Page 58 of Scars Run Deep

I didn’t have to utter the question, or wait long until he gave the answer. As soon as I holstered my gun, he strode toward me, one measured step at a time. “This isn’t like Carson’s dungeon. The lights aren’t going to switch off and cast the space into pitch blackness. A blaring foghorn isn’t going to sound intermittently to keep you on edge and enforce sleep deprivation. Punishment isn’t going to come in any form.”

I swallowed hard. “How do you know about that?”

“I do my research.”

“Not a good enough answer.”

“How isn’t a good enough question.”

“Why do you know about it?”

“After you assisted me with the extraction from one of Carson’s slaughterhouses, I required urgent medical treatment for various injuries—and infections. Following those few months of recuperation, my intent was to reach out to you, to make good on my promise and bring you in on my mission, to work together. But, while I was recuperating, I was also looking into you. I had barebones intel from my focused research on the Head Infidels, but nothing detailed, as you were just a periphery character beforehand. But I delved deep following the deal we’d struck. That was when I found out about the dungeon Carson kept in a hidden area at the Monroe Estate and the torture you were subjected to in there, the trials. While your friends believed you were away at a retreat to learn the ropes of Monroe Enterprises for a few days every quarter, you were really being abused, punished, and tormented there.”

I gritted my teeth, fighting back the memories that wanted to surge. “How?”

“A mutual associate filled me in.”

“Olivia?”

“No.”

“Scourge then.”

“Correct.”

“And? What was the use in acquiring that information? It didn’t break me. And all of that ceased once I was relocated to Hexwood and took on leadership of the Infidels faction there.”

“I didn’t doubt your mental fortitude or your ability to live up to what it would have taken to work alongside the likes of me. However, I did discover that the dungeon was what would befall you if your association with me was discovered.”

“So, you were protecting me? That’s why you disappeared and continued to stay hidden even after you’d recovered from my father’s abuse?”

“Too many people have suffered already throughout this war. This time, I was in a position to spare another.”

“That wasn’t your decision to make. And it’s beyond insulting too.”

“Well, it was made. It would have stayed that way too, if you and my daughter hadn’t crossed paths. Her tenacity was greater than I’d accounted for. With me gone, it reached heights it likely wouldn’t have otherwise.” He shook his head to himself. “Aurora doesn’t do well with injustice and that’s what she viewed my death as. She couldn’t accept it. I saw her growing closer and closer to the truth. The moment she succeeded in discovering I was actually alive and kicking, she became obsessed. She wouldn’t stop and she put herself on Carson’s radar. I had to reveal I was alive to pull his attention away from her and back to me.”

“So, our theory was correct.”

“Yes.”

“And you had plants in place throughout the Infidels?”

He merely smiled, not speaking to it directly, and telling me instead, “Because of the four of you taking up the charge, I had to relinquish control over another situation I was dealing with—the rise of the Heretics. Something that filled the vacuum I left in my wake with my death.”

“You know who they are?”

“That doesn’t concern you. They don’t.”

“I beg to differ. They attacked us, ran us off the road. And they want Aurora and me in a cage.”

“Leave that to me. Your mission is the Infidels. I’ll make good on my promise and assist you. You’ll need to defer to me and do things exactly the way I lay out, and then you’ll have your victory. Bear in mind, my strategy doesn’t call for a coup d'état. We aren’t supplanting leaders here. The goal is to completely decimate the Infidels, all underground operations, and to cripple Monroe Enterprises, the Carmichael Foundation, as well as eliminating all the Head Infidels in the process.”

“Then our goals align.”

“You’re certain?”

“I don’t want it, if that’s what you’re asking. I never wanted the seat of power.”

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