Chapter 17 Zaria #2
“Zaria.” Kane snapped his fingers in front of her face. It might have been horribly condescending, except that she heard his breath hitch as her head canted to the side.
“What?”
“Tell me why you’re in my office. Now.”
Breathe in, breathe out. “I—you left the door open.”
He hissed through clenched teeth. “Yes. I saw the way you were glancing around the other night. Almost like you were looking for something. When I heard the explosion, I figured it was a distraction, so I left the door unlocked when I went outside. I assumed I would catch you here.” He made no attempt to conceal the derision in his voice. “Do you take me for a fool?”
“No.” It was Zaria who’d been the fool. She’d walked right into his trap. She should have known better the moment she found the office unlocked.
“I take it Julian Zhao was responsible for blowing up my shed.”
“It’s not yours. You don’t own this place.”
A muscle feathered in Kane’s jaw. “That’s what I thought. What were you looking for?”
She leaned her head back against the bookcase. “I can’t tell you.”
“You don’t have a choice. I meant it when I said I would make your life hell.”
“I know.” Zaria released another shuddering breath. She no longer felt like she might pass out, but exhaustion had begun to take hold, making it difficult to take his threats seriously.
Kane took her chin in his thumb and forefinger. His touch was impossibly light, his tone commanding. “Look at me.”
Childishly, she wrenched her head away, staring instead at the buttons of his shirt. A couple of them glinted in the moonlight. She couldn’t do as he bid. Not now, not like this, when she didn’t have her wits about her.
His fingers became coercing, thumb hooking under her jaw as he guided her face back to his. “I said look at me, Zaria.”
Finally, resentfully, she lifted her gaze. She was relieved to find Kane back in focus. Whereas she felt moments from unconsciousness, he looked as though he’d never been more awake.
“You’re afraid,” he said.
She scoffed, the sound weak. “Of course I’m afraid. You just told me you would make my life hell.”
“No. Not of me—of someone else.”
“You can’t possibly know that from looking at me.”
“You’re difficult to read, but I daresay I’ve become quite adept at it. Besides, you’re not good at hiding your feelings when you’re… like this.” Kane’s voice hardened further. “Who is it?”
Knowing she couldn’t answer, she chewed her lower lip as her stomach continued to tie itself in knots.
Rather than answer, she pushed herself shakily to stand, eyeing the door only a few paces away.
Kane straightened alongside her. The moment she tensed to move, he slammed a hand into the bookcase, arm forming a barricade between her and the exit.
They were inches apart, his face perilously close to hers.
Zaria’s heart thundered in her ears. For a moment they stood there, trapped in a stalemate, and then she whirled to face him, shoving the heel of her palm into his stomach.
He stumbled back, more from surprise than the force of the blow. A laugh bubbled up, the sound rough. “You are frightened of this person. More frightened than you are of me.”
“It’s none of your business,” she said, hating the edge of uncertainty in her own voice.
“Give me a name. And then, because I’m feeling charitable, I’ll kill them instead of you.”
She thought about hitting him again. Thought about kicking him in the groin and making a run for it.
But he would doubtless catch her, and in any case, what if Kane could kill Vaughan?
The other kingpin seemed more frightening because he was unknown.
A faceless entity. He wanted Zaria on his side, but perhaps it was time she betrayed someone other than Kane.
Perhaps Kane could get the other man out of the picture.
In any case, she knew she wasn’t leaving here until she provided an answer.
“It’s Vaughan,” she said quietly. “The client I asked you to look into the other week. Do you remember?”
Kane’s expression tightened, his mouth along with it. “The man who doesn’t exist. Yes, I remember. What about him?”
“His people cornered me the day of the heist, after the… fire.” Zaria watched the pale column of Kane’s throat shift and wondered what memories were playing through his mind.
If they were the same moments she couldn’t shake.
“He knows about the theft, too, Kane, and apparently he’s been having me watched.
He asked me to work with him. Threatened to turn me and Jules in if I didn’t say yes. ”
“Why would Vaughan be having you watched?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you or Julian tell anyone else about our plan to rob the Exhibition?”
“No,” she insisted, hands going to her hips. “Vaughan fancies himself a kingpin in his own right. He wants control of the dark market. He knows how lucrative the position is, and thinks you’ll be easier to oust than Ward was.”
Kane’s gaze was flinty. “He fancies himself a kingpin? Of what, exactly?”
“Seven Dials.”
“There is no kingpin of Seven Dials. That slum has been anarchy for years.”
“I guess things change.” Zaria shifted beneath Kane’s suffocating scrutiny. She had the unfortunate feeling she knew what he would ask next.
“What, precisely, did Vaughan ask you to do?”
Her blood seemed to slow in her veins. “He wanted information. At first, anyway. He thought I’d worked for Ward alongside you, and refused to listen when I said we were no longer… collaborating.”
“What do you mean, he wanted information at first?”
“Once Vaughan found out Ward was dead, he wanted something else.” Zaria’s head was beginning to throb, exhaustion and stress making her body protest once more. “He asked me to steal from you.”
There was a stretch of quiet during which Kane pulled at his collar, the sole indication that he was anything other than perfectly composed. “Is that so?”
“I was asked to find a ledger. Some document outlining your dark market clients. I assume he intends to try and poach them.”
“Ah,” Kane said harshly. “Perhaps. Or he intends to leak the list.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because it would destroy my reputation and theirs. Stealing clients is a slow, tricky business. Outing them as having involvement with the dark market, though? That makes me look careless, not to mention would turn each and every client against me. And who do you imagine would be there to save the day?”
Zaria hadn’t even considered that angle.
A cold sweat that had nothing to do with the dizziness broke out over her skin.
“I don’t want Vaughan to have the ledger, but I had to agree.
I didn’t have a choice. Not only because I was blackmailed, but because…
” She trailed off, swallowing. “I was told my mother works for him. I don’t expect you to care, but if I was successful, Vaughan’s people said he was willing to tell me where I could find her. ”
“And that’s something you want.”
Zaria couldn’t remember if she’d ever spoken of her mother in Kane’s presence before. She suspected not—until now, what was there to say? “She left immediately after my birth. I’ve never met her, and she’s never tried to communicate with me.”
Kane’s cool gaze turned even icier. “Then you owe her nothing. Certainly not the benefit of contact.” His words held a new kind of fury Zaria couldn’t quite understand.
“It wouldn’t be for her benefit. I have questions that I want answered.”
“You want to know why she abandoned you.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
He appeared to consider this. “No. I’d want to kill her.”
“Well, we don’t all go around murdering our parents,” Zaria snapped, then tamped down her anger as Kane stiffened perceptibly, his lip curling back from his teeth.
“Are you trying to provoke me, Miss Mendoza?”
“No.” That familiar dread shot through her blood, a strange excitement alongside it.
What the hell was wrong with her? “Forget it—I don’t expect you to understand.
I’m sorry, Kane, okay? I didn’t want this, especially when you were already furious with me.
But I’m telling you the truth now because I want to help you.
Not Vaughan. All I want is for him to go away. I want all of this to go away.”
“You were working against me again.” It wasn’t a question.
Zaria didn’t bother denying it. “I have no interest in being a pawn between kings.”
Kane let his hand drop from the bookcase, watching her coolly from beneath his lashes. “So that’s why you offered yourself up in exchange for Julian’s freedom. Vaughan was the reason you came here in the first place, wasn’t he?”
“I came here because you kidnapped my best friend.”
“That’s not an answer.”
She didn’t want to tell him the whole truth.
It felt too dangerous. Like taunting a wolf as it circled you with teeth bared.
At the same time, though, it was becoming increasingly clear that she couldn’t afford to keep lying.
“Yes, Vaughan is part of the reason. I thought it would be a good opportunity to search for the ledger. But that wasn’t why I sought you out in the beginning. My main concern was always Jules.”
Kane’s face was dangerously impassive. Beneath the facade, though, was a flicker of a wholly different emotion.
“I should have known better than to trust you twice,” he said.
“Then again, you’re only good at keeping secrets until you’re asked a direct question.
That’s always my misstep, isn’t it? I never ask enough of the right questions. ”
Zaria didn’t know what she’d been expecting him to say, but that wasn’t it.
She’d been prepared for Kane to rage and threaten her again, and didn’t know what to do with the cold, reticent boy in front of her.
He was more angry at himself, she realized belatedly, than he was at her.
She wished she knew what he was thinking. She wondered why she cared.
“What are you going to do now?” she dared to ask.
Kane thrust the door open, one hand splayed against the wood, the tendons standing out in stark relief. His eyes looked entirely black. “I’m going to find Vaughan.”