to the house, actually seeing it from the outside for the first time since they’ve been gone, being lucid enough to take it in, hurts.
It hits hard. The house that they built to showcase their love being cruelly devoid of that emotion now.
A sob escapes me, but I slam my hand over my mouth in vain trying to keep it in.
“Odi, you’re back,” Lou cries, running down the front steps. I didn’t even notice her standing in the doorway.
She barrels into me, knocking me back a few paces and hugging me fiercely.
“How did it go?”
How do I answer that?
“I’m so pissed Saint wouldn’t let me come,” she adds.
I shake my head. It’s better that she wasn’t there. I couldn’t walk into either of those situations tonight with someone I cared about. It’s why Saint was the driver when we got to the Abbot mansion. I couldn’t have any weaknesses around me. As grateful as I am for The Gods’ support, I wouldn’t have cared if any of them got caught in the crossfire. But the same could not be said for Hector, Louise and Saint.
