Chapter 226 The No Names Man
ADRIANA
I’d predicted that whoever sent the shooter would eventually come looking for him.
What I hadn’t predicted was how fast.
I was in Elijah’s room when Hazel’s message came through. I’d been sitting with him for an hour, doing the thing I’d started doing more regularly now — talking to him about the day, about the kids, about the small and large disasters that accumulated between visits.
The doctors said they didn’t know whether coma patients could hear the people around them, but they also didn’t know that they couldn’t, and that was enough for me.
I’d told him about Lana. About the hospital, the tests, the fever that wouldn’t break.
I’d told him about the shooting in the way I hadn’t been able to tell anyone else — without managing my expression or keeping my voice level for the sake of the people watching me. I’d told him I was scared and that I was angry and that if he had any intention of waking up, now would be a genuinely excellent time.
He didn’t move.
My phone lit up.
You have a visitor. I think you’ll want to come out for this one.
I looked at it. Then I looked at Elijah.
“I’ll be back,” I said. “Don’t go anywhere.”
I’d asked Hazel to cancel everything today. No meetings, no calls, nothing that couldn’t wait twenty-four hours. The monthly meeting with the Alphas yesterday had left me wrung out in a way I was still recovering from. The room had been full of men talking over each, and I’d sat at the head of the table feeling the walls close in slightly and said what needed to be said and then excused myself the moment it was finished.
And Alpha Damon's apology had landed wrong in a way I couldn’t fully articulate. The words were correct. The eyes weren’t. I’d shoved it to the back of my mind and moved on because there was always something else demanding my immediate attention.
I sent Hazel back a message. Who is it?
Come and see.
I didn’t like cryptic things. I sent her another message that said exactly that and she responded with nothing, which meant she’d already put her phone away and expected me to follow.
I took the long route back downstairs, stopping in the kitchen long enough to drink half a glass of water and confirm with the maid that the twins had eaten lunch and that Lorain hadn’t tried to skip it again by claiming she wasn’t hungry while secretly reading in the garden. She had, in fact, tried this. The maid had caught her.
The man in the holding room was the same man who’d been there for days and still hadn’t said a single useful word. I’d been to see him twice. He was good at silence, which told me he’d been trained for exactly this situation or he was genuinely more afraid of whoever sent him than he was of me.
He would break. They always did eventually. The problem was eventually wasn’t fast enough.
When I’d had his clothes brought in for examination, he’d given himself away without saying anything at all. His eyes had tracked those clothes the second they came through the door. Whatever was in that fabric that could identify him, he knew it was there, and he knew I was looking for it.
The smell had been bothering me since. Petroleum and something beneath it, something lighter and specific that I couldn’t pin down. And the small red crown symbol on the chest of the jacket — I’d photographed it and sent it to every contact I had who might recognize it. Nothing back yet.
The man currently sitting across from Hazel in the receiving room was not the shooter.
He was well dressed, which was the first thing I noticed. Composed in the way that people are composed when they’ve had a lot of practice sitting in uncomfortable situations and appearing relaxed. He stood when I came in, which told me he’d been briefed on protocol, which told me he moved in circles where that mattered.
“My Queen.” He inclined his head. “Thank you for seeing me.”
“I was told I’d want to.” I sat down without inviting him to do the same. “Who are you?”
“My name isn’t important right now.” He sat anyway. “What’s important is that I know who sent the person you currently have in your holding room.”
The room was very quiet.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“The symbol on the jacket.” He leaned forward slightly. “The red crown. You’ve been trying to identify it.” He paused. “I can tell you exactly who that mark belongs to. But I need something from you first.”
I looked at him for a long moment.
“That’s not how this works,” I said.
“My Queen—”
“You came to me. You came to my house, asked to see me, and sat down in my chair without being invited. Which means you need something from me more urgently than I need something from you.” I held his gaze. “So you can start talking, or you can leave, and when your associate in the holding room eventually decides silence isn’t worth it anymore, I’ll find out what I need to know without your help. Your choice.”
He studied me.
I let him.
Hazel shifted slightly behind me. I heard the door open further down the corridor and then Leo’s voice asking one of the guards something in a low tone, and then retreating footsteps. Leo always knew when I was in a room that wasn’t safe and he always found a way to be close by without being in it.
The man across from me made a decision. I could see it happen.
“The mark belongs to someone who’s been watching this kingdom for a long time,” he said. “Someone who has been waiting for exactly the kind of vulnerability that currently exists.” He paused. “They knew your husband was incapacitated before most of your own people did.”
I kept my face completely neutral.
“That’s a very long way of not telling me a name,” I said.
Hazel stepped forward. “Perhaps we should continue this conversation somewhere more conducive to honesty.”
He looked at her. Then back at me. Then he said a name.
I recognized it.
I shouldn’t have. It was not a name that should have meant anything to me in this context, in this room, in this particular combination of circumstances. But I recognized it, and the recognition sat cold in my chest like something I’d swallowed the wrong way.
“Adriana.” Hazel’s voice was quiet and close. “Something has happened.”
I turned.
The guard in the doorway had the expression of someone carrying news they didn’t want to deliver. Not the shooter. Not the kingdom. His eyes went to me and then to the floor and I knew before he opened his mouth that this was about Lana.