Chapter 4 The discovery - I became the villain the system needed

Cains P.O.V

The walk back to Rook's took twenty minutes and I spent every one of them thinking about Felix.

I knew Felix at nineteen, sitting across from me in a diner not unlike, three days into his first real assignment, trying very hard to look like nothing was bothering him. He'd ordered a burger and eaten maybe four bites of it before he gave up and just sat there moving it around the plate.

I'd watched him for a while. Then I said, "just say it"

And he'd looked up at me with that innocent face he had and said, "I don't know if I can do this"

I'd told him that was the right thing to feel. That anyone who walked into this life without doubt was either lying or too stupid to understand what they'd agreed to. What mattered was what you did with the doubt.

He'd nodded slowly, like he was filing it away.

I'd believed, genuinely, that I was helping him.

Rook was in the kitchen, which in his apartment meant he was standing in a narrow barely wide enough space for one person, frying eggs on a two-burner stove. He looked over his shoulder when I came in.

"Did you eat?" he said.

"No."

"Sit down then. Don't argue with me, I'm not in the mood."

I sat. The table was small and covered in medical journals and an empty mug and a screwdriver and Rook cleared exactly enough space for a plate without moving any of it. He put eggs in front of me and toast and a coffee that was thick and hot, and then he sat across from me with his own plate and ate in silence

I ate too. I hadn't realised how hungry I was until the food was in front of me.

Halfway through, Rook said, without looking up, "How bad is it?"

"The wound?"

"The situation."

I considered lying. "Bad," I said. "And it's getting more complicated."

"Complicated like you need more time, or complicated like you're going to get yourself killed before those stitches dissolve?"

"Hopefully the first one."

He looked at me then, he said "You know I'm going to say be careful, and you know you're going to nod and not listen."

"Probably."

"Then I'll skip it." He picked up his coffee. "What do you need?"

"I need to borrow your phone a little longer. And I need to stay one more night if that's manageable."

"The bed is not going anywhere." He paused. "Anyone know you're here?"

"One person knows but She's not the problem."

He made a sound that wasn't quite agreement and went back to his eggs.

I was finishing the coffee when my borrowed phone buzzed on the table.

It was Sable.

"Something's changed. Come alone and come careful. Don't be followed" She sounded frantic and given that i literally just left her made me worried

I read it twice and it meant that whatever she'd found had to be serious.

I typed back. "on my way"

Rook was watching me from across the table. "You have to go?."

"Yeah."

"Come back if you need the other shoulder stitched up."

I pulled on the jacket he'd lent me and I was almost at the door when I stopped and turned back.

"Rook. The kid I trained. Felix Hale, did you ever patch him up?"

Rook thought about it before sighing and answering. "Once. Eighteen months ago maybe, he had a knife cut on his forearm, nothing serious and he Kept saying sorry for bleeding on the table."

Something moved in my chest that I didn't examine too closely. "Yeah," I said. "That sounds like him."

I nodded and left

Sable arrived exactly on time.

She was moving fast, coat pulled close, and I watched her check over her shoulder twice before she spotted me. She crossed the floor without slowing down and stopped close and I understood from that alone that whatever she was carrying was too large for the normal amount of distance between people.

"You look like you ran here," I said.

"I walked fast. There's a difference." She reached into her coat and pulled out a folded sheet of paper and held it out. "Read the header first. Then the bottom."

I unfolded it and then iread the header.I also read the date and i Read the two names in the signatory lines at the bottom and felt something go very stillinside me.

It was a contract, dating back to six years old. An agreement between Marcus Devereaux and Aldric .

A founding document and a partnership agreement predating almost everything I thought I understood about how the family operated.

I looked up at her. "Where did you get this?"

"Does it matter?"

"It matters if someone knows you have it."

She hesitated , just long enough to tell me the answer was yes, possibly. "I've been sitting on a source inside Aldric's office for fourteen months. He found something last week and got scared enough to reach out." She paused. "He's gone dark since sending it. I don't know if that means he ran or if it means something worse."

I looked back at the document. Read it again more slowly this time, understanding what it actually meant. Marcus hadn't been Aldric's instrument. Aldric hadn't corrupted a pre-existing empire. They had built it together, from the ground up, with this piece of paper as the foundation stone.

Everything I thought I was dismantling was wrong.

"The family isn't Aldric's leverage over Marcus," I said slowly.

"No."

"Aldric is the family."

"From the very beginning." She took the document back, refolded it, slid it into her coat. Her eyes were steady but there was something underneath them,

"Which means every move you make against Marcus is a move against Aldric. And Aldric will know someone is coming long before you're close enough to matter." She looked at me directly. "We need a different approach."

I stood there in with the cold coming through my jacket and the wound pulling across my chest and the Ledger sitting at the edge of my vision, Marcus's name burning at the top of it like a light left on in an empty room.

Suddenly i heard footsteps on the stairwell, more than one person, moving with the deliberate quietness of people trying not to be heard.

Sable and I looked at each other.

She said, very calmly, "Did you check your tail?"

"Yes."

"So did I." Then i said. "Then we have a problem."