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I frowned. “Why? It isn’t addictive. Not medically, anyway. People could always get by without it – they didn’t always want to, but they did. Why do they suddenly need more?”
Hector lowered his voice. “Wasn’t Ossian messing with the formula?”
My blood ran cold. “Yeah. Botanicals.”
Hector leaned towards me. “What botanicals?”
“I thought back to the time in my suite when I pulled Ossian up on the business expenditure. “I don’t know which ones exactly. All I know is he spent a stupid amount of money on them.”
“You don’t know if he used any of them? In the new formula?”
Shards of memory came tinkering back to me, forming again behind my eyelids. “I talked to Hague about the new formula, but I didn’t ask for details about the ingredients. It’s always had some mix of botanicals. I made sure he put it through testing…”
“And did he?
A lead weight set up home in the pit of my stomach. “I don’t know. I got distracted. And – stupidly – I assumed everyone did as I asked.”
Hector shrugged. “And generally they do, unless Ossian asks them to do something different…”
Questions hung off my arched brow.
“You wouldn’t drive a gun into their mouths Rupert. Ossian would. It’s not right, but I know whose command I’d follow.”
I stared at him wide-eyed, then slammed my fists down on an eighteenth century bureau – Sinclair’s pride and joy. “FUCK!”
I pounded the heel of my palm against my forehead. “He couldn’t have,” I muttered, between thumps. “He couldn’t be that fucking rotten.”
“What do you think he’s done?” I detected a slight wobble in Hector’s voice. He knew what was coming.
“Opioids are botanicals. He’s used opioids. No wonder they were so fucking expensive.”
Hector gawked. “Heroin?”
I sighed despondently. “Heroin is an opioid but it’s not the only one out there. They all have similar effects and are just as addictive.”
Hector shook his head like he couldn’t believe what was coming out of my mouth. “He’s put opioids into Bas?
I waved the press cuttings at him. “That’s the only explanation. Normal, God-fearing, law-abiding people – no matter how power-hungry they are – don’t go around attacking police officers unless they’re desperate.” I pressed my fists into the bureau and braced my arms. My head throbbed. What had he done? What the fuck had he done?
“This puts us in a whole new trough of shit,” Hector said. I couldn’t have put it more eloquently myself.
“I need to talk to Sinclair,” I said, thinking aloud. “He has to know what Ossian’s done. Blood or no blood – Ossian is bad to his bones. We might have blown up that ship, but Ossian’s the one sinking the business.”
“A business we want to put an end to,” Hector reminded me.
“Yes. Absolutely. But, in the meantime, it won’t hurt to capsize the impeccable regard in which Sinclair and Ossian hold each other. They’re as bad as each other, but neither truly knows to what depths the other stoops.” I sighed heavily and walked back to the window. “We have to keep moving.”
“Why?” Hector said. “Why not let them finish themselves off? They’re halfway there. These junkie problems aren’t going to go away. We could run, Rupert. Leave them to handle all this on their own. We could come clean, tell the world what our birth certificates have told us. That we were stolen. That the Thorns are nothing but criminals of the lowest kind. We’d be free of any stigma.” He joined me at the window, fixing his gaze dead ahead. “A lot of shit is going to blow up Rupert, I can feel it. People are dependent on this drug now; things are only going to get worse. We could wash our hands of all this. We could take our girls, move to the mainland and never look back.”
I counted five breaths before my head panned slowly to his.
“I came so close to leaving all of this, and you stopped me. You and Aro and Dax… If I’d left then, like I’d planned to, I’d have started a new life with Vivian months ago. We could have been married. We could have had a child on the way, just like Dax and Rose. She certainly wouldn’t have encountered that creature in the crypt and been defiled in a way that will haunt her for the rest of her life. She wouldn’t be the shell of the woman I love, like she is now.”
Hector dipped his eyes.
I continued.
“You told me to stay.” I said the words softly because I didn’t want him to feel responsible for everything that had happened since. “You told me I had to fight for the island. So that’s what I’ve been doing. The fight isn’t over, Hector. I’m not going anywhere until it’s been won.”
