Page 68 of Vicious King

Honestly, I wasn’t sure why I was even surprised.

The council members went on to reveal more of their ‘secrets’ to me. Most of it was relatively tame stuff. Insider trading deals and so on; all the ways they kept themselves rich under the table.

I also learned just how deep the society’s tentacles reached. Terrifyingly so. They had connections in every law enforcement agency you could imagine, as well as the government.

All in all, there wasn’t a single lawyer or police officer in the entire country who wasn’t in their pockets somehow. Of course, the vast majority of them weren’t actually aware of it, but if any concerns were raised to them, they would take it to their superiors, who were perfectly aware of their paid loyalty to Crown and Dagger.

That meant it was going to be much harder than I initially thought to take them down and bury them. Right now I didn’t even know where the fuck to start. Their creeping tendrils were everywhere. I wasn’t sure how Henry Davenport lived without losing his mind entirely, knowing there was no help for him anywhere. No one who would listen if he ever wanted to tell his story.

When they were done talking, I swallowed the hard lump in my throat and pasted on another fake grin. “So that’s all of it?”

The council members bared their teeth in vicious smiles. “Oh no,” said Davenport. “We saved the best for last.”

And then they told me the darkest secret of all…

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