Proof of Life (The Potentate of Atlanta Book 4) Page 22

  “I protected Hadley as best I could,” she whispered, “but it was only a matter of time.”

  Green.

  “You were luring me away from the sites Liz chose, or detonating them early when you couldn’t.”

  “Yeah.” She rolled her shoulders. “It was the best I could do.”

  Red.

  Down deep, she didn’t believe that, and neither did I.

  Mate bonds were powerful things, but you couldn’t let love blind you to the cost of dozens of lives.

  On the heels of that revelation ran another one. “You kidnapped my family.”

  “Liz was pissed you kept slipping through her fingers, so she targeted them to put you off balance.” The lines creasing her face made her appear older, as if the past week had aged her. “I booked the dining room for a private party and put it under their names. That’s how I cleared the restaurant of patrons.”

  Green.

  Patrons were only half the collateral damage. “What about the staff?”

  “There was no staff present when I arrived.” A certain grimness tightened her mouth. “There were no bodies either. I checked. I’m not sure what Liz did with them before I got there.”

  “Liz was present?” I verified. “How did you get my family past her?”

  “I spooked her off with a lie about you being on your way to join your family.”

  Midas keep the ball rolling when I couldn’t find the words. “What happened next?”

  “I drugged the Whitakers and the Pritchards then brought them to the old clinic until I could figure out what to do with them.”

  Green.

  “Why wouldn’t she have waited for Hadley to join them and then taken them all out at once?”

  Midas made a good point, and I lent weight to his argument. “That would have fixed all her problems.”

  “I think…” Her mouth stretched thin. “I think she figured out what I was doing, minimizing the damage, protecting Hadley.” She wet her lips. “I think she wanted them as hostages all along, but she was happy to let me believe I was getting one over on her as long as the job got done.”

  Green.

  That made no sense. “Why not just kidnap them and be done with it?”

  “She needed Ares to commit a crime against the pack of such severity it would cut her ties to us,” Midas realized. “When Ares took your family, she violated the trust given to her as your friend and as a pack enforcer. She struck a blow to her beta and his mate. She forsook her vows.”

  So that’s what Liz meant.

  Not that Ares had shrugged off her pack bonds, but that she had smashed them with a hammer.

  “She was isolating you,” Linus said. “She wanted you alone, with no allies and no one to ask for help.”

  And once Liz had spent Ares’s reputation down to the last penny, Liz would have killed her. There was no point in adding Ares to the coven’s closet, not when Liz had torched her credibility. That had to hurt.

  Head down, she gave no indication she heard, but the hitch in her indrawn breath made me want to hug her. Right up until I remembered how we got into this mess.

  She could have killed my entire family. Wiped them out in a blink. The mercy she showed them would leave scars. I was as grateful for it as I was furious about it. “That’s why you left me Boaz’s ring.”

  Guilt had forced her to give me hope, maybe even direction. Subconsciously, she must have wanted the truth to come out, whether it damned her, Liz, or both of them.

  “We had hostages, so we might as well use them.” Ares’s feet twitched with muscle spasms. “That’s what she told me when she found me at the clinic. That’s when I knew I had been set up since Choco-Loco, the night Boaz and Addie got into town.” She tucked her legs under her. “I made them as comfortable as possible. I left them food and water and buckets for…”

  The buckets, and their stench, wasn’t one that would soon fade from my memories.

  “You kept them alive,” Midas coaxed, drawing out her confessions. “That matters.”

  There was one last hurdle to truly understanding how far this relationship had soured, and I tasted the question on my tongue when I asked it. “Liz is coven, isn’t she?”

  The ambiguous phrasing wasn’t intentional, but it worked in my favor.

  “I thought at first she was infected. A host.” Ares’s shoulders hunched even more. “It was almost a relief to believe it was curable. That if Ford had survived, she could too.” Tears glittered on her cheeks. “The way she acted, I—I knew she must be coven. That a witchborn fae had… That my mate was…” A sob lodged in her throat. “But it was so much worse.”

  Green.

  What had Liz told me?

  I’m not wearing anyone.

  I hadn’t believed her then, not with so much glamour at her fingertips.

  “Liz is a witchborn fae,” I realized. “She’s a member of the coven, not a skin or a host.”

  “She quit practicing,” Midas said slowly. “Otherwise, we would have smelled black magic on her.”

  “I thought she was human.” Ares shook her head. “I had no idea…”

  Green.

  “When did you learn the truth?”

  “I walked her to work last Friday, like I always do when time permits.” Her tears hit her pants with wet plops. “I was halfway back to the Faraday when I noticed I had her ID badge in my pocket, so I circled back to the hospital and hit the help desk. I had them page her, but she didn’t show. An older man, another surgeon, came to explain she had been on leave for a month.”

  Green.

  “What did you do next?”

  “I thought maybe if she got fired, she would have been too embarrassed to tell me. The hormone therapy was hard on her, and she got written up a few times for losing her temper. I checked our apartment in case she had gone home. She knew I was working, so she would have had the place to herself, but she wasn’t there.”

  Green.

  “Where did you find her?”

  “She came home at dawn, still dressed for work. I confronted her, but she made all these excuses.” Ares shifted on the bed to get more comfortable. “She told me stress was bad for the baby, and I was driving her nuts with all the questions. I was worried she was right, so I let it go.”

  Green.

  “You didn’t really let it go,” I asked gently, “did you?”

  “I started staying up days, following her. Liz—” She shut her eyes briefly. “My Liz wasn’t the type to have an affair, but I couldn’t turn a blind eye. She was finally pregnant, and I became obsessed with tracking her. I had to know the child didn’t belong to an ex-boyfriend or…”

  A current one.

  How much simpler infidelity would have been compared to all this.

  Green.

  “You were there,” I said, prying her heart open wider, “at Choco-Loco.”

  “There was no reason for Liz to be there that night, so I followed her inside.” Ares swallowed. “Chef Daaé… He was already dead. A stake through the heart. I didn’t understand. I stood there, but I...” It was clear she still struggled with it. “That’s when I got it, what she meant to do. I begged her to stop, but she wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t fight her…” She turned bloodshot eyes on us. “The baby. I couldn’t risk the baby. Not after we tried so hard.”

  Quiet sobs broke the harsh lines of her shoulders then, and my heart shattered into razor-sharp pieces.

  “Have you considered Liz didn’t want a baby?” I hated to twist the knife, but it was already in my hand. “That she never had trouble conceiving?”

  The lowest of the low wouldn’t wield a woman’s desire for a child with her mate against her, but Liz had used the struggle to bring them closer, to tie their goals tighter, to blind Ares to what else she might be doing under her nose.

  Watch the left hand while the right balls into a fist and punches you into next week.

  Classic misdirection.

  “She lied to me, used me,
but it doesn’t change the fact I loved that woman with everything in me.” Ares laugh-cried and sniffled. “The Liz I loved doesn’t exist, but this one moves like her, talks like her, and it makes me a coward, but I still tell myself my Liz is in there.”

  Green.

  Guess this time I was the right fist staring down the barrel of next week. “Are you sure she’s pregnant?”

  A slow breath shuddered out of her. “Yes.”

  Green.

  A gwyllgi nose would be impossible to fool. They would pick up the subtle changes in scent in their mate, but I wore a ring to fake mine. Who was to say Liz hadn’t done the same? She was a doctor, of that I had no doubt, given her service record among the gwyllgi. But that meant she had access to pregnant gwyllgi females and could craft a disguise based on their natural pheromones. “Help us then.”

  “I can’t.”

  Red.

  “What do you think will happen to your child if Liz goes free? The coven will help her raise it. What kind of life is that for a kid? What kind of mom would you be if you let it happen?”

  “I’ll never see it,” she breathed. “I’ll be killed for my crimes, and I’ll deserve it.”

  Tisdale was a wise alpha, and a good mother. Both of those required a streak of ruthlessness.

  “Are you saying because you won’t be there to see it, that makes it all right?”

  “What’s worse? That the child grows up orphaned or is raised by at least one parent?”

  “Depending on the parent,” I said with absolute certainty, “an orphan would be luckier.”

  Ares looked at me then, and I could tell she had overheard Liz’s long talks with my mother. “You hate your mother that much?”

  A dull black sheen veiled her eyes.

  “No question answered,” Grier murmured an interpretation of the new result.

  “I loved my mother. That’s what you have to understand. I loved her. I bent over backwards to live up to her standards. I did and said whatever I thought would make her happy, or at least not make her angry.” I stripped the hurt from my words and pressed on. “All I wanted was to make her proud.” I swallowed hard. “I just wanted to not hurt.”

  Midas crossed to me and took my hand in his, reminding me I wasn’t alone, that love didn’t require pain.

  “I thought if I was good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, that she would love me back. I thought if I was a better daughter, she would find me worthy.” I stared at Ares, but she had to glance away. “I tried. So hard. For so long.” I watched my shadow pacing, as if he too were upset. “I had no idea who I was or what I wanted. I had no identity outside of being the empty vessel I had become for her to fill with her anger, and I cracked the day I realized I would never be enough in her eyes.”

  And then I went and bargained with Ambrose, still thumbing my nose at her, and ended up in the same place as where I started. Empty of self and yet overflowing with another’s purpose for me.

  The choice to move to Atlanta, to survive, was the first one I had ever made fully for myself in my life.

  “We’re all responsible for our own actions and for the consequences of those decisions. That sucks extra hard if you have a crap role model and don’t comprehend up from down or left from right. But you can’t afford to let yourself off the hook, not even once. Otherwise, you’ll keep excusing your behavior until you never find a reason to swallow the blame for anything you do ever again.”

  “I’m sorry for what she did to you,” Ares said. “No child should have to fear their parent.”

  Black.

  More tears, harder tears, cut tracks down her cheeks as she visibly struggled to come to a decision.

  “There are two places she might have gone.”

  Green.

  “A warehouse in Buckhead or a condemned auto parts store in Alpharetta.”

  Green.

  “Thank you.” I shot to my feet. “You’re doing the right thing.”

  While Midas collected more detailed information, I stepped outside the cell, and Linus followed me.

  “What you said in there…” black swallowed his eyes from corner to corner, “…I had no idea.”

  “No one did.” I rolled a shoulder, but it hitched under his steady regard. “I made sure of it.”

  As if unable to resist, he tossed out, “Not even Boaz?”

  “Especially not him.” I sawed my upper teeth over my bottom lip. “He’s always been the one good thing in my life. Bright, funny, outgoing.” I wasn’t sure if I was explaining it right, but it wouldn’t matter in the days to come, when I had harder questions to answer. “No matter how bad it got, I could go to him, and he was always there with a quick hug or an idiotic idea guaranteed to get us grounded or just a shoulder when I was tired and sore and hurting.” I blasted out a sigh. “He’s not perfect by any means, and I would never encourage anyone to date him, but he’s the best big brother a girl could ask for and then some. He loved me, loves me, no matter what.”

  For me, he had squared off with our mother after she disowned me.

  For me, he had given up on the dream of something more with Grier.

  For me, he had wooed Addie so I could claim Hadley’s name as my own.

  And he had done all those things out of love, not guilt. Love. However misguided his actions might be, he always battled his heart over his head when it came to those he loved most. I was the chink in his armor, the exception to his rules, and he had no clue how often he had saved my life with a well-timed hug that convinced me tomorrow would be better than today.

  “Despite our issues,” Linus said gently, “I will admit he’s not without his redeeming attributes.”

  “Don’t go getting soft on me.” I punched him in the upper arm. “I won’t know what to think.”

  Ducking his head, he huffed out a small laugh. “How do you want to handle this?”

  “I’ll take the warehouse.” I had a feeling about it. A bad one. “Are you up for tackling the store?”

  “We are happy to help any way we can,” Grier chimed in before he could answer. “Right?”

  “Right,” he said, the black of his eyes fading to dark blue with her near.

  The two of them went to prepare for their drive, and I stood in the hall to wait on Midas to finish. I could have gone back in, checked to see if he needed any help, but it was as if every word I had spoken lingered in the air of that room, and it threatened to choke me if I reentered it.

  “Did I hear right?” Midas tugged the end of my hair. “You picked Buckhead for us?”

  Oh, yes. He had been eavesdropping. He was almost as sneaky as Grier.

  “You do that a lot now.” I readjusted my ponytail. “Touch me.”

  “I like touching you.”

  “I like that you like touching me.” I smiled. “It’s nice. Different. But nice.”

  “I haven’t acted on instinct where women are concerned in a long time.” He walked with me down the hall. “I was always afraid of what would come of it.” He placed his hand at the small of my back, like I had cracked something open by verbally approving his more tactile side. “I don’t have to worry with you.”

  “Because I can kick your butt.”

  “Yes.” He rolled his eyes. “That.”

  “I mean, I could. I don’t have long legs, but they’ll stretch that high.”

  Midas dug his fingers into my ribs, and I burst into giggle-snorts that horrified me to my core.

  Future potentates weren’t ticklish, and they didn’t respond to personal assaults with giggle-snorts.

  Since it needed saying, I fended him off with my elbow. “I would never use that power against you.”

  I’d had enough power stripped from me in my life to never do it to another person without grave cause.

  “But you could.”

  “If I had to.”

  “If I had to,” he repeated with the solemnity of a vow. “I’m beginning to understand the appeal of what you have with Linus.”


  “Oh?”

  “It’s nice to know there’s always someone there to pull you back from the ledge.”

  Rising onto my tiptoes, I kissed him gently. “Failing that, I’ll be your parachute.”

  He took the kiss but looked at me funny, not for the first time.

  “I made it weird, huh?” I spread my hands. “Honestly? What else did you expect?”

  “I can pull you back,” he said after a moment. “I can probably manage parachuting too.”

  I read between the lines. “But you can’t be what Linus is for me.”

  “No.” He cupped my face in his hands and smoothed his thumbs across my cheeks. “Never.”

  “It’s cute that you don’t think you could murder me to save potentially dozens of lives.”

  “You would think so.” He trailed his fingers across my jaw then down my throat. “You are so weird.”

  “But you like it.”

  “I do.” He frowned. “I wonder what that says about me.”

  Preening for him, I fluttered my lashes Southern belle style. “That you have excellent taste?”

  A laugh almost escaped him. “Let’s go with that.”

  Buckhead was too far for the average Swyft, which left us with few other possibilities.

  Namely Ford or Remy.

  And no one willingly got into a car with her behind the wheel.

  We had one other choice that overlapped our usual suspects, and I grinned as I dialed her.

  Seventeen

  “Hadley,” Lisbeth chirped when she answered her phone. “I heard your foot didn’t fall off after all.”

  “It seems to be right where I left it,” I agreed. “How’s your stomach?”

  “Let’s not talk about it.” She cleared her throat. “How can I help?”

  “I like that you assume I’m calling you for help.”

  “Yes, well, if you’re up and moving, then I have the right to be suspicious.”

  She wasn’t wrong. I would be suspicious of phone calls from me too. In fact, I would block my number.

  “You sound really chipper.” I imagined I heard her blush. “What’s up with that?”

  “Ford kissed me,” she sang. “Full on the mouth and everything.”