CHAPTER 14 #3
“You’re not listening to me.” Tears streamed down her cheeks.
She pushed up her glasses, swiping them away.
“You never listen. Micah and I understood each other. I’ve always felt like an outsider in this family.
They treated me like a freak at school. Micah was the one person I felt I could talk to.
He actually listened to me when you and Sera were always too busy. ”
Alex thought he would be sick. “Bella, I’m so sorry—”
“And then Sera had to go and ruin everything.” She folded her arms, lowering her head. “And don’t even try to pretend like you haven’t taken her side. It’s always been the two of you ganging up against me. Dante sometimes used to listen, but he’s got his own problems now. And I feel invisible.”
Alex silently swore. How had he not seen what a dark place his sister was in?
Things had been bad after the blow up at Sera’s engagement party, and even worse after their father had shipped Micah off to the front.
His sister had taken to spending more time in her lab, something she’d been partial to even before she and Sera had started avoiding each other.
He’d been so immersed in his own troubles that he’d told himself the situation would improve with time, that Isabella needed space to nurse a broken heart and wounded pride, but that she would eventually come around.
Instead, they’d all made her feel that she was once again being abandoned.
“Dad’s been sick and I’ve been all alone with this,” Isabella continued quietly, drawing him back. “He didn’t want the news getting out. He said you’d make it all about you, and he was right.”
Alex pinched the bridge of his nose. “Bella, you know he’s not really sick, right? He does this. He lies, manipulates everyone around him. Of course he would tell you he had cancer.”
“He does.”
“He wants you to feel sorry for him.” Alex looked at his sister with pitying eyes.
How could someone who was so brilliant in an academic sense be so blind when it came to relationships, particularly where men were concerned?
“He wants you to look the other way and ignore all the people he’s been draining for their blood. ”
“He’s sick, Alex. Why can’t you understand that? Of course he needs to feed more often.”
“And that justifies it? There are reports of aberrants being taken off the streets. They’re not coming home. They’re just disappearing.”
“You don’t know that it’s connected.” Her eyes filled with tears. “And I think you should go.”
He silently swore. This wasn’t going the way he’d planned.
“I’m only asking you to look at the information objectively. You’re a scientist. He’s doing this for a reason. What’s his angle?”
“I don’t want to talk about this.” Isabella pressed her fingers to her temples.
“Look, Bella—"
“You really have no idea,” she burst out.
“All this time, he’s been fighting this battle alone, with no support from you or Dante and certainly not from perfect, spoiled Princess Serafina, and his focus, even as his prognosis has gotten worse, has been on supporting research and innovation, in the hopes that with the combined support of the monarchy and Cavalieri Industries, that research could save future lives. ”
A cold feeling settled in his stomach. The secret lab testing fae blood. Women being taken off the streets and forced into testing programs against their will. It all now made sense. And his sister had been at the heart of it from the start.
“This research they’re asking you to do,” he began, following a hunch. “Am I right that it could provide a breakthrough, but at the cost of ethical violations the scientific research community normally wouldn’t condone?”
Her face went pale. “It isn’t like that, not at all. All the donors agreed to give blood consensually. All our test subjects volunteered and have been properly compensated for their time in the study.”
“You confirmed this?”
“Not personally. Luciano’s people handle the administrative end of things.”
“You have to listen to me,” Alex said in a low voice.
“Luciano Cavalieri has been abducting girls off the streets.” When Isabella started to shake her head, he gripped her shoulders, forcing her to look at him.
“Sera and Dani met with them. They talked about being held prisoner in an underground facility. They said they were forcibly drugged and experimented on.”
“That’s… that can’t be right.” But even as she denied it, Isabella’s voice had started to shake.
“Fae have been going missing near the border as well, and they overheard the guards talking about how they were being held there, too, so Cavalieri can extract their blood.”
“He wouldn’t.” Isabella swiped tears from her eyes.
“He swore to me. I’m just working with the samples and data they send me, but this is the most promising treatment we’ve seen in three decades.
Our father is dying, Alex. And I can’t just stand around and do nothing when there could be a way to save him.
I swear to you. These are all ethical donations. ”
“Isabella, wake up. Can’t you see what he’s making you do? He’s using you.”
At that, she burst into tears.
“Do you know where the offsite facility is?”
She nodded through her sobs, and when he drew her into his arms, she didn’t protest. Alex reminded himself that she was only twenty, that her scientific genius had unfortunately outpaced her emotional development.
Losing their mother in her teens and being raised by a narcissist hadn’t helped matters.
“I got in over my head,” she said in a small voice. “I didn’t want Daddy to die. He’s the only parent I have left.”
“I know.” She simply couldn’t accept how evil he was, and to be fair, Judas had always treated her differently from the rest of them. “But fae have been disappearing at the border. They’re being abducted. We went to see Finneas. He told us.”
“I told myself it was the only way to save him, that the research I was doing would ultimately help so many people that I had to just look the other way and not think about where the samples were coming from.” She took a shuddering breath.
“But deep down, I think part of me knew. There’s more, Alex.
He has me working on another project with the wolves.
And it’s so much worse. I’m ashamed to even tell you what he and father have played a part in, what I’ve now played a part in, too. ”
“We’ll fix it,” he whispered into his sister’s hair. “Whatever it is, I promise I’ll help you, as I should have done from the start.”