Chapter Thirty-One #2
“You're stupider than you look,” I say flatly. “Alex will bury you for this. You think killing his second won't bring down the full force of the Denver Kings? The Filthy Few? Every organization he's aligned with?”
“By the time they mobilize, I'll have already disappeared,” Fiona says. “With enough evidence on Alex's operations to keep federal authorities busy for years. He'll be too busy defending himself to come after me.”
“Wrong,” I tell her. “He won't bother with defense. He'll just kill you. And he'll make it slow.”
“We'll see,” Fiona says, unbothered.
The SUV pulls to a stop.
“We're here,” she announces. “A secure facility where we can have a longer conversation.”
She opens the door and steps out, then looks back at us.
“You should know… I'm not expecting you to help me. I just wanted you to understand what's happening. Wanted you to see that footage before tonight.”
She smiles.
“Because when Toren dies, I want you to remember that she spent her last night wanting another man.”
Agents pull us from the vehicle—roughly, ignoring Cas's grunt of pain as his leg gets jostled.
We're in an underground parking garage. Concrete walls. No windows.
“Move,” one of the agents orders, shoving me forward.
“Touch me again and I'll rip your throat out with my teeth,” I promise him.
He hesitates, looking to Fiona for guidance.
“He's cuffed,” she says dismissively. “He's not going to do anything.”
They shove me toward an elevator.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
An agent pulls it out, glances at the screen.
“It's Ken,” he tells Fiona.
“Answer it,” she orders. “Put it on speaker.”
The agent does.
“Boss?” Ken's voice crackles through. “Where are you? What the fuck is happening?”
“I'm detained,” I say, my voice hard. “Federal custody. Listen to me very carefully. You're going to call Gauge and Johnson. You're going to coordinate with every available man. And you're going to get to that house before the briefing starts.”
“Boss, Williams is listening—” Ken starts.
“I don't give a fuck who's listening,” I cut him off. “You get to Toren. You protect her. You kill anyone who tries to stop you. Those are your orders. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Ken says immediately.
Fiona's expression darkens. “End the call.”
“And Ken?” I continue before they can cut him off. “When you find Fiona Williams after this is over—and you will find her—you have my permission to make her death as painful as you want.”
The agent ends the call.
Fiona looks at me with cold fury. “That was stupid.”
“No,” I correct. “What's stupid is thinking you can threaten what's mine and walk away. That footage? That almost-kiss? Doesn't change a goddamn thing. Toren is mine. And anyone who tries to hurt her answers to me.”
“You're in federal custody,” Fiona reminds me. “You won't be there to protect her.”
“I don't need to be there,” I say. “My men will handle it. And when they do—when they've killed every single one of your embedded agents—you better pray they don't find you first. Because what they'll do to you will make my threats look like kindness.”
They shove us into the elevator.
As the doors close, Fiona looks directly at Cas.
“You know,” she says casually. “There's something I've been meaning to share. A little secret that might interest both of you.”
“I don't give a fuck about your secrets,” I say.
“Oh, I think you'll care about this one,” she continues, looking directly at Cas. “Especially you, Mr. Vought.”
Cas's jaw tightens. “What are you talking about?”
“Tell me,” Fiona says, “do you know why Alex Denver has been so interested in your wellbeing? Why he's gone out of his way to protect you from certain... consequences of your actions?”
“Because he's using me to get to Xaden,” Cas says flatly. “We've established that.”
“Partially,” Fiona agrees. “But there's more to it than that.”
She pauses for effect.
“Alex Denver took my brother from me, so it seems only fitting I take his brother from him, Mr. Vought. Alex Denver is your brother. After the loss of their daughter, they couldn't stomach the thought of raising another child, hence the adoption.”
The words hang in the air like a bomb.
Cas goes completely still beside me. “What?”
“Your parents couldn’t cope after losing your sister,” Fiona continues.
“Their son went off the rails, became The Butcher and they banished him from their life. They blame Alex for the loss of their daughter. When they had you, they placed you up for adoption, they thought they were protecting you by keeping you as far away from your brother as they could. But Alex knew about you. Watched you from a distance. Protected you.”
“You're lying,” Cas says, but his voice wavers.
“Am I?” Fiona pulls out a folder and opens it. “DNA test results. Birth certificates with matching paternal information. Financial records showing your father paying off your adoptive family to keep them silent about who you truly are.”
She holds them up for us to see.
“Alex Denver has been protecting his little brother for years. And you had no idea. Toren thought the Kings agreed to help because they are good people. Alex sanctioned it because it meant more protection for his last living sibling.”
Cas looks like he's been punched in the gut. “No. That's... that's not possible. I would have known. Someone would have told me—”
“Why would they?” Fiona asks. “Alex—well, Alex had his own empire to build. But he kept tabs on you. Made sure you were safe. Made sure you had opportunities.”
She closes the folder.
“That hockey scholarship at Somerset? Alex arranged it. Your acceptance into the program? Alex made a few calls. Every major opportunity in your life—your brother has been pulling strings from the shadows.”
I watch as Cas processes this, see the confusion and betrayal warring on his face.
“When he found out about you working for me, he came back to save you," Fiona continues. “To control the situation. To make sure his little brother didn't get killed in the crossfire.”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” Cas says, but his voice lacks conviction.
“You betrayed Xaden for nothing. Alex was already protecting you,” Fiona says.
She looks at me.
“Caspian Vought was never really yours, Mr. Devlin. He's always belonged to Alex Denver. Blood is thicker than water, after all.”
The elevator descends in silence.
I look at Cas, and the devastation on his face is clear.
“Did you know?” I ask quietly.
“No,” he says, and I believe him. “I swear, X. I had no fucking idea he’s my—”
His voice breaks.
“He’s your brother,” I finish.
“Yeah.”
The elevator doors open, revealing a long concrete corridor lined with cells.
“Welcome to your temporary accommodations,” Fiona says. “I thought you'd both appreciate some time to process this new information.”
She walks away, her heels clicking on concrete.
“When this is over,” she calls back, “you'll both understand that loyalty means nothing in this world. Family, friendship, love—it's all just leverage waiting to be exploited.”
The cell door slams.
Silence.
Not the useful kind, not the kind I occupy by choice when I want someone to understand the weight of what I'm about to do.
This is the silence of a room where something irreversible just happened, the particular deadness of air after a detonation when all the pressure has already moved outward and there is nothing left to fill the space.
I don't look at Cas.
I look at the wall. Concrete block, damp at the seams, the kind of surface that has absorbed decades of everything that gets said in rooms like this.
I stare at it and I think, very carefully about nothing.
I have been doing this since I was fifteen years old, the deliberate emptying, the methodical clearing of every thought and feeling until what remains is just function, just the mechanical operation of a body that knows what it is doing even when the person inside it doesn't.
It doesn't work tonight.
I hear him breathe.
Cas breathes differently when something has hit him somewhere real.
Most people wouldn't notice. I have spent the past couple of years noticing everything about Caspian Vought.
Cataloguing him the way I catalogue everyone who gets close enough to matter, not out of warmth but out of survival, and I know the difference between the breath he uses when he's controlling anger and the breath he uses when he is genuinely undone.
This is the second one.
I turn my head.
He's sitting against the far wall with his casted leg stretched in front of him, his head tipped back and his eyes closed.
He looks for just this moment, in this half-dark cell with the fluorescent light buzzing somewhere down the corridor, like someone who has been carrying something very heavy for a very long time and just dropped it on the floor.
I don't say anything.
Neither does he.
Alex Denver is his brother.