Chapter 3 INSIDE THE ENEMY'S HOUSE

Elena's POV

Elena's first instinct when Kai opens the front door is to run.

The house is nothing like what she expected. It's beautiful. Huge windows overlook the ocean. Moonlight pours in and makes everything look like it belongs in a magazine about rich people's homes. There are books stacked everywhere. Real books. Thousands of them. Paintings on the walls that probably cost more money than Elena has ever held in her entire life.

Classical music plays softly from somewhere inside.

"This is where you live?" Elena asks. Her hand is still on her knife. Every part of her training is saying that beautiful things hide dangerous things.

"I do," Kai says simply. He doesn't try to touch her or move closer. He just stands in the doorway like he understands that she needs space. "I know it's not what you expected."

"The Shadow Guard taught us that vampires live in darkness. In filth. In places that smell like death."

Kai closes the door behind them. "The Shadow Guard taught you a lot of things. Most of them were lies."

Elena moves through the house like she's walking through a trap. She's waiting for something to spring. Waiting for Kai to transform into something monstrous. Waiting for the beautiful facade to crack and show the monster underneath.

But nothing happens.

Kai follows her silently as she explores. There's a kitchen that looks like it belongs in a restaurant. A living room with furniture that probably costs thousands. A library that makes Elena's chest hurt because she's never seen so many books in one place.

"You can look at anything you want," Kai says. "Search anywhere. I have nothing to hide from you."

Elena wants to believe him. She also wants to believe that vampires can't exist but here she is living with one so her judgment isn't exactly reliable right now.

She finds his office at the back of the house. Floor to ceiling shelves. A big wooden desk. And everywhere, everywhere, files organized with dates and names written in neat handwriting.

"What is all this?" Elena asks.

"Evidence," Kai says. "Ten years of collecting evidence."

Elena's fingers shake as she pulls out a folder. Names she recognizes from Shadow Guard briefings. People who have died. Operatives who disappeared. People connected to her family. She pulls out more folders and her heart starts beating faster.

There. A folder with her father's name written on it.

Elena opens it with shaking hands. Inside are photographs. Her father at meetings. Her father with other Shadow Guard leaders. Her father arguing with someone about something important. But what makes Elena's breath catch is a photo of her father meeting with a man she knows.

David Price.

"These are from ten years," Kai says quietly. He's not looking at the files. He's watching Elena's face. "I've been collecting this information since before you were born."

"Show me," Elena whispers. "Show me everything."

Kai spends the next two hours walking through his files like he's telling a story he's had to tell himself a thousand times. Photos. Recorded conversations on old cassette tapes. Bank transfers. Documents marked classified. Every piece of evidence points to the same person.

David Price.

The current director of the Shadow Guard. Elena's father's oldest friend. The man who came to her parents' house for dinner every single month. The man who taught Elena how to throw a knife when she was eight years old. The man who told her bedtime stories about hunting vampires and saving humanity.

The man who murdered her entire family.

Elena can't breathe.

"It doesn't make sense," she says, but even as she says it, everything is clicking into place. "He was there the night they died. He came to the house. He said he was investigating. He said he was helping us."

"He was the investigation," Kai says quietly. "He came to make sure you didn't have any survivors in the family. He didn't expect you to survive."

Elena sits down on the floor. The files scatter around her. She looks at a photo of David Price shaking hands with her father. They're both smiling. Both completely unaware that one of them is about to murder the other.

"Why?" Elena asks. "Why would he kill my father? They were friends."

"Because your father found out about the breeding program. About what the Shadow Guard was really doing. Your father was going to expose it and David Price couldn't let that happen."

Elena remembers now. She remembers her father arguing with someone on the phone. She remembers him telling her mother that he couldn't stay silent anymore. She remembers him saying that his conscience wouldn't allow him to be part of something so evil.

She remembers him dying three days later.

The betrayal hits Elena so hard that her vision blurs. David Price didn't just kill her family. He did it while pretending to be their friend. He mourned them at the funeral. He patted Elena on the shoulder and told her to be brave while knowing that he was the reason she had no family left.

Elena breaks.

She cries. Actually cries. For the first time since the night her family died, Elena lets herself feel the full weight of the loss. She cries for her mother. For Thomas. For all the people she trained with who died that night. For the life she was supposed to have before someone decided that her father knowing the truth was worth killing an entire family.

Kai doesn't try to comfort her. He doesn't touch her or tell her it's going to be okay. He just sits nearby, close enough that she knows she's not alone but far enough away that he's respecting her grief.

That somehow makes it worse and better at the same time.

When Elena finally can speak again, her voice is hollow.

"I want to kill him."

"I know," Kai says.

"I want to make him feel what I'm feeling right now. I want him to understand what it's like to lose everything because someone decided your death was inconvenient."

"I know that too."

Elena looks at Kai. His black eyes are full of something dark and old and painful. He's looking at the files like they're memories that haunt him every single day.

"Why do you care so much?" Elena asks. "Why have you spent ten years collecting evidence about the Shadow Guard? What did David Price do to you?"

Kai stands and walks to the window. He looks out at the ocean like the answer is written somewhere in the darkness of the water.

"There was someone I loved," Kai says finally. "Someone David Price murdered. Someone I've been looking for for a very long time."

"A human?"

"Yes."

Elena waits for him to say more but he doesn't. He just stands at the window with his hands pressed against the glass, looking like someone who's been carrying grief for far too long.

"What was her name?" Elena asks.

Kai doesn't answer immediately. When he does, his voice is so quiet Elena almost doesn't hear him.

"Iris. Her name was Iris."

Elena feels something shift in her chest. Kai isn't just helping her for some strategic reason. He's helping her because David Price took someone from him. Maybe someone he loved the way Elena is starting to suspect she could love someone if the world wasn't falling apart.

"What do we do?" Elena asks.

"First," Kai says, turning away from the window, "we stay alive. Then we prove what David Price did. And then we make sure he pays for it."

Elena nods. She can do that. She can survive. She can help gather evidence. She can wait for the moment when David Price understands that everything he did to her family is about to be exposed.

But something Kai said is still nagging at her. Something about looking for Iris for a very long time.

"Kai," Elena says, "why are you still looking for her if David Price killed her? Isn't she already gone?"

Kai's expression changes. Something shifts behind his black eyes. Something that looks almost like hope mixed with deep, ancient pain.

"Because," he says, "I'm still not entirely sure she is."

Elena's blood goes cold.

There's a secret inside that answer. A secret that's going to change everything about this alliance she's just formed with a vampire who may or may not be telling her the complete truth.