Chapter 84 My Brother’s Shadow
“You don’t know that, we can’t be too sure.”
“The fuck you mean by ‘we can’t be too sure?’ I literally felt it bounce off of her, It didn’t work!”
“That’s your incompetence.”
A short laugh in disbelief, “My incompetence? Don’t let me get started on the incompetent one…”
Molly slowly came to. She was partially conscious and aware of voices before she could make sense of them.
Two voices. Both male. One raised.
"She's a witch, Enzo. A witch!"
Zion. That was Zion's voice, he was panicking.
"Keep your voice down."
"Were you not listening? I tried to compel her twice and she blocked it both times without flinching. That is not something a regular human does."
"I heard you."
Molly kept her eyes closed. She was upright, arms pulled behind her back, wrists bound. When she tested her mouth she found it sealed with something like tape.
She breathed through her nose and listened.
"Were you and Grace actually close?" Zion's voice dropped but the edge stayed. "How did you spend that much time around her and not know her closest friend was a witch?"
"I didn't know," Enzo said. "And I doubt Grace knew either."
"That doesn't make it better. It makes it worse." Zion's footsteps moved back and forth. "We've brought a witch here, Enzo. If she belongs to a powerful coven, they will come for her. And that's the smaller problem."
Silence.
"Your father is around," Zion said.
The quality of quiet that followed was heavier than the quiet before it.
"I know," Enzo said.
"Uncle Cesare would find out about her, you know how he works. And when he does he won't ask her nicely about what we want to know. He'll take her apart." Zion stopped moving. "We need to get her out."
“Zion.”
“Why did I even listen to you and agree to bring her here?!”
“Zion.”
“We’ve barely just crossed the border, just close to it, we— no, I can take her out of this warehouse and return her—”
“Zion!”
“What?!”
"The only things I care about right now are finding Grace and dealing with Maddox," Enzo said. "Everything else is secondary."
"Dealing with?" Zion repeated slowly. "You're going to kill him, Enzo."
"That's the mission."
"I'm not talking about the damn mission. I'm talking about you. He's your brother."
"Half-brother."
"That distinction didn't used to matter to you."
"Things change."
Zion was quiet. When he spoke again the social ease he always carried was gone. "I almost don't recognise you anymore. Is this to impress your father? All of this? Is that what's happening?"
The silence broke fast. Fabric gripped. Footsteps closing.
"Don't." Enzo's voice dropped to something controlled and pressured. "Don't ask me if this is about impressing my father. You have no idea what you're talking about."
"Then explain it."
"Do you know what it feels like," Enzo said, "to have it pointed out your entire life that your only advantage over him was being born first? Born with the right bloodline? Maddox couldn't head the pack because of his blood, not because of anything he did or didn't earn. Everyone in that pack knew it and made sure I knew they knew it."
Zion said nothing.
"My mother lost her mind," Enzo continued, and his voice changed on those words specifically. "Not gradually, she sits in a room and doesn't come out, half the time she doesn’t even know who or where she is. Has been like that for years. You want me to separate that from Maddox cleanly? Fine. But I also don't need to." His voice hardened. "He stood in that prison and let women and children be killed for not joining his cause. I found their bodies. I found a child behind a shelf in a storage room." The last sentence came out differently from the rest. "So don't tell me he isn't worth killing."
Silence.
"He could have killed you," Zion said quietly. "That day, he chose not to. Grace or no Grace, he made a choice."
"Good for him. I don't owe him anything for that."
A pause. Then Zion said, "You told your father you killed Matteo."
The footsteps stopped.
Molly was drifting in and out of consciousness, she kept trying to hold onto being conscious before it temporarily slipped from her grasp for a few seconds.
"I heard it from enough people that it's not deniable," Zion continued. "Why did you?"
The silence stretched.
"Give me a break," Enzo said finally, and for the first time, his voice carried exhaustion. "What use would killing Matteo have been? Tell me practically what I stood to gain."
Enzo frowned. ‘Fuck, only Matteo knows what fucking happened that day anyway. So what’s the point in explaining myself?’
He’d claimed the kill to curry favour with his father after all. He didn’t want to go into the details of what really happened that day. Because it would simply make him look far more pathetic.
"I don't know. That's why I'm asking."
"I gave my father a version of events that made sense to him. That's all."
"That's not nothing," Zion said. "That version of events is probably why Grace ran. You know that. You're talking about finding her and you haven't asked what you're going to say when you do. You're unstable right now, Enzo. That's not a criticism. It's an observation. You're running on impulse and whatever your father has been putting in your ear, and Grace was smart enough to feel it." He paused. "This is why she left. You're an unpredictable prick, and she knew it."
"Go home," Enzo said.
"I’m not leaving without Molly."
"Zion."
"I won't leave without her." He lashed out.
Molly had been listening with her eyes closed and somewhere in the middle of all of it she had finally become fully awake without either of them realising it. She opened her eyes.
Both of them looked at her.
Zion's expression moved through several things. Enzo did not move at all.
Molly looked between them, her mouth sealed, wrists bound, still in the white dress she had put on for what she had told herself was not a date. Two people who had just conducted an entire argument over her unconscious body, and both of them were now looking at her with the expressions of people who had said considerably more than they'd intended.
She looked at Zion. Then at Enzo. Then back at Zion. She directed the force of her glare to the both of them with an expression of someone who had a great deal to say and was currently being prevented from saying it.
“She looks mighty confused,” Zion said as Molly narrowed her eyes further.
“Of course she is, who would wake up from being abducted and not be?”
She directed the force of her glare at Enzo.
Zion looked at Enzo. "Take the bindings off."
"You put it on." Enzo returned calmly.
Zion turned to Molly and approached to free her mouth.
“If she uses any damn spell, I swear I’ll break her neck.”
She breathed. Ran her tongue over her lips. Looked at both of them.
Then she looked at Enzo, then at Zion, then back at Enzo again, “thank you.”
Zion moved to undo her binding but that was apparently where Enzo drew the line.
“She’s not going anywhere.” He warned, eyes glowing with severity.
Zion met his goat and got up, claws bared and his back against Molly. It was already clear what came next…