Chapter 266 Fake
ADRIANA
I shifted back down beside him, letting him pull me close again, more carefully this time.
After a while, when his breathing had evened out slightly and the medication had taken the edge off the strain in his face, he spoke again.
“You said I missed things.”
I hesitated.
Then, quieter, “You did.”
“I want to hear it,” he said. “All of it. Just… not all at once.”
That, more than anything, told me how tired he really was.
I nodded, even though he could probably feel it more than see it.
“Okay.”
So I didn’t start with everything.
I started small. And when I did eventually get to Damien, he took in a deep long breath.
“Damien,” he said finally.
“Is innocent. Was always innocent.” I held his gaze. “Someone built that case specifically for you. They knew what you would need to see and they showed you exactly that.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I sentenced my own brother to death.”
The word landed between us.
“Brother,” I said.
“There’s something I should have told you a long time ago.” He shifted slightly against the headboard, slower now. “When the case first came to me, the evidence file had a photograph…”
He told me everything.
And this time, I felt it as he said it. The weight of it. The regret.
It all made sense.
Hazel knocked and came in to tell me the guards had dismantled the device and removed it from the building, and that Leo had brought the children back inside and they were being settled downstairs. I thanked her and she left, and the room was quiet again.
My phone rang. It was Damien.
“We have him,” he said. “We found him at the eastern border checkpoint. He’s contained.”
I exhaled slowly. “Bring him back. Don’t hurt him yet.”
“Yet,” Damien said, and ended the call.
I looked at Elijah. “He’s caught.”
“Good.” He reached for my hand, his fingers still a little unsteady but determined. “The kids. Are they—”
“They’re fine. Leo had them out before the guards finished clearing the floor.” I looked at him. “Leo is remarkable, by the way. You should know that.”
“I know that.”
“He sat up with me through the worst of it. Helped me with the investigation. Found the clue that broke the whole thing open.” I paused. “You raised a good one.”
“We raised a good one,” he said. “We raised all of them.”
“She’s going to be your greatest problem,” I said. “Lana. She’s already decided she prefers you and she doesn’t have the language to be subtle about it.”
He laughed.
Soft. A little strained.
But real.
And it was still the best sound I had heard in seven months.
Having Elijah back in the house was surreal in a way that things were surreal. I’ve been bracing against his absence for so long that his presence felt like something your nervous system needed time to accept as real.
I kept hearing his voice around corners and going still for half a second before remembering that was allowed now. The twins had attached themselves to him, and he moved through the house trailing them like a tide he’d accepted he couldn’t outswim.
Lorain had appointed herself the authority on what he was and wasn’t allowed to do in his current condition, which he submitted to with more grace than I expected.
Damien had brought Thomas back the previous evening.
He came through the main door with Thomas Gray’s collar in his hand and dropped him on the floor of the entrance hall with the efficient contempt of someone who had spent the drive back deciding exactly how to make that entrance.
“He was hooked at the border checkpoint,” he said pleasantly. “Apparently crossing requires documentation.”
Thomas was on his knees on the floor, significantly less composed than he’d been in Lana’s room, and he looked up at me with the expression of a man recalculating.
“Take him down,” I said to the guards. “Put him in the same cell as Damon.” I looked at Thomas. “I imagine you two have things to discuss. He’s going to be very interested to learn who’s been pulling his strings this entire time.”
The fear that moved across Thomas’s face when I said Damon’s name was the first genuinely honest thing I’d seen from him.
The guards took him out, and Damien watched him go with an expression that I hadn’t seen on him before.
“The boys,” I said. “You said all three.”
“All three. He faked Kyle’s death. He made him lie on a floor with stage blood and sent you the photo. He said killing them was a waste of his energy since you’d made it clear you didn’t care.” Damien looked at me. “They’re downstairs.”
I moved before he finished the sentence.
Kyle was standing in the corridor outside the kitchen with Collins and Miller on either side of him, all three of them showing the evidence of days in Thomas’s custody. They looked tired, dirty, thinner than they should have been.
Kyle looked up when I came around the corner and I crossed the space without thinking about it and put my arms around him, and he went rigid for half a second with the surprise of it before he hugged me back with a grip that said something about what the past several days had cost him.
“I thought he’d killed you,” I said into his shoulder.
“He wanted you to.” His voice was rough. “He said you’d already proved you didn’t need us back, so there was no point.” He pulled back and looked at me. “You said that so he wouldn’t actually do it. Right?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly why I said it.”
Something in his face released.
I looked at all three of them, they’d been used and threatened and dragged through months of someone else’s plan because they’d been hungry and desperate and someone had appeared at the right moment with money in his hand. They were not going back to that. Not if I had anything to say about it.
“You’re staying here until we figure out what comes next,” I said. “Get cleaned up and sleep and eat something real. I’ll come find you later.”