Chapter 33
ELLIE
Istill can’t seem to wrap my head around everything Landon confessed before he slipped out a few hours ago.
I mean, the Fischer revelation isn’t too surprising. All of us suspected that his only purpose here was to get me in line. It’s obvious that Aria never intended to have him take over for her—that position firmly fell on my shoulders.
But to discover that he isn’t technically related to me?
That’s…that’s a lot to unravel. I suppose it explains why my Uncle Raymond is so dismissive of him.
Still, knowing Fischer isn’t my biological brother doesn’t change my love for him.
I don’t give a damn what our blood says.
We’re family. I believe that with the entirety of my heart.
I don’t even want to think about Jane. One of my closest girlfriends…is my aunt? Just when I’m beginning to wrap my head around that bombshell, hysteria will snake through, and I’ll have to shut that shit down.
Later. I’ll attempt to wrap my head around that later.
Right now…
Right now, I need to confront my older brother.
Adoptive brother, apparently.
He’s here. He’s actually fucking here, and restless anticipation skitters across my skin like an infestation of fire ants.
I don’t know where Aria sends him most days, but today, he’s sipping coffee while staring out the living room window, dark shadows marring the skin beneath his eyes and his hair disheveled.
He looks awful, and my heart is unsure whether it wants to break or harden.
What, exactly, has he been doing when Aria sends him away on “business”? Hurting people? Killing them?
The guys are in our room. I asked to do this alone.
Well, they’re supposed to be. I think I can see Zane’s piercing brown eyes staring up at me from behind a pillar, but I’m pretending I don’t notice that.
Crazy-ass stalker.
Fischer doesn’t acknowledge me as I step closer.
He just…stands and stares, like he’s been placed there as part of the room’s architecture—permanent, unmoving.
The early morning light strips the world of warmth, turning the glass into a pale mirror.
His reflection looks worse up close: hollowed eyes, jaw unshaven, hair sticking up in directions that suggest he ran his hands through it too many times and then gave up.
He holds his coffee with both hands, but he isn’t drinking it.
It’s merely an anchor, something to keep him upright.
I hesitate, then clear my throat.
The sound cuts through the stillness like a snapped wire. Fischer jolts, coffee sloshing dangerously close to the rim. He spins around, instincts flaring before recognition settles in.
“Ellie,” he says, exhaling. Like he didn’t realize how tightly he’d been wound until now.
“Sorry,” I say, though I’m not. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
He snorts. “You didn’t. I scared myself.”
There’s a beat where neither of us knows what to do with the quiet.
“Do you want to play chess?” I ask.
He stares at me. Actually stares, like I spoke in another language. “You hate chess.”
“I know.”
His mouth twitches. “You complain the entire time we play. Last time, you accused the board of being rigged.”
“It was,” I say mildly.
A breath of laughter slips out of him before he can stop it. He rubs his face with one hand, dragging it downward like he’s trying to reset himself. “You trying to distract me?”
“Yes.”
He considers that, then nods. “All right. Let’s do it.”
We dig out a board I spotted earlier from the lower cabinet.
The board is worn smooth in places, one corner chipped.
A few of the pieces don’t match—the result of years of losses and replacements.
Fischer sets it up automatically, muscle memory guiding his hands.
I take white without asking. He doesn’t comment.
We sit across from each other at the kitchen table. The house feels too big, too quiet, like it’s listening.
I move first.
For a while, the only sounds are the soft knock of wooden pieces and the faint hum of the refrigerator. Fischer plays aggressively, like he always does. I play defensively, buying time. It’s familiar enough to feel almost safe.
Almost.
“Is it safe to talk?” I ask, flicking my eyes from the board.
He doesn’t look up. “Yes.”
I slide my knight into position. “You’re sure?”
He finally meets my gaze. “The house isn’t bugged. Aria’s too confident in her control over us to bother. Besides, she doesn’t want anyone to know what she’s up to. She understands how dangerous it would be if someone were to hack into her database.”
My stomach twists and tightens.
Fuck, I just need to…let it out, don’t I? Rip the metaphorical bandage off.
Why does my skin feel so itchy?
I swallow. “Fischer…are you aware that Aria isn’t your biological mother? That our dad…my dad…isn’t yours? That we’re not actually related?”
The air changes.
His hand freezes over a pawn, fingers tightening like he might crush it. Slowly, deliberately, he sets it down. When he looks up at me, something in his face has gone dim, like a light switched off behind his eyes. He appears older. Exhausted in a way sleep doesn’t fix.
“I became aware shortly after she took me in,” he says.
My chest aches. “You didn’t tell anyone.”
“There was no one to tell,” he replies. “And no benefit in saying it out loud.”
“How did you know?” I ask quietly.
“Paperwork, mostly. Dates that didn’t line up. Medical records that vanished when I asked questions.” He exhales through his nose. “And instinct. She never looked at me the way mothers look at their children.”
I can’t describe what that’s supposed to look like, but I know what he means.
“I thought she wanted me to become the new leader of POP, though at the time, I didn’t understand what that was. Not fully,” he continues. “She talked about legacy. Continuity. The future.” His fingers curl around a rook, knuckles whitening. “I thought I was being prepared for something important.”
“And instead…” I begin, nibbling on my lower lip.
“Instead, I was bait,” he says flatly.
The word sits between us, sharp and undeniable.
“For me,” I whisper.
He nods once. “She assumed you’d come for me. That your love for family would override caution.” A bitter smile flashes across his face. “She wasn’t wrong about the instinct. Just the timing.”
My next move on the board is reckless. I don’t care.
“I discovered the truth about our father first,” he continues, his voice subdued.
I can’t imagine how that feels—to discover the man who raised and loved you isn’t actually your blood.
Then again, maybe I can understand. It’s the same with my mom, after all.
“He is my father. He adopted me when I was a baby. Apparently, Mom had a fling with a lowlife and ended up pregnant. She met Dad shortly after, and he agreed to raise me as his own.” A tentative, fleeting smile touches his lips before vanishing. “I learned about Aria not long after.”
“When did you realize the truth about what POP is? What she is?” I ask.
“When she first started seeking me out, she tried to buy my loyalty,” he says. “Helped the shipping company. Cleared routes. Smoothed out regulatory issues that had been strangling us for years.” His gaze drops to the board. “I honestly believed she was on our side.”
“And POP?” I ask.
“That came later. I thought I was joining a movement. She made it sound like I could change the world. I didn’t understand the scope until I was already inside.
” His jaw tightens. “The underbelly is where you see it clearly. The coercion. The disappearances. All those damn deaths.” His piercing gaze locks on mine, swarming with demons I can’t even begin to comprehend.
“She made me do awful things. Makes me. I became a monster. I…I don’t want to talk about it. ”
I take his bishop. He barely reacts.
The word echoes in my head, an ugly, jagged thing. Monster.
Is he one? I replay the fragmented stories I managed to pry from him so far.
I have no doubt he did POP’s dirty work.
He broke things. He hurt people. He did things that the Fischer I grew up with, the one who taught me to ride a bike and cried when our dog died, would never, ever do.
He did it all with my face in his mind. He became a shield, a weapon, a monster… all for me.
Coerced.
Forced.
I understand the logic. I do. It was the only choice he thought he had.
But understanding doesn't erase the image that’s now burned onto the back of my eyelids—the look in his eyes when he confessed the truth.
Not pride, not even satisfaction. Just a profound, hollowed-out emptiness.
A piece of his soul chipped away, ground to dust.
I wonder whether he can ever get that piece back. Or if you break something that badly, does it stay broken forever?
The question turns inward, sharp and accusatory.
What if it were me?
What if it was him they had threatened? If they’d come to me with pictures of Fischer, with their veiled promises of what would happen to my brother if I didn’t cooperate?
My mind supplies the images without permission. Fischer, with his easy laugh and his stupidly kind heart. Fischer, helpless. Fischer, hurt because I was too weak, too scared to do what needed to be done.
A cold dread, slick and oily, rises in my throat.
I think of my mom, my dad. I think of the men I love more than life itself.
I picture their faces, their safety, their lives hanging in the balance, contingent on my actions.
On my willingness to cross the lines that separate decent people from…
people like Aria. Like what Fischer has become.
And I know.
The certainty is a rock in my gut. I would do it. I would shatter. I would burn. I would walk into the fire and let it turn me into something unrecognizable if it meant keeping them safe. I would lie, I would steal, I would hurt.
I would become the very thing I fear in him.
I look back at Fischer’s rigid spine. He isn't a monster because he's evil. He's a monster because he loved me too much. And in that moment, I realize the capacity for that kind of monstrosity isn't just in him. It's in me too. It’s sleeping in my blood, waiting for a reason to wake up.
And that is the most terrifying thought of all.
“She hates me,” he says suddenly, pulling me out of my macabre thoughts.
I look up. “Aria?”
“She despises me because I’m not hers,” he says. “I’m useful, but I’m wrong. A flaw she tolerates.” His voice drops. “She never lets me forget it.”
Something sharp lodges in my throat.
“We may not be biological siblings, but you are my little sister. That will never change. Some ties are stronger than blood,” he says.
I think of my guys, of Fischer, and can’t help but nod.
Yes. Some ties are infinitely stronger than blood.
“I’ve been trying to spare you from this fate,” he adds.
“As much as I can without tipping my hand.”
I shake my head. “You shouldn’t have had to.”
“No,” he agrees softly. “But here we are.”
“We originally sought you out because we thought you would have information on Aria’s little black book,” I begin, and when he gives me a befuddled stare, I know it’s pointless.
“Rumor has it that Aria keeps extensive blackmail material on all the members of POP, in case one of them steps out of line. Do you have any idea where that information would be?”
Fischer’s laugh is sharp and humorless, a bark of sound in the sudden silence that permeates the room.
“Fuck no. Do you think that crazy bitch would tell me anything? I’m just…
” He holds up his chess piece, turning it over and over in his hand.
“A pawn.” He drops it back onto the board with more force than necessary, causing the entire table to rattle.
“I’m the pawn, she’s the queen, and you’re the… ”
“King,” I answer evenly, sliding my bishop across the board. “I’m the king.”
A wry smile tugs at his lips. “All hail King Ellie.”
I tamp down my amusement as I give the board a once-over. At this point, I’m not even truly playing—simply moving random pieces across the board. “Do you know why Aria wants me to pretend to be Cassia? I know what she claims, but how much of it is the truth? What is her end goal?”
He leans back, the chair creaking under his weight. For a moment, he stares at the ceiling like the answers might be written there.
“I don’t know enough,” he admits. “But Cassia is a construct. A symbol. A rallying point. Something bigger than a person.” He looks back at me. “POP is mobilizing. Quietly. For something massive.”
“The religion is fake,” I say, sharper than I mean to. “It’s propaganda. No one actually believes it.”
Fischer doesn’t answer right away. He studies the board like it’s betrayed him.
“I’m not so sure anymore,” he says. “I think that Aria is trying to turn the front into something real. She wants belief. Devotion.”
He taps the chessboard with one finger, his haunted gaze never leaving my own.
“And she’s using you to make them believe.”