Chapter 11 #2
“I’m going to be really honest here—” I can’t make myself use her name, “I’d like to get through this as quickly as possible. My boyfriend here bought me a brand-new library, and I’d like to read. And I believe my sister is baking muffins.”
“Funny you said sister,” Isobel exhales slowly. “Carlos has connections to someone very close to your sister.”
The room goes very quiet. Too still. My blood turns cold.
“Cass?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. “Caleb.”
“Caleb…” The name makes me go from cold to hot at once. “What does any of this have to do with Caleb?”
“Someone from his past is connected to Carlos.”
My past. And England. The life we ran from. The people who watched and whispered and did nothing while Caleb destroyed my sister’s spine and took pieces of all of us.
“Name,” he says.
Isobel shakes her head. “I don’t have the name. Marina does.”
“Your cousin,” I say.
“Yes.”
“The one who helped Carlos?” I ask.
“Yes.”
I ask, “So why tell us this now?”
“Because this is when Carlos sent me.” Isobel’s gaze lifts to mine. “Because, with all my careful planning, I still had to wait for him to send me here. If I had tried to leave on my own, he’d have killed me.”
“What did he want you to tell us? How did he plan on getting to Erin?”
“He has files on your entire family,” she stares at me.
“What kind of files?” I ask.
Isobel’s hands curl in her lap. “The kind of files that make people do what he wants.”
My stomach twists. Blackmail. Men like Carlos and Caleb collect pain like currency.
“Did he send you to say this?” Lucian asks. “How can we possibly trust you?”
Amen, Lucian.
“I told you,” her voice shakes. “I came to help you. I want to stop him.”
“Why?” I ask. “Really. Why?”
Her eyes flicker with pain. “Because I’ve been a pawn in men’s games far too long.”
I see her for a moment. A survivor. As all us women are.
“What does Carlos want?” Rafe asks from his spot on “Right now?” She stares right at me. “He wants, Erin.”
“So, you’ve said,” I say even though my spine is turning into an icicle. “Does he want me dead or alive?”
“Alive,” she says, “But I’m not sure what he’s planning to do with you. Other than I know he wants you to get to Lucian.”
Kidnapping? Blackmail? Torture?
“He sent me to give you the information you need to receive messages from him, which I gave to Rafe this morning. Along with any addresses and places I remembered.”
“Messages of?” Lucian asks.
“One of them Caleb pre-recorded a long time ago. Something Carlos found after Caleb was killed.” She gives Lucian a pointed look.
Rafe redirects the conversation. “Tell us about Marina.”
Isobel says. “Older than Carlos. Smarter. One of those employees you all call ‘Bachman friendlies,’ a trusted part of the family, but not one of you. She was in the inner circle of the outer circle. As close as a non-Bachman could get. Always on the edge of important rooms. She handled messages between old Bachman contacts. She knew codes, schedules, access points.”
“The gates,” Lucian says. “She’s the one who helped whoever it was that planted the explosives past security and inside The Village. Isn’t she?”
Isobel’s gaze flicks to him.
“Yes.”
Blaze grew up with New York in his blood and Bachman Village in his bones. His voice comes from the doorway, stripped of all humor. “You’re saying Marina is the one who opened Bachman Village?”
“I’m saying Marina knows who did. And she helped them.” Then, she says, “It was a member of Carlos’s new crime ring he established after the fire.”
“Why,” Blaze hisses. “Why would she do that?”
She shrugs. “That I don’t know.”
“Give us names. This talking in circles is getting old,” Lucian snaps.
Isobel looks at him, and for the first time, her composure slips fully. “So is being blamed for surviving.” She stares at him. Hard. “You have no idea what I went through. What Carlos put me through to get to you. What I had to do to get here alive.”
Lucian’s face goes hard. The room holds its breath. Finally, he asks, “Where is Marina, now?”
Blaze paces the floor. “I want to kill the men who took our Village from us. Slow and painful and alive as long as possible so I can enjoy it.”
“Stop it, Blaze,” I say. I ask Isobel, “Is she with Carlos?”
She shrugs. “Sometimes.”
“Helpful,” I mutter.
Isobel’s gaze moves to me. “We’ll know more when Carlos contacts you.”
“And you think there will be a message from Caleb?” I ask.
She nods. “Yes. I do.”
I think of Cass in that kitchen. Blood through her shirt. Laughing about flesh wounds because pain was easier to joke about than fear. I think of Ryan walking into school with his Spider-Man backpack like bravery was a thing he could wear.
I think of Caleb’s hands on me.
My stomach turns.
Lucian moves instantly, arm around my shoulders.
“Carlos is using Caleb to get to me somehow. He wants to draw me out, force me to make a foolish plan that isolates me from you and—”
“Don’t ever pull that again,” Lucian growls before he lets me finish.
I put my hand on his chest to stop him. I look up at him. “Each time I did something stupid, I was only trying to protect the people I love.”
Begrudgingly, he says, “I know.” He puts his hand over mine, pulling it to his and holding it there.
“But I’m here,” I tell him. “And I’m not leaving.”
The tension in his body changes. Not gone. Softer.
For a moment, we sit there like that as if there’s no one else in the room. Or the world. Just us.
Then Cass yells from the hallway, “Are you all done with this secret meeting?
Because some of us would like to eat our breakfast before dinner.”
I close my eyes. Lucian sighs.
“Your sister,” he says.
“You know she’s not a patient person. She’s difficult.”
He smiles. “Runs in the family.”
Emotion makes my voice even raspier than usual. “We have to do whatever we can to keep her out of this. And to keep her safe.”
“Same for you,” Lucian says.
I look at Isobel. I have no doubt she’s been watching Lucian and me the whole time.