Chapter 22 Kaye
KAYE
Rose. The drug has touched so many lives in New Malcolm. Even mine.
The previous videos were filmed with a more direct, purposeful focus on the subject, but the next is footage from a security camera. The image is fuzzy at first. I inhale sharply as it clears and reveals a place burned into my memory. Mayor Valentino Vanall’s office.
His desk is made from cherry wood. Sturdy.
Antique. It takes up most of the center of the longer, narrow room with only a couple feet on either side for access.
A half-height bookcase lines one wall; a shallow bar waits along the other.
The art above them is tasteful. Modern. A massive slate fireplace makes up the entire back wall.
Its flames dance in the viewscreen. Two leather armchairs face the desk, their backs nothing more than splotched shadows in the video feed, but I can smell the scent of them mixed with cigar smoke and spice nonetheless.
The same smell follows Vanall wherever he goes.
Several meetings passed before I realized the scent was so much more than furniture or environment.
It was him. A man in his fifties, Vanall carries his age well.
His dark hair may be streaked with gray, but it only serves to give him an air of gravitas.
His tall form—six foot two inches, I once read in a magazine profile—is corded with lean muscle.
The type of man who takes pride in his appearance, he is often seen in new, tailored suits or getting a shave at his preferred barber.
The women of New Malcolm call him a catch. His wife calls him a bastard. For me, Valentino Vanall was a generous benefactor. He’s the man who made Checkmate legitimate. The first one to speak to me and of me with respect. As a hero. The savior of New Malcolm, that’s what he called me.
Until I wasn’t.
I take in the familiar space. I’m so caught in my thoughts that I startle as the painting over the bookshelf moves.
Slides to the side on a hidden track to reveal an opening.
I would estimate it at no more than three feet by three feet, not small by any means, but not large either. Something moves inside.
It’s just a flicker, a stirring within the dark cavern in the wall. If I weren’t examining the footage so closely, I could easily have missed it. Then limbs made of shadow spill out into the office.
“They call her the Black Monarch.”
I glance over my shoulder to find Zane fixated on the screen.
I turn back just in time for the inky limbs to form into a shapely pair of legs, sheathed in material so purely void of color they seem transparent on the screen.
Her waist cinches in appealingly, giving the perfect amount of curve to her thighs and buttocks.
Darts sliced into her oxblood-colored, long-sleeve top give away tantalizing glimpses of sun-kissed skin.
A matching capelet covers her hair down to her shoulders while a black mask conceals her face from cheekbones to chin.
“Black Monarch,” I sample the taste of the name on my tongue and find it bitter.
“An assassin,” Zane adds. “She’s on our trail.”
“I think I would notice if an assassin were targeting me.”
“I never said she was after you.” He smirks. “Who do you think set the fire in that warehouse, hm?”
“You.”
He looks away, his face undergoing a rapid shuffling of emotion as he turns. “You always thought the worst of me, didn’t you? You never once even considered that I didn’t want to be your villain. It’s just a role I got stuck playing.”
I fumble through words and thoughts faster than my mind to process them, trying to find something to say, because I wish I had. I wish I had seen in him an inkling of what he saw in me.
He huffs a laugh, shifts his weight to the other leg. “Did you know that you were going to see me that night?”
I shake my head, still searching for language that seems to have left me momentarily high and dry. The words that come out in no way encompass all of what I’d like to communicate, but at least it’s a start.
“I’m sorry,” I sputter.
I’ve wounded him. I’m not sure how I know—maybe it’s in the slope of his shoulders, the hair’s breadth of distance he adds between us.
“I’m sorry, Zane,” I repeat, and reach for him. Let me fingers dance across the tension in his shoulders to rest on the curve of his bicep.
His head dips into his hands, fingers carding through his hair as he thinks.
He looks up at me through his lashes, expression shuttered again.
“The worst part is that I can’t say I blame you.
I made it too easy for them to narrate my story to their own benefit.
This is about proof, right?” He tips his chin toward the screen.
Black Monarch is seated behind the mayor’s desk now, toying with the ballpoint pen on its surface, one long, slender leg crossed over the other.
A stripe of light spreads across her face, her dark eyes glinting.
They are the only part of her face that is visible.
An onyx cloth draped from her cheekbones to chin obscures the rest of her features, but even so she is mesmerizing.
Vanall storms into view, confronting Black Monarch in a flurry of silent speech and gestures.
“No audio?”
“We’re lucky to even have this.” He scoffs. “What I had to do to get it would offend your virtuous sensibilities.”
My cheeks heat, shame and something very different alight just below my skin’s surface. “I’m not diabolical, but that doesn’t make me a prude either.”
“We’ll see.” He snickers, and I want nothing more than to wipe that smug smirk right off his handsome face.
I have a retort ready on the tip of my tongue but it dies there. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw—I thought I saw—but that’s not possible.
“How do I rewind this clip?” I press the air in front of the screen, swiping and brushing with gusto, but I can’t seem to find the one familiar icon I’m looking for.
“Allow me.” Zane folds my hands in his warm, dry ones. God, can he see the effect one little touch has had on me? But his attention is on the screen as he works to clear all the boxes and menus I opened in my search.
I mentally shake myself. One man cannot distract from the pursuit of justice, even if that man happens to be a particularly gorgeous, wounded anti-hero with a tongue so wicked he could make even the devil blush.
There.
The video may be grainy and monochromatic, the key moment nothing more than a three second blip in a sea of otherwise harmless material, but it’s there, nonetheless.
Valentino Vanall pulls a thick envelope from somewhere within the confines of his jacket, smoothly sliding it across the desk’s glossed surface and into Black Monarch’s waiting grasp.
The mayor of New Malcolm hired an assassin.
“When was this?” My head feels a little light. Halos are starting to turn the lights into starbursts. Breathe, Kaye.
Zane sounds so calm when he shatters my delusions. “Two nights ago. I have others, if you’d like to see them. My contact takes great personal risk acquiring them for me. Rendezvous like this one occur roughly every two weeks for the last year at least. Probably longer.”
My face and neck feel scorched with heat, though my fingers and palms feel boneless and numb.
“Kaye?” Cool fingers brush soothing trails up my burning nerves, from shoulder to the sensitive skin just below my earlobe. “You’re all flushed and blotchy. Your pulse is racing.”
“You’re not a doctor. You said so yourself.”
“You need to sit down.”
My chest feels heavy, growing more so with every breath I take.
My throat constricts, achy and raw, as if I scraped something along that vulnerable flesh.
My dry eyes are strained with adrenaline and grief.
If this video is like this, what’s on the others?
A wetness that feels suspiciously like tears gathers at the corners of each eyelid, but I don’t have time for that.
No time to process the barrage of emotion crashing down on my shoulders.
“I need to know.” I choked on the words until they are little more than a whisper. A whisper that tears through my lungs like a scream.
I’ve sunk to the floor, and Zane is there with me, holding me, curling around my body in a full, protective embrace.
How did I get here? My unfeeling legs are folded beneath my bottom.
I couldn’t rise up again even if I wanted to.
Even if I had that drive. But out of my eyes, my mouth, my lungs, my heart, pours a whimper of despair.
“It’s okay,” Zane murmurs into my hair. His arms wrapped around me at some point when I fell, holding me upright with his strength.
Without it, I have no doubt that I would have laid my head on the ground too, and perhaps decided to stay.
That seems easier, doesn’t it? Than this pain. “I’ve got you.”
“It’s true, isn’t it? I was a monster all along.”
“No.” He presses comforting circles into my back.
It hits me then. “I’m the villain.”
“They manipulated you into doing what they wanted. Seeing what they wanted you to see. You didn’t know.”
Does that matter? Evil deeds done in the name of good are still evil.
Like the roots of a tree, I envision the consequences of my actions extending out through New Malcolm.
To the men, women, and children who make their lives within these limits.
I allowed corruption to persist here. Thrive even.
I defended those who prey on the vulnerable.
How many lives were lost because of my inability to see?
“You can’t think like that.” Zane curls his fingers around my hip, brushing tender strokes onto my skin and drawing my attention. It’s not fair, using his powers at a time like this, but I’m too empty to care.
“You tried to tell me.” I blink at him, make a conscious effort to focus on the fine features of his face. Anything to tether my mind back into myself.
His eyes rove over my face with a soft look, mouth parted ever so slightly. His tongue darts out to wet his lips. His palm grazes my cheek as he tucks my hair behind one ear, lingering at the sensitive skin where earlobe meets jawbone.
“I wish you had listened sooner, but I understand now.” His voice is soothing, washing over me with coolness and a wave of shame that settles into the lining of my stomach.
The urge to duck my head, to break the intense scrutiny in his gaze, is overpowering.
“You can’t change the past, but you can help me now. ”
I never wanted to be the villain, but then, maybe villains never do.
Is this how it happens? You do the best you can with the knowledge you have at the time, but you continue to make mistakes and you try to learn and grow from them.
You redeem yourself only in seeing things from a different perspective. Sometimes you die trying.
“We can still save New Malcolm, Kaye. Together.”
I could do it, couldn’t I? Even if I could turn my back on New Malcolm, I can’t ignore my responsibility to its people.
I feel it, growing from the lining of shame inside me. A kernel of something unquenchable and hard as steel.
“I want to know everything.” I’m done with half-truths and omissions. No one will use me ever again.
Zane’s lips quirk into a lopsided grin, and heaven help me if my heart doesn’t race at the sight of it. His thumb brushes across my cheek, the skin heating along that same path.
I am in so much trouble.