Chapter 8 #2
The man appeared to be around their age, with brown hair matted in blood.
There was duct tape over his mouth, and though he was trying to plead with Eden, his words were too muffled to make out.
His left eye was already swollen shut, and he’d been stripped of his clothing and laid out over a bed of plastic.
The whole room had been decorated in the stuff, actually, every nook and cranny covered by a layer of clear plastic. It was as if he’d stepped straight into a scene from a crime procedural movie.
“How long did this take?” Even he recognized what a ridiculous thing that was to ask, given the circumstances, but he couldn’t help it. He also couldn’t answer Ares’ question, because he didn’t know either.
Did he feel numb right now because he was trying to separate himself from the horror of it all, or did he really just not give a shit?
Ares slipped the headset off, letting it settle around his neck, and shrugged. “Not long.”
“Have a lot of practice?”
“Not really. I don’t usually prep for this sort of thing.”
“And what sort of thing is this, exactly?” Eden stared at the man again, trying, and failing, to place him. “Seriously, who is he, and what did he do to piss you off?”
“Wondering if you should try and save him?”
“Maybe.”
“He didn’t do anything to piss me off.” Ares stepped up to the man and rested a boot on the side of his head, pressing his face into the plastic.
“But I don’t really get angry about things.
It’s sort of a waste of energy. Not that I’m judging.
” The mask covered it, but Eden was certain Ares flashed him a smile.
“You’re allowed to spend your energy however you like, Ransom. ”
“Not my name.” Not even a good cover, if the goal was to try and prevent their captive from identifying him. He looked enough like the character he portrayed to easily be linked to him by looks alone. Which meant Ares didn’t intend to let this man leave here alive.
Or he didn’t care whether or not Eden was pinned for the crime.
Only time would tell.
“Meet Zonnie,” Ares began the introductions. “Six-one, age twenty-one, grew up in Prim.”
That was a neighboring town. Eden had hung out there a lot in high school, and he took a closer look at the man, but still couldn’t place him. “You shouldn’t have messed up his face so much.”
“Sorry, babe.”
Eden sent Ares a warning glare but then turned his attention back to Zonnie. “You’re the same age.”
“And the two of you are the same height. Isn’t that cute?”
“This the part where you tell me this is all practice for when you finally tie me up and—”
“No.” All of the playfulness drained from Ares in a blink, and he straightened, removing his boot from Zonnie as though he needed to break contact with him in order to fully focus on Eden.
“No one’s putting you in plastic. You don’t get to escape me through death, Eden Baldur. Do I make myself clear?”
He frowned, but that seemed to upset Ares even more.
“Answer me.”
“For a guy who just claimed he doesn’t get angry, you sure seem pissy all of a sudden,” Eden drawled. He held up both hands in surrender when Ares took a step over Zonnie’s body. “Okay, okay. Light. I don’t have any intentions of dying any time soon. Relax.”
Why was the topic of death such a trigger? It was especially confusing considering the setting and what was obviously about to happen.
“Shouldn’t I be the one with the attitude here?” Eden pointed out with a huff. “You called me in the middle of the night—it’s freezing, by the way—all so you could show me a stranger?”
“Admittedly, your reactions have been unexpected. I anticipated more…resistance? Disgust? Panic?” Ares shrugged as though any one of those would have made sense. “You do realize what’s happening here, don’t you, Starling?”
“One,” he held up a hand and began ticking off fingers, “my name isn’t Ransom.
Stop calling me that. Two, I’m not your fucking Starling, and you’re not a god.
Three, Eden stopped giving a shit about other people the second my family was wiped out.
No one gave a damn about them. No one came to their rescue or tried to save them. ”
Hell, there’d been two witnesses that night, one who’d left just before the killers had entered, and one who’d been walking his pet derf across the street during, and neither had spoken up.
In fact, when they’d been called on by the police, they’d adamantly stated they hadn’t seen or heard a thing despite the surveillance footage—which had conveniently disappeared the next day—showing otherwise.
“Other people’s suffering has nothing to do with me,” Eden said.
“Crab mentality,” Ares grunted.
“That’s bred from insecurity or jealousy,” he corrected. “I’m just…numb.”
Ares’ red eyes glinted in the light cast from the single light orb flitting about the ceiling, something about that last word resonating with him. Reaching back, he slipped a hidden dagger from somewhere and twirling the handle in his palm.
He bent down, making sure Zonnie saw the knife, and then yanked the piece of duct tape off his mouth with a rough flick of his wrist.
Zonnie whimpered and curled in on himself. “Please! Please, I told you everything you wanted to know!”
Crouching down, Ares roughly grabbed a handful of the man’s hair. “Tell him. Tell him what you told me.”
Zonnie stared at Eden. “It was meant to be stupid fun. We were high and bored. I’d gotten into a fight with my dad, and Inzer—”
“Hold on.” Eden finally felt his heart constrict. “You know Inzer Yezaers?”
“Interrupting is rude, babe,” Ares chided, then gave Zonnie a shake with his hold on his hair. “Keep going.”
“I…” He tried to glance between them, but Ares’ firm grip prevented him from being able to turn to look at the Black Hart directly.
“Inzer mentioned he knew where we could blow off a little steam. Said there was a place nearby that always collected their weekly funds for the bank that day. Sedos was interested because his mom had cut him off again, and he was out of bolt. I just went along for the ride.”
Bolt had been a popular drug five years ago, but the police had finally cracked down and weeded it out after years of failed attempts.
Actually…that’d happened roughly a year after the deaths of Eden’s family…
“We thought it’d be easy. Take the money and go. But the owners fought back and—” Zonnie instantly stopped talking when Eden spun on his heel and threw up in the corner.
“What’s his last name?” Eden spit, and then, when he didn’t get an answer fast enough, growled. “His last name?!”
“Dephik,” Ares replied. “Meet Zonnie Dephik. He’s the one responsible for killing your family.”
“No! I told you, I only—” Zonnie’s words were cut off when Ares stomped down on his face.
“My bad. He’s the one responsible for killing your mother. According to him, his friends did the others.”
The way he said it, cold, clinical.
Like he was talking about a sandwich order or some shit.
Eden would have been insulted by it if not for the rest of it. The part about how someone he’d known, someone he’d called a friend, had also been involved.
Hell. Inzer had come to their fucking funerals even…
Inzer Yezaers had been a friend of his since elementary school. They’d grown apart as they’d gotten older, but had kept in touch. Since they’d attended the same college, they’d taken to meeting for lunch every now and again.
Eden had invited him over a couple of weeks before the robbery to study.
They hadn’t talked in years, but Eden had figured that was because he’d pulled away from everyone. There’d even been fleeting moments where he’d thought of his friend and felt guilt for ghosting him. But now…
To learn this…
He didn’t think he could handle this new information.
There was a click, and a second later, Ares was standing at his side.
“It’s my fault,” Eden whispered. Inzer must have seen his dad counting the coin from the register. Or overheard his parents discussing the bank run planned for the next morning. Either way, he’d believed he’d learned the store's schedule because Eden had brought him there. “I let him in.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Ares disagreed.
Eden reacted without thought, grabbing him by the collar of his sweatshirt. He barely registered the blaster in Ares’ hand, the one he had pointed at Zonnie, or how Ares didn’t bother resisting or fighting back when he shook him. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sure I do.” His expression remained enigmatic. “We’re talking about revenge. More importantly, we’re talking about who deserves to pay. Eden? That isn’t you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“No, I—”
“Everyone trusts the wrong person eventually,” he cut him off. “You aren’t special. Come down off your high horse and catch a glimpse of reality. That,” he shook the gun aimed at Zonnie for emphasis, “is who you should be disgusted by. He’s one of the reasons your family is gone. Not you.”
He blinked, some of those words managing to cut through the pit of despair and self-loathing he’d plummeted into. “One of?”
“You heard him, babe.” Ares took a step closer, Eden’s hold loosening in the process, but he still didn’t make him release his grip. “Three. There were three of them that night. And they’re not even the final boss.”
“Final boss?” Eden didn’t care that he’d been reduced to an echo machine. Every word Ares spoke seemed to bring more confusion and more questions.
“Think about it. How could three idiot high school kids, high off their asses on bolt, get away with a messy murder involving an entire family? Did you see the crime scene? I have. There’s a whole filmed walkthrough in the police report.
There should have been enough evidence to implement them within an hour of the search beginning, and yet all these years have passed, and still nothing? How is that?”
“The Dephiks.” That was right. That’s what they’d learned from Galen. It’d been a cover-up. A cover-up because the Dephik heir had been involved.