Page 6 of Bound By Blood and Lies

He is predictable in his depravity. Routine lives in his vices. For him to disappear this cleanly means one of two things: he’s dead or he’s with her. He better pray it’s the first. If he has Fae, if he so much as breathed the same air as whoever took her, I won’t just kill him. No, death would be mercy. I will dismantle him piece by piece until he understands exactly where he miscalculated.

The door to my room swings open without a knock and I’m upright before the sound registers. The whiskey glass topples from my hand, shattering against the floor as I reach for the gun on my bedside table. I have it aimed before my brain finally catches up. Atlas freezes in the doorway.

“Fuck. Knock,” I bark.

“Sorry,” he says, lifting a hand in surrender.

Atlas scans the room, his shoulders are tight and his breathing is heavier than it should be. My gut feels like a weighted ball from his body language and I quickly cross the room with urgency and cut the music.

“What did you find?” I demand

Atlas steps inside and shuts the door behind him. His gaze flicks briefly to the concealed panel in the wall, before returning to me.

“I got into her cloud backups,” he says. “There was a secondary deletion layer. Someone wiped the surface messages and buried the originals under encrypted junk.”

“And?” My jaw flexes as my heart compresses.

“She was never meeting Quinn at the café.”

“That lying—” I cut myself off, forcing the words through my teeth. “What are you saying, Atlas?”

“Quinn was always meeting her at the barn,” he holds my stare as the temperature drops ten degrees.

Sound disappears as the last month flashes through my mind. Did I miss Christmas with her over a lie? Did my mum cry herself to sleep whilst hosting her kidnapper in her home? My dad is going to be mortified. Everything we stand for as a family has been made a mockery of. My own breathing fades beneath the slow recalibration of my pulse as every detail slides into place with surgical precision.

“Send me everything.”

“Already done, but Ro?—”

“No,” I cut in as my voice whips through the air. “If she set Fae up, I don’t care what it costs. Do I make myself clear?”

Atlas exhales. It sounds like a long-suffering sigh but he cannot be surprised. I turn toward the hidden panel and press it wider, revealing rows of labelled vials and sealed compounds gleaming under light.

“She might be a woman,” I say calmly, reaching for a case and selecting what I need. “But if Quinn orchestrated this, I will extract every single piece of information she has.”

Damn the consequences.

I select a couple of vials without hesitating. They are clear, almost innocent looking but I know the truth. Atlas watches mecarefully as I snap the case shut and there’s a shift in his posture that tells me he already knows this isn’t going to end clean.

“Where are you going?” he asks carefully.

I don’t look at him as I slide my phone from my pocket and unlock it.

“To pick up Quinn.”

“Roman, wait don’t you…”

“She lied to me,” I snap. “At the very least she set a trap for Fae.” My thumb is already punching over Quinn’s name, “and she’s going to tell me why.”

Roman:

where are you?

Her response comes instantly and I curl my lip. This girl is so desperate she’ll finally walk into my trap.

Quinn:

At school why?