Chapter 144 CHAPTER 145: The Hidden Value

Chapter 144 CHAPTER 145: The Hidden Value


BIANCA'S POV

I paced back and forth across my bedroom floor, my heels clicking sharply against the hardwood. My phone was gripped so tightly in my hand that my knuckles had turned pure white. The screen had gone dark three minutes ago, but I could still see the text burned into my vision like an afterimage from staring at the sun.

She's valuable because of her bloodline. Because of who her family was before the fire wiped them out.

The words circled inside my skull like vultures. I couldn't make them stop. Every time I tried to push them away, they came swooping back, lower and closer, until all I could hear was the echo of that man's cold voice telling me something I didn't understand about a girl I despised.

Everything I had built, every bit of social standing I possessed, had completely vanished. My reputation was in ruins. Zane wouldn't look at me. The brothers treated me like furniture. Students who used to worship me now crossed to the other side of the hallway when they saw me coming. And every single day, Aria walked through school with her head a little higher, her smile a little wider, her orbit a little bigger, absorbing the warmth and the attention that should have been mine.

I stopped pacing and stood in front of my full length mirror. My reflection stared back at me, beautiful and furious and absolutely lost.

For years I had believed people cared about Aria because of the brothers or because of Zane. I thought I was fighting a petty high school war over popular boys and social standing. I thought she was just a pathetic, wolfless omega who got lucky. That was easy to hate. That was easy to fight against. But this? This was something else entirely.

I was hearing that Aria might be important for a reason that had nothing to do with any of us.

The realization made me feel a hundred different things at once, and none of them were comfortable. There was anger, of course. Bright and hot, like always. But underneath it was something I hadn't expected. Curiosity. A sharp, hungry, desperate curiosity that made my hands itch and my mind race.

Using my burner phone, I tracked down the underground contact I had used before. I needed to understand what I had heard. I needed to know if it was true or if these criminals were just feeding me garbage to keep me confused and off balance.

"What do you want now, rich girl?" the man barked into the receiver when I called. "I told you to lose this number."

"I want answers," I snapped back, trying to keep my voice from trembling. I hated that it was trembling. I hated the weakness of it, the way my vocal cords betrayed me when my brain was screaming at them to hold steady. "You told me she was valuable because of her bloodline. What does that even mean?"

"That's above your pay grade," the man sneered.

"Stop talking to me like I'm a child!" I shouted, and the force of my own voice startled me. I was standing in the middle of my room, screaming into a burner phone at a criminal, and for a second I caught my reflection in the mirror and didn't recognize myself. The girl staring back looked wild. Unhinged. Like someone standing on the edge of something she couldn't come back from.

"She's not valuable because of your stupid school drama," the man replied, his voice dropping into that cold, chilling register that always made my skin prickle. "She's valuable because of her bloodline. Because of who her family was before the fire wiped them out. She's carrying something rare, and everyone from the old days wants a piece of it."

"What fire? What bloodline?"

Click.

He hung up. The dead tone buzzed in my ear like a flatline.

I lowered the phone slowly, staring down at the cracked screen. My hands were shaking. Not from fear this time. From something closer to excitement, mixed with a terrible, gnawing unease.

A fire. An old bloodline. Aria wasn't just a regular omega from a cheap apartment. There was something hidden underneath all those plain clothes and innocent stares, something that people with money and guns and international connections were willing to kill for.

The burning hatred I usually felt toward her suddenly shifted. It didn't disappear. Hatred like mine didn't just go away. But it changed shape. It became something colder, harder, more focused. Jealousy was loud and messy. It made you scream in hallways and hire thugs and throw yourself at boys who didn't want you anymore. But what I was feeling now was different. This was the quiet kind of hunger. The dangerous kind.

If she was just a nobody, why were syndicates hunting her? Why were the Steel brothers guarding her like she was made of gold and glass? Why did that criminal look at her name like it was worth more than everything in my trust fund?

I walked to my vanity table and sat down. The mirror lights cast a warm glow across my face, smoothing out the dark circles under my eyes, the tight lines around my mouth. I looked beautiful. I always looked beautiful. But beauty hadn't saved me from losing everything.

Information might.

If everyone wanted Aria so badly, then I was going to find out exactly why. Not to help her. Not to protect her. To use it. Because that was what I was good at. That was the one thing nobody had taken from me yet.

I set the burner phone down on the table and stared at my reflection with a slow, calculating smile spreading across my lips.

Whatever secret Aria was hiding, I was going to dig it up from the roots.