Heartless Legacy (Heartless Heirs of Canyon Falls #4)

27. Thea

Chapter 27

Thea

A knock sounds on my door, and I poke my head up from the blanket I’m wrapped in, as Wolfe walks over to answer it. Alexz steps inside my room, carrying a folder.

“Mind if I sit?” Alexz asks, stopping next to the couch.

“This is your boat. You can do whatever you want.”

“This is your space, Thea, and I respect that. If you tell me to stand, I’m happy to stand.”

“You can sit.” I straighten on the couch, tucking my blanket under my feet, to give him more room. I appreciate how he isn’t pushy and doesn’t demand that I treat him a certain way. Other than the initial acknowledgment of him being my grandfather, he hasn’t even mentioned that we’re related. He insists I call him Alexz, but it’s Operation s, or Sir to everyone else, and treats me like I’m a guest, but also one of his crew.

“I want to show you something,” He says, placing the folder full of photographs on the table in front of me. Wolfe takes the chair on my right. The first photo Alexz hand me is of a bunch of kids. It takes me a while to realize I’m in it. I’m so little, but I remember those purple polka dot ribbons that I wanted to wear all the time, even when they clashed with my yellow sunshine shirt. I flip the picture over and see the name of the daycare center.

“I remember this picture day. I was so excited that mom said I could wear the yellow sunshine shirt, my flower glasses, and my jacket and boots with my purple hair bows.”

“Very cute outfit.” Wolfe says, not bothering to hide his laughter.

“Right? I was rocking my cowgirl bumble bee color scheme.” I study the picture a little longer. I remember taking the pictures, but I never saw them. “This was a good day. We went to see Disney on Ice, then out to dinner afterwards, and she let me order onion rings.”

Alexz hands me another picture. It’s of me in front of the Disney on Ice sign. Then he gives me a third picture taken a few weeks later at the zoo. Mom snapped a picture of me while I was watching the elephants. There’s a second picture where mom must’ve stepped back a little to get more of the elephant in the frame. She’s captured a woman in the background.

I flip back to the Disney on Ice picture. The same woman is in it, off to the side. The date on the pictures shows they were taken a month apart. At first glance, it looks like mom has accidentally caught her in the frame, but when I compare the two, I see she’s intentionally added her to the one from the zoo. “This woman was at both places at the same time we were.”

“Three.” Alexz says, handing me another photo. “We believe this photo is outside of one of the places where Hailee worked.”

Looking up at him, I ask, “How do you have these photos if you weren’t shadowing us when I was a kid?”

“The insurance company collected them for me.”

“What insurance company?”

“The one working on the claim for the water damage at your storage unit.”

Wolfe snorts, and asks, “You flooded the place?”

“Not at all. But I made sure we were the ones going through Thea’s things.” Alexz smiles at me. “I’ll show you my photo albums sometime.”

I just stare at him. What else can I do? He shows no remorse about picking through my belongings and helping himself to what he wants. “Don’t you mean my photo albums?”

His smile widens. It’s one that says he didn’t misspeak. He’s keeping my pictures for himself. “You can’t just go around taking people’s shit, Alexz.”

He laughs. A sound so unexpected, it startles me, then I find myself smiling too, because I realize how much of a hypocrite that statement makes me.

I go back to looking at the zoo picture. “We moved for the first time, right after this. Mom made sure I knew how to spell my name and my birthday. She kept saying it was important that I remember my birthday. We bounced around a lot after that. She spooked easily and was always worried about people talking to me. We finally ended up in Nevada. Things would be good for a while. She’d be dating and then, out of the blue, she’d get real nervous and suspicious, thinking everyone was lying to her and spying on us. Her drinking made her paranoid. Or at least I thought it did.”

Alexz says, “I’m going to say something and I want you to keep an open mind, okay?”

I don’t agree or disagree to his request. He’s not really expecting me to, because Alexz is gonna say what he wants either way. “I don’t think your mother was an alcoholic.”

“Oh, she was.” I say, quickly disagreeing.

His stare is unwavering, eyes unyielding, when he responds, “I think it was all an act.”

“Excuse me?”

“I think your mother pretended to be drunk for attention.”

“Sure.” I shrug. “They diagnosed her with a personality disorder when I was thirteen. I just never asked her which one. The medicine was helping, so-”

He interrupts and says, “Let me clarify. I don’t think your mother was ever an alcoholic, nor do I think she was on any medication. I think it was all an act so that people wouldn’t look too closely into who she was or what she was doing.”

I pluck at the cuff of my sleeve, and Wolfe asks, “What do you think Hailee was really doing?”

Alexz admits, “I haven’t worked that part out yet.”

Whatever Alexz knows, I need to know. I force myself to face him. “But you have your suspicions?”

“I do.” He glances over at Wolfe before continuing. “You asked me about the day I died.”

“You told me you were on your way back from a challenge, but you never went into detail about why someone tried to kill you.”

“I assume Beauwolf still hasn’t told you.”

My chest tightens. More secrets. I’m so fucking over secrets. “Told me what?”

“During my time as a prospect, I spent a lot of time in the archives going over the documents about the town, the school, and The League’s history.”

I look from Alexz to Wolfe, who doesn’t look even slightly remorseful about keeping secrets from me. In fact, he looks pissed that Alexz is even mentioning it. “Lots of people read those documents, Alexz. In fact, it’s encouraged.”

“True, but some of the documents I accessed were in secure league vaults and were never supposed to be seen by anyone outside of the high council. I’m not sure if you’re aware of the structure for securing challenge items.”

“I know there are vaults and sometimes you have to take your challenge item right there, but all the ones I had were for me to keep safe on my own or turn over in chamber.”

“That’s right. The league has many vaults, but there are three that are designated for holding extremely high value items and documents. There’s one vault each under the control of The Historians, The League, and The Guardians. I was asking a lot questions, and one day they sent me on a challenge to break into a guardian vault and steal a bond. Everything that could go wrong did. Right from the beginning. The case I was looking for was misplaced. I triggered an alarm and barely got out of there undetected. To top it all off, when I opened the case, there was no bond. There was a letter and a remnant of a burned piece of paper. My accident happened on the way back from that challenge, and the case was gone when I came to. That’s why I didn’t question going with those guys. I knew then that I’d been set up.”

He looks uncomfortable, as if he’s not sure if he should continue. “What else?”

“One of the questions I had was whether or not the names on the wall in the tomb were accurate.”

“Why would you think they weren’t?”

“Because a few months before all this happened, I came across a note in a book in the archives that referenced a group of men who started the trinity group of The League of the Daggered Raven. The next time I was able to access the vault, I looked for the book I saw the note in, but it was gone.”

“Trinity? You mean three names, like The Trium?”

Alexz smiles at me like a proud parent. It makes me feel weird. “Very good.”

“So the trium families are in charge of everything in the league?” That doesn’t bode well for me. I’ll never be able to show my face in town again.

“I can’t prove it, but I don’t think the other groups were meant to be under the umbrella of The League.”

“What do you think it was supposed to be?”

“I think the original structure gave equal power to three branches of the society. The Historians, The Guardians and The League.”

“And you think this, why?”

“Because of the archives. If it was just a single organization, there would be no need to designate the archives as owned and managed by each activity, and a friend wouldn’t have had to sneak me into the guardian archives where I saw that note, to begin with.”