Chapter 5
My body was numb. Maybe that was why I didn’t react to the life-size teddy in a tuxedo propped up in the corner of Ellington’s luxury apartment. It was on the same coast-facing street as Ray’s mama’s, and its ocean view was unobstructed.
I wonder if he walked to work while pretending to be Thompson.
“You like?” Ellington darted around his kitchen. “I won it in a raffle.”
“What?”
“The bear.” Ellington pulled down two glasses and filled mine with tropical-flavored juice. “I had to fight two eighty-year-olds at bingo, and I’m lucky I was wearing prosthetics because they wanted to rip my face off.”
I eased myself onto one of his plush stools, in the shape of scalloped shells.
“Who are you?” I whispered.
Ellington nudged the glass, and his eyebrows met. “Lyra, it’s Ellington. Did you get hit in the head?”
He hurried around the bench and pressed his hand to my forehead. I jerked away from his touch. His apartment smelled like fabric softener, and vacuum lines ran across the patterned rug.
“No, I mean, I’ve been searching for you for how long? And you’re—” I waved my hand up and down his lean body. “This. In my mind you’re a villain. I thought you’d be scarier. Actually, I thought you’d kill me.”
I drank the juice just to shut my rambling mouth up.
Ellington’s face went blank before he tossed his head back and roared with laughter.
He slapped the white marble counter as it petered off into a little giggle.
I wasn’t joking. Ellington was nothing like I had envisioned.
He was unserious, and a little unhinged.
I’d expected the last part, but not how easily my guard dropped in his presence.
“Don’t be mistaken. I’m still a villain.”
“Turns out I know a lot of those,” I mumbled.
Maybe I had hit my head.
“Don’t you have questions? I’m bursting with answers, and how about that phone call? Adelaide is everything I thought she’d be.” Ellington sighed, leaning his chin on his hands.
I grimaced, licking the last few drops of juice from my lips. “I’m yours to use, aren’t I?”
Why would I care about a traitor?
Adelaide’s sneer echoed in my mind, and I hopped off the stool and moved toward the couch before Ellington hissed in protest.
“You’re covered in dirt, can you not?”
I slumped back onto the stool, looking down at my dirt-stained clothing for the first time. Compared to the pristine apartment, I was a stain.
“Well, you got me here. Tell me what you know about my mom.”
Ellington wagged his finger at me, and I fought the urge to snap it off.
“First, we have more important things to discuss. Like the encrypted Amato data you have stored somewhere, and how I’m going to use it to show my innocence, and The Unseen’s guilt. Adelaide hasn’t forgotten about you, by the way.”
Ellington held up his phone where a text message filled up the screen.
“Connall says she’s being sneaky and trying to track down my location.”
My stomach dropped from nosebleed height, and a wash of tiredness crashed over me. I didn’t have it in me to fight anymore. I was raw.
“Are you friends now?”
Ellington let out a soft laugh. “No, he hates me, just like you. But I’m an optimist. When you see my evidence and realize how I’ve been right all along. You’re going to kick yourself, trust me.”
“So show me. I hate when people don’t back up their threats.”
His eyebrows rose. “Is that what I was doing when I rescued you from a literal grave?”
I hummed, sagging into the table. My elbow squeaked across his glossy white countertop, leaving a streak of brown. Ellington crinkled his nose and pointed down his hallway.
“First, clean up. I’ll show you my guest room.”
I stood, and held out my hand.
“If you think I’m getting naked in the same house as you, you’re delusional. Give me your house keys, the spare key, and fuck off. I’ll let you back in when I’m clean.”
I might be utterly exhausted, but I wouldn’t forget my instincts. If Ellington thought I was stupid enough to let my guard down, he hadn’t been watching me long enough. He tossed me a set of keys from his pocket, grabbed his jacket, and slung it over his shoulder.
“I’ll go get us lunch, shall I?” He cracked a smile. “Unlike your boyfriend, Beck, I’m an open book. My underwear drawer is the top one if you want to rifle through it.”
Beck? What did he have to do with it?
Ellington wandered to the door, and I cleared my throat.
“The spare key. Now.”
His gaze sparked with amusement. “Good girl, never let me get away with anything.”
Ellington lifted a painting off the wall and jammed in a pin to open the hidden safe embedded in the wall. He tossed me a single silver key with an arched eyebrow. Was it the exhaustion? Or was he handling me softly, like one might with someone nearing a breakdown?
“You’ll find copies of my evidence in there. Go through it, and you’ll see.”
I locked the door as soon as he left and muscled the couch to block him from entering by force.
“Sorry, not sorry.” I smirked at the fingerprint stains I left on the plush cream couch.
My lower back ached, and I got a whiff of soil and iron. If I were going to die, I could at least be clean. I snagged a shirt from Ellington’s drawer and a pair of boxers that would fit me well enough. His entire wardrobe was organized in orderly folded piles.
My head spun as I opened the glass shower door, and the first spray of warm water pulled a guttural groan from the pit of my stomach.
Minor cuts stung, and the pain was welcome.
It reminded me to stay in the present. No matter how much I wanted to sink into a puddle of emotion and give up. I’d survived worse than this.
My mom.
The thought of her kept me from dwelling on my aching heart. Each beat spread a sharp stab of pain. Part of me was still in that hole. Scrambling panic so deep it drowned me. What information could Ellington have about her? I shivered, even though the spray of water was scalding.
My entire world shifted tonight, and I had a feeling it wasn’t finished being wrecked.
I scrubbed the filth off my arms, catching a sob with my hands against my mouth.
Beck knew how much my mom’s death changed me. And even though I lied, I didn’t deserve the way he reacted. I knew Ray and Jonah wouldn’t be okay, but Beck? He knew what suggesting that would do to me.
He wanted me broken down. I rubbed my nose until the tears retreated.
I’d loved Beck for years.
From the moment his dark gaze pierced inside me in a dingy basement fight. When I saw him again at The Unseen’s base, my heart hammered so hard against my chest I thought I might pass out. He was what I wanted to be.
Someone who wielded power and control. The churning chaos of the world faded when I was around him. I knew he would take care of it. Of me.
Despite every warning he gave me about how he could never return my feelings the way I wanted. He didn’t know how to love. But I thought I could teach him. Now I was shattered by the dark twist of his betrayal.
I shook it off. Falling apart wasn’t an option.
There was still Adelaide to think about, and if Ellington was telling the truth, she was in danger.
Maybe she would forgive me if I could show proof it wasn’t her I meant to deceive.
My stomach cramped. The Unseen gave us tools to turn off our hearts, and I used my experience with militant efficiency.
I toweled off my body after the shower and stared at myself in the mirror. My tongue throbbed, and I had one or two nicks on my arms that dribbled pale pink. Those had to be dealt with first. I found Ellington’s medical kit and patched myself until I reeked of disinfectant, not blood.
I set my jaw. Time to cosplay as a robot. By the time I opened the door, Ellington was waiting. He held up a paper bag.
“Got you a sandwich and a thick shake.” He peered into my mouth. “I wasn’t sure if you could eat after what happened to your tongue.”
“I took some painkillers.”
I opened the door and waved him in, as if this were my apartment and, not his. He smothered a smile, probably having the same thought. I peered in the bag but put it aside. Even if I were hungry, which I wasn’t, my tongue throbbed from the antiseptic I’d stupidly dabbed on it.
“I don’t want to talk about it. Your evidence about The Unseen, though? You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get me here, so spill.”
Ellington pulled out a laptop and grabbed a folder and thumb drive from the safe, tossing the former onto my lap.
“I preferred your attitude when I was blackmailing you.”
“You get off on the idea of killing innocent people?” My shoulders rose as I cracked the folder open.
“I’ve never pretended to be a good person. I’m not doing this out of the goodness of my heart. Revenge is the only thing I care about.”
For months, I’d worried about Ellington snapping and killing everyone I cared about. I thought he was a crazy traitor, the most dangerous man to evade The Unseen. But my mind had fractured so badly that I was sitting meekly beside him and looking at endless pages of financial records.
“What am I looking at?”
Ellington booted up his computer and connected his thumb drive.
“Those are my physical copies, but it will be easier to see the patterns on this. When I suspected The Unseen were up to something, I took copies of all the financial records Thornridge had. That wasn’t my objective.
I was supposed to get close and eliminate her.
Just like you were sent to take out Angelo Amato.
But when I didn’t, they knew I had to go as well.
That’s what happens when you question The Unseen. ”
“Yeah, yeah.” I shook my head, weary. “I’ve heard all this before.”
Ellington clicked his tongue. “I’m sorry for boring you. They’re going to do the same thing to Adelaide and you as they did to me. It’s only a matter of time before the order comes through to Beck. Trust me.”
I pursed my lips at him. Trust? Just because I was sitting beside him didn’t mean I gave credit to his delusions. He pointed at the screen with a growl.
“Look, you can see the amount of money being moved out of the business. These contractors? They don’t exist, and their bank accounts are all located offshore.
But someone was sloppy. They used the same alias and amount twice.
I tracked down a dozen suspicious transactions and linked them all to the same offshore company. This one.”
He pointed at a name.
Mantel Holdings.
“You go through the records you kept from Amato, and you’ll find the same thing. Check for contractors because they rarely exist. The payments go offshore and lead back to Mantel.”
A shiver went down my spine. The name piqued my interest.
“Why is it familiar?” I rubbed my forehead. “It will come to me.”
Where had I seen that name before?
“Pass me your laptop.”
As soon as he did, I accessed the cheap website I’d set up over a year ago. Ellington leaned forward and clicked his tongue.
“We don’t have time to… buy inflatable palm trees?”
“Shut up and let me work.”
The website was fluorescent green, and a thousand pop-up ads made me growl before I turned them off. Stock photos crammed the screen, confusing as none of the links went where they were supposed to.
It was the perfect place to hide something that I never intended anyone to find.
I accessed the backend and located the encrypted ZIP file labeled “back-up”. I clicked it open, and the extracted information from Angelo Amato filled the screen.
“Oh, I see.” Ellington clapped his hands. “You’re like a real-life spy.”
“Did you not think I was good at my job?”
Ellington patted my shoulder and peered at the data.
“I’m only teasing. This is brilliant, though it might take a while to sift through everything.”
There was only one thing I was looking for, though, and a quick search lit up the name.
Mantel Holdings. There it was.
“It’s there. I knew it.” Ellington gripped the laptop and tried to pull it away.
I slammed it shut instead, breathing through the tightness in my chest. It was a coincidence. For all I knew, Ellington could have orchestrated this. But why would he warn Amato? Why would he go to all this effort if he wanted money?
I stared at the grim line of his jaw. These were the actions of someone who wanted revenge.
“If this is what you wanted all along, why did you force Connall and me to set up a web of surveillance over the city?”
“If I ordered you directly, you would have deleted it out of spite.”
He wasn’t wrong. Ellington continued, “the Unseen want to set you up as a traitor, and destroy Adelaide. They did it to me, and if Beck wasn’t so obsessed with you, you’d probably be dead by now.”
I tasted iron as I swallowed. I’d looked at what he wanted to show me, albeit briefly. It cracked me open in a way that left me off-kilter. Now I had to know the rest of it.
“What did you know about my mom?”
Ellington’s shoulders dropped, and he finagled the laptop out of my white-knuckled grip.
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why?”
“This will change you, can you understand? I know what it’s like to be on the other side. I was The Unseen’s most loyal agent until they fucked me over. Now I’m this.” His lopsided smile had an acerbic edge as he swept his hands down himself.
“Don’t tell me you have a conscience.”
Not after he’d dangled me on a string like a puppet, with the lives of innocent people like a carrot in front of me.
Not when he kidnapped Connall’s sister and locked her up to make my friend work for him.
This was another ploy to get under my skin.
But I couldn’t think clearly, especially if there was a drop of truth to his words.
Ellington reached out and tucked a damp lock behind my ear. I swatted his hand away. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me close, until his furious breath puffed against my cheek.
“The Unseen orchestrated your mom’s death.”
His grip tightened until my delicate bones crunched together.
In the pain, I fell into a flood of memories.
Drowning. Mom, on the couch, eyes fluttering.
Christmas mornings when she wrapped tinsel around our necks, and we danced.
The clash of bottles in the early morning as she stumbled to bed.
The sweet smell of perfume on Mom’s neck as she pulled me in for a hug.
Iron on my tongue like a phantom since the day she died.
I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move.
“I told you.” Ellington let out a soft sigh.
Ellington’s phone vibrated, and he looked at the screen with a deviant grin. This was who he really was. But in my gut, I knew he wasn’t lying.
“Guess who?” he sang, showing me the screen. “Should I pick up this time?”
It was Adelaide.
My stomach dropped. All the work I’d done to cram my disgustingly human, tangled emotions behind an unbreakable wall crumbled. Ellington was right. My world shifted like a kaleidoscope, but all the fragments were gray and jagged.
Nothing was ever going to be the same again.