Chapter 240 Loyalty to Blood
ADRIANA
With Hazel gone, the work didn’t stop. It just became mine alone to carry.
She was out there pulling threads from the outside and I needed to be doing the same thing from here. The only resource immediately available to me was sitting in the cells beneath the palace, and I intended to use every bit of it.
I’d decided against the execution order because dead men couldn’t testify, and those three boys were the only people in this building who had actually laid eyes on the man behind the red crown.
I was heading down the corridor toward the lower stairwell when Leo appeared at the top of it.
“I’ll come with you.”
“No.”
“Mum, I’m fifteen—”
“I know how old you are.” I turned and looked at him properly. “These aren’t the kind of people you need to be sitting across from yet. There will be a time for all of this, Leo. I mean that. But it’s not today, and it’s not down there.” I held his gaze until he stood down.
He did but his expression was one he’d inherited directly from Elijah, the one that meant he disagreed and had decided to absorb it rather than argue. He stepped back from the stairwell and I kept moving.
The guard led me through the lower corridor. I’d separated the three of them immediately after court. No proximity and no chance to exchange signals or shore up the rehearsed version of events. Whatever story they’d drilled into themselves was going to start fracturing under the pressure of isolation and silence. That was the design.
Kyle’s cell was the first stop.
He was standing when I arrived. He looked me over as I approached the bars.
“Thought we were getting executed,” he said.
“Plans change.” I kept walking past his cell without breaking stride. “I’ll be back.”
“Where are you going?”
I didn’t answer. I moved down toward Miller’s cell at the far end of the corridor, and I heard Kyle behind me move toward the bars, and his sharp intake of breath. Good. Let the uncertainty do its work.
Miller was sitting in the corner of his cell with his knees pulled up to his chest, staring at a fixed point on the floor with the stillness of someone who had gone somewhere else in their head to survive the waiting. He raised his eyes slowly when the guard’s key hit the lock. He looked younger than he had in the courtroom. Something about the confined space made that more visible.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get some air.”
He came out without argument or question, and we moved back through the corridor. When we passed Kyle’s cell, I heard him react before I saw him — the scrape of shoes on concrete, the rush to the bars.
“Don’t hurt him.” Kyle’s hands wrapped around the bars and his voice had dropped all the performance from earlier. “Whatever you’re planning. He doesn’t know anything. Please.”
Miller looked at me.
I let a long moment pass. “I’ll think about it,” I said, and kept walking.
We came up through the lower stairwell and out into the garden. The evening air was cool and still, and I watched Miller register the open space and something in him physically loosened. I sat down at the outdoor table where tea was already waiting and I opened my notebook.
“Sit down,” I said. “Tell me everything from the beginning. Take your time.”
He folded himself into the chair across from me with careful, deliberate movements. Then he looked at his hands for a moment and began.
“Kyle was telling the truth about the bar. That part was real. But it wasn’t the chief guard who approached us.” He paused. “It was a man. He never gave a name. He sat with his face covered the entire time by a pulled down cap. He kept his eyes on his drink. He never looked up directly, not once.” Miller’s voice was even and quiet, like someone reciting something they’d thought about many times in a small room. “He said he’d pay us more money than we’d seen in a year if we did what he asked. He paid half of it upfront, right there at the table. Said we’d get the rest when the job was done.”
“The clothes,” I said. “The ones with the red crown insignia. Where did those come from?”
“Him. He gave them to us directly. We didn’t know the symbol was significant. He just said to wear them and we did.”
“Did he make contact again after that first meeting?”
“Once. The day before we were supposed to be in the woods.” Miller’s jaw tightened slightly at the memory. “He called and told us exactly what to say if we were caught. Word for word. He said we definitely wouldn’t end up in jail.” His shoulders dropped. “He was wrong.”
“Is there anything else you remember about him? Anything at all — even something that seemed small or irrelevant at the time.”
He was quiet for a moment, genuinely thinking rather than performing the effort of thinking. “I wasn’t focused on him because I assumed he was one of Kyle’s contacts. Kyle’s contacts make me nervous. They’re always armed.” He frowned slightly. “But I remember he seemed out of place in that bar. The way he was dressed — like he’d come from somewhere professional. Formal shirt, neat. Nobody in that bar was dressed like that. And he smelled strange.”
I looked up from my notes. “Strange how?”
“Not like cologne or alcohol. Clinical. Like rubbing alcohol. The kind you smell in a hospital or a laboratory.” He paused. “It was strong enough that I noticed it over everything else.”
I wrote that down slowly and underlined it. Rubbing alcohol wasn’t a smell that came from personal habit. It was occupational. It settled into fabric and skin from sustained exposure in a specific kind of environment.
“Thank you, Miller. That’s genuinely helpful.” I set my pen down. “Can I see your shirt for a moment?”
He hesitated, then reached for the hem and lifted it, and I kept my face absolutely still even though what I was looking at made something cold move through my chest. His torso was covered in bruising — old marks gone yellow and green at the edges, newer ones still livid purple, and beneath those, faded lines that had been there long enough to become part of the landscape of his skin. This was not from one incident. This was sustained and deliberate and had been happening for a long time.
“Miller.” My voice stayed calm because I needed it to. “Who did this to you?”
He pulled the shirt back down. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I didn’t push. I looked at the necklace instead, a thin chain with a small pendant, plain enough to overlook until you looked at the pendant closely. A red crown, small and precise, pressed into the metal.
“Can I borrow that for a few minutes? I just want to photograph it.”
His hand went to it immediately. “Kyle gave it to me. He said never to take it off.”
“Kyle won’t know. I’ll have it back before you go downstairs.” I held his gaze steadily. “I promise.”
He reached back, unclasped it slowly, and placed it in my palm.
“Are you actually going to kill me?” he asked. His voice was completely level when he said it, which somehow made it worse than if it had shaken.
“No,” I looked at him directly. “You’re not in danger from me, Miller. I need you to understand that.”
He looked out at the garden and was quiet for a moment.
“He’s a really good brother,” he said. “Kyle. He’s always tried to look after us.”
I looked up from the necklace. “Collins is your brother too?”
He nodded.
I kept my expression neutral and wrote it down, but my mind was reordering everything — the dynamic in the courtroom, the protectiveness, the way Kyle had positioned himself as the one absorbing all the risk. He hadn’t been performing loyalty to a stranger or an employer. He’d been trying to keep his brothers alive.
“Thank you, Miller.” I stood and signaled to the guard. “Don’t take him back to the cells yet. Find him somewhere comfortable upstairs.” I turned back to Miller. “I’ll return the necklace to you. You have my word.”
I waited until he was out of earshot, then turned to the second guard. “The shirt. I need it back stained. Animal blood, dark, make it convincing. Bring it to me in twenty minutes.”