Chapter Twenty-Four

I blinked at the Rey brothers. They were here. I’d wanted to talk to Marcus for days, wanted to ask how he was doing, and now he was standing in front of me.

With Antonio?

“I’m guessing you didn’t expect to see me,” Antonio greeted, dark eyes scanning each of us.

His gaze stopped on Keira. “Hi.”

It was a single word, but it made her smile.

“Hi,” she replied.

There was a distinct glint as their eyes connected, and we all stood there, silent, as a hum emanated off them so intensely it lifted the hair on my arms.

“Oooh, I’m feeling sparks!” Craig pretended to fan his face with his bound hands. “You guys feelin’ it, too?”

“Shut up,” Charlotte snapped.

“Antonio, I didn’t know you got my sloppy seconds!” Craig cheered like he wanted to offer a high five. “We should exchange notes.”

“Shut up!” I said, my voice growing stronger.

“What are you doing here?” Keira asked. She sounded shocked, but her eyes screamed that she was happy. Really happy.

After everything Antonio did to us, she can’t honestly be pleased to see him…

Only I was thrilled to see Marcus. Despite everything he said, it didn’t matter. I was ready to forgive him. Did she feel the same way?

“I’m here for you.” Antonio gazed at my sister like she was hot chocolate on a snow day off from school. He wanted to devour her, cuddle her, and warm her all at once—and judging by the ghost of a smile on Keira’s face, she felt the same.

Isn’t she pissed at him?

“I don’t understand,” she said, keeping her voice firm.

That made two of us.

Antonio’s walnut eyes twinkled, like there was much more he wanted to say. Instead, he glanced at Marcus and me. “I heard you were in Boston, and you went to our old house. I tried to get there as fast as I could, but I missed you.”

“You were there? When we were?” I looked at Marcus, but he didn’t meet my eyes. Still.

“Sí. I met JoAnne.”

“Who?” I didn’t recognize the name.

“JoAnne Dawkins, Detective Dawkins,” Antonio specified.

Huh, I never knew her first name. It was like hearing someone call your English teacher “Nikki.”

“JoAnne told me about your friend Regina getting involved with Sophia Urban, so we started talking…”

“Why?” Keira stepped closer.

“I want to make things right.”

He betrayed us, for months. He hurt Marcus and my sister. But he was standing there, remorse rising from him so heavily I could almost smell it, Eau de Regret. But I couldn’t trust it. I couldn’t trust anything.

“What happened to Marcus in Rio, the poison, I can not forgive myself. And what I did to you.” He reached for Keira, but she had the sense to step back. “I made so many mistakes. Lo siento. But I do not think my parents should pay for todo. I know they are not dangerous, I know they are not killers. I want to prove that.”

“And Dawkins is helping you?” I looked at Marcus for confirmation, but he kept staring at his brother, grinning like he wanted to wrap him in a headlock and rub a knuckle on his head. He was so happy he was here.

“JoAnne is determined.” Antonio chose the word carefully. “She wants her job back, and she wants to know who killed your friend, Tyson. She’s gonna solve his case.”

Wow. Antonio won over Detective Dawkins? Sure, she was suspended from the force and breaking a few rules—like sending me to Wyatt’s house and not turning us in when we broke into Marcus’s home—but teaming up with a criminal spy? That seemed like an extremely ill advised ally for a detective, former or otherwise. Did everyone just automatically trust this guy?

“He’s trying to help. I swear,” Marcus vouched, speaking up for the first time.

I wanted to believe him. I’d listened as his parents admitted to roping their son into this underground life. I knew Antonio never had a choice. But after everything he’s done, can we really trust anything he says?

Antonio wrung his tattooed hands, shaking his head like he was desperately trying to construct the exact words to get us to believe him. “I want to stop Department D. Believe me, I was being honest when I said I did not want to work there. Ever. I want to help you now. I’m doing everything I can to make this right for all of you.”

He looked at me, holding my gaze like he had something to prove, as a slow clap rose, floating up from behind us. We all turned to find Craig Bernard, his wrists still cable-tied, slapping his palms together like a seal.

“Great speech!” He whistled with the enthusiasm of a fan in a football stadium. “Did you practice that on the way over? Sorry to interrupt, I was just so moved by the moment.”

Antonio shot fireballs from his eyes as he stepped toward Bernard, scratching his bushy black beard in a way that made his hulking biceps look menacing. “Why are you here?”

“I was invited,” Bernard rasped. “I have to ask, the facial hair, do you find it gets in the way of the romance department? Because I’ve been thinking of growing mine since I’ve been here. No razor,” he whispered, rubbing the pale blond stubble on his chin. “Keira, you tell me. Who did you like kissing better? Because I remember you always liked this thing I did with my—”

Antonio dove at Craig Bernard without a sound or a warning. One minute he was scratching his beard, the next he was practically frozen in midair like a kung fu movie. He landed on Bernard and whaled on him with his fists again and again and again, pounding Bernard’s cheeks, his gut, his kidneys. Each dull, wet thud pulled me further and further out of the funk. My pulse began to race, and my eyes grew alert.

“Should we stop this?” Julian asked, sounding horrified by the spectacle.

“No.” Charlotte, Keira, and I all answered in unison.

“Mr. Bernard’s hands are bound. It’s not exactly a fair fight,” Julian continued.

None of us cared. The whole fight held more beauty than a ballet in Manhattan. I watched, riveted, my eyes twinkling for the first time in a long time. Maybe all hope wasn’t lost? Maybe some bad guys could still get what was coming to them?

Marcus stepped to my side and the back of his hand lightly grazed the back of mine. It was the faintest of contact, a slight brush of his knuckle, but it sent a tingle up my arm that jolted my senses. Everything switched to hyperdrive as adrenaline finally pumped within me once more.

“My brother thinks he knows who killed Tyson,” Marcus said, still not looking my way, but at least he was talking to me. And he had information.

“What?” I was unsure if I heard him right. His brother knew who ordered the hit on Tyson? How? And why didn’t he say that already?

Marcus turned his head, meeting my eyes for the first time in days and it was like a gulp of oxygen. I couldn’t tell if he was angry, missing me, loving me, or blaming me, but at least he was looking at me. My hands twitched at my sides, wanting to touch him, wanting to ask how he was doing and whether he’d spoken to his parents, but Bernard interrupted from the ground.

“Fine, fine!” Craig shouted between assaults. “I know where Sophia is!”

Antonio stopped midpunch, his bloody tattooed fist hanging in the air. Did he just say that? I morphed into a statue, afraid any movement might stop him from speaking.

Craig groaned, slowly rolling his head my way and wincing like a man about to yell “Uncle!” One of his eyes was swollen and blotchy purple, and his bottom lip dripped a crooked line of blood down his stubbled chin. “Sophia,” he rasped, “she has a friend who works for the BBC, stationed in Prague. I worked with her once—she’s Department D. That’s who Sophia would call for an interview. That’s the only person who would keep anything this quiet.”

Hope. It was once described “as a thing with feathers,” and now I knew why. It was tangible. You could feel it as surely as you could pet the feathers on a duck. I felt it now.

Craig Bernard knew where Sophia was. We had a way to find Regina.

We weren’t beaten, not completely, not yet.

Then I watched as Antonio delivered one more punch to Craig Bernard’s face and knocked him out cold.

…

At first, like everyone else, I pretended not to listen. I’d spent so much time in silence lately, it wasn’t hard to keep my mouth shut, even now that I was feeling better, more alert. But once my sister yelled, “You betrayed us, you betrayed me, and now you’re back!” I crept toward the window.

Keira and Antonio were pacing on one of Julian’s rear stone patios, my sister’s hands waving in the air, while Antonio’s head hung like a beaten man accepting his punishment. In response, we were hiding behind heavy velvet drapes straining to catch snippets of the argument that slipped through the panes of glass.

“Do you have any idea what it was like seeing you in magazines with that pendejo?” Antonio hollered.

“You don’t get to have an opinion about who I date, or how I get over you…”

“So you needed to get over me? You cared about me…”

“The problem was never me caring about you,” Keira yelled.

“I am so sorry!”

“You’ve said that already.”

“Because I mean it, and you know that. Tell me you know that.”

My sister nodded, and Charlotte released the hunter-green drape beside me and headed back to her laptop, giving me a look. We both knew where this was headed. Keira was taking him back. Maybe that was her plan all along—date a celebrity so publicly that somewhere in the world Antonio would see the pictures. If it was, I had to give her credit; it was possible Keira was the most skilled at disinformation in the group.

I felt Marcus breathing beside me. We were watching our siblings argue while we were barely speaking. But I figured “barely” was better than “not at all.”

“Did you know he was coming today?” I asked, staring at the glass, his reflection shining perfectly in the inky black night. It was as if I were looking at him in a mirror.

“Sí.” Marcus nodded.

“You could have told me…”

“You hate him.”

I shook my head, not sure what the honest response was. I didn’t hate Antonio. I simply didn’t trust him. That was different, and I had good reasons. I knew Antonio was unwillingly sucked into the world of espionage (as were we), but I also believed he eventually became one of them. He put our lives in danger. And he broke my sister. That dead look in her eyes on Valentine’s Day, the drinking, the dark moods, the sheer fact that she even went public in the first place—it was all because of Antonio.

But at the same time, I cared enough about Marcus to want to give him what he needed.

“He’s your brother,” I replied.

“He is, and he’s all I have left.” Marcus shifted his body away from me.

Not long ago, I felt safer with him than I did with anyone else in the world, and now he wouldn’t even give me a heads-up that his brother was about to land on our front steps. He wouldn’t even look at me.

“I’m sorry about your parents,” I repeated.

“You know, I spoke to them in prison.” Marcus’s face contorted like he hated the way the words tasted in his mouth. “They’re the ones who helped me find Antonio.”

“Good,” I nodded, my voice small. “What he and Detective Dawkins found out, it makes sense. If it pans out…”

“You’ll what? Finally believe he’s not evil?”

I shot him a look. I didn’t want to fight anymore. Couldn’t he see that?

Antonio had relayed a lot of information after Craig was unconscious, including who he thought wanted Tyson dead and why. His theory was so obvious and simple, it was plausible. Now if I could just get Regina to believe it, to listen to me. We had to find her in Prague, and we believed if she were there, my parents would be very close behind. So for the first time since everything fell apart in Dresden, we had a plan—if we chose to believe Antonio Rey and Craig Bernard.

“Everything Antonio did with the Dresden Kids, it was to try to keep our parents out of prison for crimes they didn’t commit. Now he’s trying to fix it,” Marcus said. “I believe him. He’s my brother.”

“I know that!” I spun toward him, fire in my gut. “Do you really think I don’t get that? It was awful watching you say goodbye to your parents,” my voice cracked, and I reached for the little silver padlock on his chain, willing him to remember how he felt the night he put it on, in this house, only weeks ago. “I never want to see you like that. Ever. I don’t want to take your parents away from you, or your brother. But this isn’t all up to me, and it isn’t easy on me, so stop acting like it is.”

Marcus’s head jerked back, surprise spreading across his face.

I kept talking. Finally. Loudly.

“My parents are the bad guys. I know that. You all remind me of it all the time. My parents deserve to be punished for everything they’ve done to the whole freakin’ world! I get it! But here’s the big secret”—I flung my arms out wide, heart crashing in my chest as the words jumped up and down in the back of my throat, fighting their way out even though I was petrified of saying them—“I don’t hate them! Did you hear me? I don’t hate my parents, any of them. I know I should. And I’ve tried, I’ve tried really hard. I know what they’ve done. Hell, I watched them kill a man right in front of me. But…they’re still my parents,” I squeaked out with a defeated shrug. “They’ve ruined so many lives, including mine, and yours, and Keira’s.” I gestured to the patio doors, which had slid open. Keira and Antonio now were listening to me. Everyone was listening.

“It felt good when I learned they weren’t dead. It felt good to stand in that house in Poland and listen to Randolph Urban tell me that all he wanted was to get to know me, that he wanted me to be his daughter, from the moment I was conceived. I’ve been an outcast and a burden to so many people for so long, and now here is this man, standing there, saying—He. Wants. Me.”

There it was. The dark truth. The ugliness that had been metastasizing inside me like stage four cancer consuming everything I thought I knew about myself. I was an orphan who wanted a parent, any parent, even an evil one.

“But you don’t need them, you have us.” Marcus stepped toward me, seeming stunned by my admission.

“No, I don’t.” I shook my head, jerking away from him, tears sliding down my cheeks and dripping off my chin. “You’ve spent days shutting me out, blaming me for things I didn’t do. You all expect me to be this perfect savior who rescues the world, but then if I make too many decisions, I’m wrong. If I don’t consult you, I’m wrong. If I don’t act fast enough, I’m wrong. I can’t keep letting everyone dump on me—Department D, the Dresden Kids, and now you. I can’t take much more!” I hiccuped, wiping my runny nose as I tried to hold back the sob that was shaking my chest.

Keira and Charlotte rushed to my side, flinging their arms around me.

“It’s okay,” Keira whispered. “Everything’s okay.”

“We’re right here,” Charlotte added. “You’re not alone.”

I nodded against both of their shoulders, tears still tumbling through a door I feared I might never be able to shut. Since the morning I walked into that bloody bathroom, it felt like everything that happened in the world was my fault. I didn’t kick Craig out of our party. I didn’t stop him from taking Keira. I didn’t make the Boston police listen to us. I didn’t even know who my parents were. I didn’t know the Dresden Kids would betray us. I didn’t stop the bartender from poisoning Marcus. I didn’t save Allen Cross from being knifed by my mom and dad. I didn’t save Tyson in that alley. I might not save Regina.

It was all on me. Because I was their daughter.

And somehow that bond still mattered to me.

We were about to attempt to bring down this organization for good, and that meant bringing down my family with it. I was tired of pretending that was simple.