CHAPTER 20 - Lucy #2
"The Elite, the bodies I drove you to the morgue, the Arbiter... these aren't just stories. People are terrified of him. We talked about him. I saw the patterns. I even saw him that night, you know that.”
Madeline looks at the folder, then back at me, her expression a mix of awe and sheer terror.
"You've been digging into him? Lucy, if he knew—"
"I don't care what he knows!"
I snap, my stubborn streak finally flaring up.
"I cared about you. But I didn't know the rabbit hole went this deep. I thought I was searching for a stalker, a serial killer... I didn't think I was investigating my own damn DNA."
I look out the window. The car is still there, idling like a predator in wait. Sterling is leaning against his car, lighting a cigarette, watching us like we’re lab rats in a maze he built.
I watch Madeline’s eyes as she processes the sheer magnitude of the situation. I see the gears turning, her forensic mind frantically trying to reconcile the cold, calculating man she’s been seeing with the biological truth of my existence.
"He doesn't know," Madeline whispers, more to herself than to me. Her voice is hollow, trembling with a new kind of realization.
"Lu... he has no idea."
I frown, my protective instincts flaring up.
"What are you talking about?”
"Charles Vane is a master of compartmentalization," Madeline says, her gaze flickering to the car outside.
"Deimos talked about his father like a ghost he's trying to exorcise. He’s spent his life trying to hunt him down, but he thinks he's the only one. He’s been using you as leverage against me, Lucy. He threatens you, he tracks you... but he thinks you’re just my 'vulnerable best friend.
' If he knew you were his sister, his own blood, he wouldn't be using you as a pawn. He’d be terrified of you. Or he’d be trying to own you in a completely different way. "
I look at her, the weight of the secret pressing down on us like a physical force. Madeline looks like she’s carrying a mountain on her shoulders. I can see there’s more she’s not telling me, something about the man that Charles Vane actually is, but she’s shielding me. Again.
"If he doesn't know," I say, my voice low and dangerous.
"Then we have the only weapon he hasn't accounted for. Information."
"No, Lucy," Madeline says, reaching across the table to grab my wrists. Her grip is frantic.
"You don't understand. To him, secrets are an insult. If he finds out we’ve been keeping this from him, if he finds out Charles hid an entire life from him, he won't just be angry. He’ll burn everything down to find the 'truth' at the center of the ashes."
I look out the window. Detective Sterling is still leaning against his car, exhaling a plume of smoke, seemingly oblivious, or perhaps just waiting for the explosion.
"We can't tell him," Madeline urges, her eyes pleading.
"Not yet. We have to play the roles he’s assigned us. You’re an innocent friend. I’m the broken doctor. If we break character now, before we have a plan, we’re both dead."
I swallow hard, the taste of my own family’s lies bitter in my mouth. I’m not good at playing the victim. I’m the one who fights back. But looking at the terror in Madeline’s eyes, I realize that my stubbornness might be the very thing that gets us killed.
"Fine," I hiss, just as the bell above the door chimes.
"We play his game. But the second I see an opening, Madeline, I’m taking his head off. Brother or not."
Through the window, I watch Detective Sterling. He’s mid-exhale when his phone vibrates. He snaps it open, listens for exactly three seconds, and his entire posture shifts from predatory to urgent.
He doesn't look back at the café. He doesn't even glance at us. He just throws his cigarette to the pavement, kills the engine's idle, and peels away from the curb, his tires screeching against the asphalt.
He’s gone. Our only shield, however thin and crooked it was, just vanished.
"He's leaving," I whisper, my voice hollow.
"Sterling just left us."
Madeline’s head snaps toward the window. Her eyes go wide, the pupils dilating until they nearly swallow the iris. She starts to shake, a fine, rhythmic tremor that rattles the silverware on the table.
"Everything is falling apart," she gasps, her voice rising into a pitch of pure paranoia.
She starts frantically checking the corners of the ceiling, looking for lenses, for microphones, for any sign of him.
"Lucy, this doesn't happen. Sterling wouldn't just leave a lead like this unless someone higher up pulled the leash," she continues.
"I still can't wrap my head around it. You. Him. The same blood. How is it possible that my best friend, the only person who keeps me sane, is part of that... that lineage of monsters? It’s like a sick joke the universe is playing. If he’s your brother, Lucy, then the darkness I see in him. .. is it in you too?"
"Mali, stop it," I snap, trying to ground her, but the fear is infectious.
She isn't listening. She’s staring at a man who just entered the café. He’s not coming toward us; he’s stopped at the counter, calmly ordering a coffee, but his eyes are fixed on the reflection in the pastry case. He’s watching our booth.
"He's here," Madeline breathes, her gaze darting to every person in the shop.
"Every shadow, every flicker of a camera... It's him. He’s in my head, Lucy. He’s claiming me, and now he’s going to claim you because he thinks you’re just a weakness he can use to break me. He doesn't even know he's stalking his own flesh and blood."
She leans in so close I can feel the frantic heat of her breath.
"We have to go. Now. But we can't go to your place, and we can't go to mine. If he catches us together after Sterling's revelation, he'll know something shifted. We have to act like we're still just two terrified women who know nothing."
I look at the man at the counter. He’s taking his cup, his movements slow and agonizingly deliberate. He starts to turn.
It’s him. It’s the man I met at the morgue.
"Too late," I mutter, my hand sliding toward the heavy ceramic mug on the table.
"He’s coming over."
The air in the booth feels thin, like I’m breathing in glass. He’s here. The Arbiter. My brother. His presence is crushing the light out of the café. I don’t even know his real name yet. Madeline didn’t want to tell me. But I suppose I’ll find out.
He isn’t wearing any mask. He doesn’t care that everyone sees his face. The mask he wears now is made of his own fractured psyche.
He looks different from the night at the morgue. Tattered, his eyes wide, vibrating with a frantic energy that tells me he hasn’t slept in days. He’s leaning into his own madness, and it’s terrifying to watch.
He slides into the bench right next to me, forcing me to squeeze against the cold windowpane.
"Deimos," Madeline whispers. Her voice is a brittle wreck, but I feel her foot kick me sharply under the table. It’s a warning: Don’t say a word about Charles. Don't let him know.
He ignores her, his gaze locked on me. It's clinical, the way a predator sizes up an animal before the kill.
"So," he murmurs, his voice a low, raspy vibration.
"This is the famous Lucy. The anchor. The reason my Doctor keeps trying to drift away from me."
I grip my coffee mug so hard I’m afraid the ceramic will snap in my palm.
"Get out of our booth," I hiss, my eyes burning into his.
He tilts his head, a slow, unnatural, bird-like movement.
"Such a spirit for someone so... fragile. Do you have any idea how much effort it takes to keep your world from shattering, Lucy? Madeline does. She knows the price of your safety."
Madeline lunges forward, her voice a desperate, hushed snarl that sounds entirely out of character for her.
"Are you insane? What are you doing here? You just cleared out a Detective, Deimos! You’re going to get me arrested. Bryan is gone, detectives are already breathing down my neck, and now you’re sitting in a public café where anyone could see us!"
She gestures wildly at the window.
"No one knows what The Arbiter looks like, but if they see me, the lead pathologist, consorting with a man who looks like he just crawled out of a nightmare, I’m done! You’re destroying the only life I have left!"
Deimos turns his gaze to her, and the madness in his eyes is blindingly bright. He reaches out, his fingers tracing the line of her jaw with a touch so agonizingly light it feels like a threat.
"The life you had is dead, Madeline. I buried it with Bryan," he says, his smile widening into something jagged and wrong.
"And as for the police... they see only what I allow them to see. Sterling left because I gave him a bigger fire to put out. You should be thanking me."
Then, he turns back to me. His eyes narrow, searching my face. I feel like I’m being dissected while I’m still breathing.
"Go on, Lucy," he laughs, a dry, hollow sound that echoes against the café walls.
"Tell me. Is she worth it? Is Madeline worth the darkness that follows her?"
My hand twitches. I have the power to destroy him right now. One sentence. We share a father, you sick fuck. And this whole cage he’s built around us would crumble. But I look at Madeline, and her face is a mask of pure, desperate agony. She’s begging me with her eyes to keep the secret.
He is leaning back now, his shoulder brushing against mine, acting like we’re all just old friends catching up. But the look he gives Madeline is different, possessive. He’s enjoying the way she’s unraveling.
"You’re so protective of her, Lucy," he says, his voice like silk over sandpaper. He turns a slow, mocking smile toward Madeline.
"But does the anchor know what the Doctor is truly capable of? Does she know about the mess I cleaned up last night?"
Madeline’s face goes pale again.
"Deimos, don't," she whispers, her hands disappearing under the table to hide their shaking.
"Bryan wasn't just a message, Lucy," he continues, leaning in closer to me, his breath cold against my cheek.
"He was a test. And your precious Madeline... she passed. It wasn't my blade that finally silenced him. It was hers."
I feel like the floor has just dropped out from under the café. I look at Madeline, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
"Mali? What is he talking about?"
"I had to!"
Madeline suddenly erupts, her voice is a desperate sob that draws looks from the tables around us. She leans across the booth, her eyes wide and pleading, directed straight at me.
"Lucy, you weren't there. You didn't see him. Bryan he... he was suffering. He was beyond saving, and Deimos..."
She stops, her gaze flickering to him with pure, unadulterated hatred.
"He told me if I didn't end it, he’d suffer even more. He forced me to choose, Lucy! He made me the monster so he could keep his own hands clean."
Deimos just laughs, a low, melodic sound that makes my skin crawl.
"I didn't force you to do anything, Madeline. I simply gave you the opportunity to show mercy. You chose the ending. You’re the one who felt his heart stop under your own fingers."
I stare at them both, my head spinning. The man who made her do it is sitting right next to me, smelling like sandalwood and death, completely unaware that the girl he’s sitting next to is his sister.
The irony is so thick it’s suffocating. He’s trying to break Madeline by showing me her darkness, but he doesn't realize that the darkness he's so proud of is literally running through my veins too.
"You're fucking sick," I spit out, my voice surprisingly steady despite the chaos in my brain.
"You broke her on purpose just so you could have someone as twisted as you are to own."
Deimos turns his bloodshot eyes back to me, the complete madness in them flickering.
"We are all twisted, Lucy. Some of us just stop pretending otherwise."
I watch as Deimos leans to Madeline, ignoring the way she flinches. His presence is like a heavy, suffocating shroud, and the void in his eyes seems to sharpen as he looks at her.
"You think you can just turn me off, little storm?"
He murmurs, his voice a low, intimate rasp that makes my stomach turn.
"Do you think that rejection changed anything? It only made the design more interesting. You’re the only person in this gray, pathetic world who actually has a pulse. You’re the blood in my veins, Madeline. You’re the only thing that makes me feel like I’m actually building something that matters."
He reaches out, his thumb dragging slowly, possessively across her lower lip. Madeline is frozen, her eyes wide and glassy with a mixture of terror and a sick, forced compliance.
"I’m looking forward to having you back," he whispers, a dark, twisted promise flickering in his expression.
"Next time, there won’t be any scalpels or tests. Just you and the silence I’ve prepared for us. I want to see that light in your eyes go out again, just so I can be the one to light it back up."
He lets out a soft breath that sounds almost like a sigh of relief. Then, as abruptly as he arrived, he slides out of the booth. He stands tall, buttoning his suit with a clinical precision that contrasts sharply with the frantic energy he brought in.
He doesn't look back at me. To him, I’m still just the "anchor," a tool to be used against Madeline.
"Stay safe, ladies," he says, his voice returning to that terrifyingly calm, melodic tone.
"The city is a dangerous place for people with so many secrets."
With a final, lingering look at Madeline that feels like a branding iron, he turns and walks out of the café. The bell above the door chimes again with a sickeningly cheerful ring as he vanishes into the crowded sidewalk.
The moment the door closes, the air seems to rush back into the booth. Madeline collapses against the vinyl, her head falling into her hands as she begins to shake with violent, silent sobs.
I stare at the door, my heart hammering a rhythm of pure, unadulterated rage. He’s my brother. A psychopath who just threatened to "have" my best friend again. And he thinks he’s the one in control.
I reach across the table and grab Madeline’s wrists, pulling her hands away from her face.
"Mali, look at me," I demand, my voice hard and cold.
"He’s gone. For now. But we aren't victims anymore. We know who he is. We know who we are."
Madeline looks up, her face a mask of ruin.
"Lucy, you don't understand... he’s never going to stop. And now, he saw you again. He saw the only thing I have left to lose."
"Then let him look," I hiss.
"Because the next time he sees me, I’m not going to be the girl in the café. I’m going to be the mirror he’s too afraid to look into."