Chapter 19 #4
He was quiet for a moment, staring into the hearth.
“We have a lot to discuss with him. I’ll find him tomorrow.
I’m too busy tonight.” Max sucked his teeth, orange eyes drifting, then focusing on something beyond the window.
“Damien has been sending money to black market dealers, buying dead bodies.”
“Bodies?” Elli murmured, wrinkling her nose. “Nina mentioned something about sending money to black market traders, but bodies… That doesn’t sound like him. Are you sure?”
He nodded once. “Nina found the smugglers’ records. Her mother was recently taken by the operation that Damien has been funding with these payments. If we can track down who he’s working for, then we can find her mother.”
Andre crossed his arms, thinking. “If Damien is using the profits from the opium trade to buy up dead bodies, then he’s up to something serious.” He shook his head. “I had a feeling he was hiding something, pushing out your dens in the New City.”
“But why?” I interjected. “Is he not an Antonin as well?”
Andre looked at Max as he replied to me. “Damien was part of the Trials and escaped with us, but he only clung to our family for his own survival. He keeps an obvious resentment toward Max specifically. Whatever he’s hiding, he’ll be hard-pressed to help anyone tied to Max.”
“I suppose that includes me, unfortunately,” I muttered as I shot a crippling look at Max.
Andre shook his head, looking to me. “Not necessarily. You’re a Veyr. During the Trials, your father was one of the few good men who helped kids like Damien. I’m sure he remembers the name, and I know he’ll connect you two, just as I did.”
The room went still. My blood simmered.
“My… father?”
Andre’s gaze widened, realizing too late. “You mean… Max didn’t tell you?”
“Andre…” Max sighed his name.
I turned to him, my pulse sounding in my ears like a volley of bullets. “Tell me what?”
Max tensed, every inch of him frozen with guilt. He opened his mouth, but the words didn’t come fast enough.
“You knew my father? And you didn’t tell me?” My voice shifted from fury to disbelief.
“Nina, I—”
“Don’t!” I was shouting. Elli stood slowly from her chair. “Don’t say my name like you care. I asked you if you knew him, and you lied to me!”
A muscle flinched in his jaw. “If I told you about your father, then I’d have to tell you about everything else that happened in the Trials. Nina, I wanted to protect you from all of the terrible things that the rest of us were involved in, including your father.”
“No.” I took a step back, chest heaving. “You were protecting yourself. Because you knew the second I found out about your lie, I would look at you differently.”
There was nothing more I wanted to hear from him. I couldn’t take another moment listening to whatever excuse he had ready.
I grabbed the rest of my drink off the desk and rushed out of the room.
“Nina, stop!”
I started back toward the staircase leading to the third level, toward Elli’s room on the west side of the building, hastily walking around couches and avoiding dancers, brushing their feathers as I passed.
Dim, red lights and loud music disoriented my senses, combined with the lingering effects of the poison to blur it all out of focus.
By the time I reached the staircase, Max had caught up and snatched me by the wrist.
“Nina, I told you everything that mattered. And if you’d asked directly, I would have told you. I didn’t lie to you, I swear it.”
“A secret is still a lie.”
He took another long breath. “Don’t act like you’re such an open book yourself. You refuse to tell me anything about your bloodline or how you can use my dice. You’re hiding things, too.”
“My bloodline?” I was fuming now, shaking in his grip. “You’re the reason my face is on a bounty poster, the reason my mother was kidnapped, that my life is ruined. And you only care about your bloody dice?”
His nostrils flared, grip tightening in a furious embrace. “I care about you, Nina. Isn’t it obvious?”
The spot on my temple throbbed, and I ripped free of his grasp. “No. Nothing about you is clear anymore.”
“Maxence?” A woman called him from the top of the stairs. He dropped my hand immediately. “Are you coming, darling?”
Everything went numb. I swallowed down the hurt, the anger, and faced him with the last bit of dignity I could scrape together. “I’m sorry, was I in your way? Did you already make plans for tonight?”
“Not everything is about you, Nina.” His gaze fell to my chest, avoiding the look in my eyes. He made to climb the steps, but as he tried to pass me, I stopped him with a single hand on his chest.
“No, it’s not about me,” I whispered. “And now I know it never was. Thank you for making that obvious.”
I left him stranded on the steps, rushing so I didn’t lose my nerve.
Thankfully, the lighting was too dim in the brothel to betray the sting in my cheeks, the tears gathering in my eyes.
Elli met me in the middle of the parlor, smoke swirling around her form from the patrons lounging on a nearby couch.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
The dull ache in my chest sharpened into something more dangerous. A vengeful spirit. “Perfect. But I need to get out of this place. How about you and I visit a den and go find Damien?”
Her lips stretched into a wide smile. “I’m ready when you are.”