Chapter 254: Chapter 254: Author's POV

Chapter 254: Author's POV

Nobody moved for a long time.

Alonso sat against the lockers with his nose still bleeding into his collar, the tablet glowing on the bench beside him, the photograph of his own life still up on the screen where Nikolai had left it.

"Twelve years," he said finally. Quiet. Almost to himself.

"I know," Walter said.

"Twelve years, and I never once asked him why. I just believed it. Every single piece of it. The logs. The evidence. The face he gave me to wear. I never asked who built any of it, because some part of me wanted it to be true. Wanted someone to blame. And he knew that. He knew exactly what I'd take without checking."

"And I'd call you pathetic..." Walter stopped. "But I wouldn't blame you either."

Alonso laughed. It wasn't a real laugh. It came out wrong and sounded quite broken, pathetic, like Walter had mentioned.

"He told me Zane chose his mother because that's who Zane is. Selfish. Always saving himself first." He shook his head slowly. "But that's not what this was, was it. That's what Simon is."

"Yes," Walter said.

"He's spent his whole life avenging a woman who left him before any of us were born, and he made me the weapon for it. I burned. I lost my face. I lost years sleeping in places that don't exist, learning to live with skin that doesn't grow back. And he sat somewhere safe the entire time, deciding who I was allowed to hate."

Nobody corrected him. There wasn't anything to correct. It was best to allow the villain to feel where they had been wronged, till the very end.

"Where is she," Walter asked. Gently, but not soft. Enough to let you know his patience was wearing thin.

Alonso remained quiet.

"Alonso. This isn't a question. We will find out anyway. But we are doing you the favor of asking. Where the fuck is she?"

Nikolai said, hands braced across his buckle, tapping at the head of the gun.

Alonso's hands tightened around nothing, his eyes looked empty, like he looked empty.

"You'll kill me either way. He will kill me." For the first time, Alonso sounded quite scared.

"No," Walter said. "We won't. And we won't allow him to touch you."

"And why should I believe that. Because you have made me see the truth and you think that changes who I am or what I have done? No. It changes nothing."

"Yes. It changes everything, Mason Stillford."

The decoy who had attacked him said for the first time since Walter and Nikolai had stepped into the room.

"And how the fuck did you know my name. Who the hell are you again man?"

"Zane gave me a little information and I had my men run data on you. As for my name..."

He stopped, staring at Nikolai who gave him a nod, and he rolled his eyes before turning to look at Alonso.

"I am Rhett Lexington. And if we wanted you dead, I should have killed you the second you tried to take the puck from me."

Alonso's eyes widened in shock. Not at his last words but at his name.

The name shook through his body, as he felt dread washed through him.

"You are... Rhett Lexington..."

He muttered it, and it wasn't a question, his eyes still wide, and his shock total. He didn't recognize the man's face because Rhett had kept his identity a little bit secret. He mostly played with his mask on, and had only recently shown his face to the public.

Simon. Alonso. Both of them were about to be in serious trouble if the Lexingtons found out their heir, their top hockey player, had been put in any form of danger.

"You've been on this floor for ten minutes. Nobody's touched you since the first hit, and that one was personal, not strategic." Walter glanced at his own knuckles. "Where is she, Alonso?"

The silence stretched long enough that Nikolai shifted his weight, like he was preparing to ask differently.

"There's a warehouse," Alonso said finally, knowing he had no option, "Off the old shipping corridor on the east side. Used to be a textile distributor before it went under. Simon's had it for years. Nobody official owns it on paper."

"How many men."

"Fifteen when I left. Maybe more by now. He doesn't take chances." Alonso's voice had gone flat, hollowed out. "He has her tied up in a back room. And Paloma, someone who's been working with me. And Cole."

"Anyone else?"

Alonso's jaw worked.

"He doesn't know I'm telling you this."

"He's about to find out everything's already over," Nikolai said. "Address. Now."

Alonso gave it. Street by street, the exact loading bay, the side door that didn't lock right, the camera blind spot near the east fence that he himself had pointed out to Simon's men two months ago, back when he'd still believed he was building something instead of being used.

Nikolai was already moving before he finished talking, phone to his ear, voice low and fast.

Walter stayed crouched in front of Alonso a moment longer.

"For what it's worth," he said, "Klaus would've forgiven you. He was that kind of stupid."

Alonso didn't answer. He just sat there with his back against cold metal lockers, twelve years of certainty in pieces on the floor around him, and let himself, for the first time since the fire, actually grieve the man he used to be.

Three hundred miles away, in a room that smelled like a woman being kidnapped and old concrete, Olive watched the screen go dark.

The game was over. The message had gone out. Simon had said it himself, operation cancelled, your family's safe, and somewhere in the building, men were probably already standing down, lowering weapons, packing up and walking away from houses they'd been watching all night.

She should have felt relief.

She felt the opposite.

Beside her, Ruby was crying quietly again, and Cole had finally stopped pulling at the tape, exhausted, his head dropped forward against his chest.

Simon stood up, stretching like a man who'd just finished a long, satisfying meal.

"Well," he said, glancing toward the door like he was already thinking about what came next. "That's that, then."

Olive said nothing. Maybe it was best she said the Lord's Prayer, and then think about the time she hadn't eaten sushi because they told her it was made of raw fish, or when her mother had asked her to try on the wedding gown on a random day, and she had called it weird, maybe she'd missed the chance of being a princess even for a second.

She kept her eyes closed against the dead television screen, and when she opened them, she stared at her own faint reflection staring back at her, and she had no idea, none at all, that three hundred miles away, a phone was already ringing, an address was already being repeated out loud, and three cars were already pulling out of a parking garage toward her.