45. Aeris
Aeris
When I built Atlantis, Selene had Renley oversee every detail, making sure I created nothing that hadn’t been pre-approved. No hidden rooms. No safes or vaults. Nowhere for me to conceal anything. So, I had to be clever.
Whatever I needed to hide had to be hidden in plain sight.
Reaching up, my fingers brushed over the grooves and raised patterns surrounding the mirror hanging on my wall. The frame intricate, opulent, and deliberately busy.
Click.
The mirror let out a delicate hiss, the entire glass opening to reveal a hidden compartment that no one but I knew existed.
It was where I kept my poisons, each vial carefully held in a wooden rack in an order of potency and fatality.
It was also where I kept my most important secrets, the names of the inner workings of the Bratva, a list of known assassins much more competent than I, and things that could destroy an empire as successful as the Beast’s.
It was a folder full of things I’d purposely kept to myself, information I used when Selene squeezed me too tightly, when her patience wore thin and I had to give her something.
There was only one physical copy, because digital files were too vulnerable. Safer, I’d believed, to hide them inside a mirror no one realised wasn’t just a mirror.
Or so I had thought.
The folder was there, exactly where it had always been.
Inside lay the map that had taken three years and the lives of eight separate mercenaries to piece together, all born from a single whisper I’d once overheard from a client.
It marked the estimated location of the Beast’s production facility, along with the delivery routes that stretched from the site into the city and far beyond it.
Everything I knew had been built from whispers and secrets spilled in the throes of passion and dying gasps, then carefully documented and locked away.
The folder was still here, untouched, which meant one of two things: either Sebastian’s men had started letting their tongues slip, or someone had discovered the mirror.
The first was almost impossible. Of all the crime lords, Sebastian was notoriously strict and would have eliminated anyone who posed a threat. Which left the second option.
Atlantis never closed, my Sirens and staff always somewhere in the building. No one could have slipped in unnoticed without triggering alarms or drawing attention. Which meant whoever had gained access wasn’t a stranger.
It was someone I knew and who had unrestricted access to my office.
My stomach dropped, the mirror clicking closed as I simply braced myself against it. Pulling the silk screen partially over the wall, I turned to find Albus standing frozen in the doorway. The office had been locked, yet there he was, a key he shouldn’t even have held in his hand.
“You’re … you’re not supposed to be in today,” he muttered, quickly shoving the key in his pocket.
“I had something I needed to check,” I said calmly, my heels clicking against the floor as I closed our distance.
His eyes widened a fraction, Adam’s apple bobbing with a swallow.
I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it before.
“You want to tell me why?” I asked.
His breathing picked up, his hand shaking as he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. And his words, when he said them, were barely a whisper. “I didn’t have a choice.”
My chest tightened, anger and hurt tangling so violently I could barely separate them.
“How long?” I asked.
“Aeris …”
“How long?” I repeated, only for him to look away. “A week? A month?”
Still no response, his eyes closing as he tried to keep himself together.
“The entire time?” My voice sounded like a whip against his silence. “I’m such a fucking idiot.”
I had trusted him. The quiet, careful man who looked like he didn’t belong anywhere near a place like Atlantis. The one who never raised his voice. Never spoke badly of anyone. Never made himself feel like a threat.
“You told Selene about the detective.”
“Aeris—”
“You gave her secrets that protected me.”
“Aeris, please.”
“She killed Olivia,” I snapped, the words ripping out of me. “Had her raped then discarded like she wasn’t even human, Albus.”
He flinched, but he didn’t deny it. “I know.”
I laughed, the sound manic. “You know?”
“I didn’t have a choice,” he rushed out. “I didn’t know she’d do that.”
My blood ran hot.
I didn’t have a choice.
A phrase I was starting to hate more than anything else in the world.
“I’d never have …” He seemed to choke on the words. “Please, I never wanted anyone to be hurt. I didn’t know what happened until the detective, I swear.”
“Albus …”
“Please,” he gasped, panic cracking his composure completely. “If she suspects anything, she said she’d cut out my tongue and sell my sister at the auctions.”
I stared at him for a long moment, searching for something in his face that might help this make sense. To recognise some fragment of the man I thought I knew. But there was nothing left to find there except fear.
Fear of Selene.
Fear of me.
And fear of what he’d already done.
“Aeris, please—”
“Don’t.” I cut him off cleanly, his mouth opening then closing again, as if still grasping for an excuse. “You’re going to keep going,” I continued. “You’re going to do exactly what you’ve been doing. You’re going to answer her when she calls. You’re going to feed her only things I give you.”
“Aeris …”
“But if you make a single move that puts me or anyone I care about in danger,” I added softly, “I won’t need Selene to cut out your tongue.”
His face went pale.
“Do you understand me?”
He nodded, just a single jerk.
“Good.”
I turned away before I did something reckless, like kill him. As satisfying as it would’ve been, it would only create more problems. Selene needed to believe she still had a leash around my throat, that I remained blissfully unaware of the spy she’d planted beside me.
For now, Albus was more useful alive.
Pulling the door open, I stepped into the corridor. Laughter drifted from somewhere to my left almost immediately, warm and careless, before it was followed seconds later by a low, breathless moan.
I hadn’t planned to step onto the stage tonight, but the expectant hush that fell over the room as I climbed the short stairs was almost addictive.
Because up here, I had a voice.
The spotlight felt warm against my skin, my fingers curling around the microphone. There was no music or backing track. It was just me, and my voice carried the weight of everything I couldn’t say out loud from the very first note. Every fractured piece of me.
It was raw and unfiltered, stripped of every mask I wore.
The song wasn’t pretty or seductive. It was about being broken. It was about being furious and fighting until my last breath. It was cathartic and everything I needed it to be in that moment.
When I finally let the last note fade, the silence that followed was deafening. I opened my eyes to a standing ovation, but I barely heard it. Not when I found him almost instantly, my very own personal magnet.
Caden stood near the back, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, watching me like I was the only person that existed.
For one dangerous, idiotic second, a thrill shot through me, the forbidden rush of having him here, in my domain, watching me bare myself on stage.
Then the feeling soured, because Caden Ackworth could never be mine.