Page 181 of Heartless Legacy

“Your actions speak louder than words.” He hums, “And there were so many actions, like that night on the beach, all of our lunch dates and phone calls, the night in your dorm when you left us in Tijuana. Shall I go on?”

I should’ve known he’d twist those events to mean something they don’t. Instead of correcting him, I ask, “You’re sharing all my secrets. Has he bothered to share his?”

Finn glares at Pax. “Yes, we know all about Malcolm.” My body locks up at the sound of that man’s name. “But we haven’t told himallyour secrets.I would never betray you like that. We told him about your plan for the fourth bloodline.”

I scan the floor for a familiar face. “Oh, great. Now he’s gonna go tell the council and fuck me over.” Or did he do it already? Does the league enlist prospects to act on behalf of the security council? Didn’t I tell Wolfe this would happen? I can incapacitate Pax long enough to run to the end of the aisle and hop out a window. We’re on the second floor of the library. I should be good. Delta Team members assigned to campus would have me in a car before he could hobble down the stairs after me. Finn might chase me and jump through the window too, but he wouldn’t be trying to catch me.

Pax’s voice interrupts me, mentally planning my escape. “I’m not gonna rat you out, Nem. I told you we’re a team.”

I scoff at that. We’re definitelynota team. “That was a one off for a challenge and I spent the entire night trying to get rid of you.”

He says, “We became a team long before that night.”

“Really? What day did we-” I point between us. “Decide to team up? Because the only person with tits you’ve ever been thick as thieves with is your fiancé.”

His jaw ticks because he doesn’t like hearing the truth. Tough shit. Holden answers, “We’ve been teammates since the first time I came in my hand while watching you swim. There was never going to be anyone else I wanted to play with or to work with after that.”

“Exactly we’re- wait… What?” I gawk at him. “What do you mean you watched me swim?”

He’s wearing his glasses today and looks so damn cute. I force myself not to stare as he pushes them up his nose. “I watched you for weeks when you first came to school. You used to go swimming in my lake. You looked so damn good naked, sunbathing on a rock, and making yourself cum.” He looks so sweet when he says, “I timed my strokes to match yours. We were so in synch. That’s how I knew you’d be the perfect person to hunt. It took so much willpower not to swim out there and suck your juices off your fingers.”

I remember they were following me, but it never occurred to me that anyone saw that. I glance over at Finn, who shrugs. “Don’t look at me. You’ve been on my team since I threatened to cut out your tongue.” He jerks his finger towards Pax. “He’s the idiot that took a long time to accept the truth.”

Pax hefts his shoulder and says, “Fair point. I was an idiot.”

“Still are.” I mumble.

He rocks back in his chair. “That’s true, too. Good thing I have you to help keep me from fucking up too badly.”

“You don’t have me Pax.”

“I know. But I’m working on it.”

I narrow my eyes at him, but before I can turn this into a fight, point out his character flaws, and reject him again, he says, “I know about you helping the other amnesty prospects so they’d share stories about their families, but you should’ve saved your points. If you wanted to know league history, you could’ve just gone to the archives.”

I ask, “Have you ever talked to anyone other than your upper echelon buddies? Because it’s the people struggling on the leaderboard. The-” I make air quotes. “Bottom of the barrels, who are more open with sharing the interesting bits of gossip they hear at their family reunions and holiday gatherings. They’re the ones with colorful theories about how the mix up in Vale Tower happened. Although, can you really call it a mixup when those families paid to be there?”

Pax says, “There’s no proof that anybody’s been paying for a spot in Vale Tower outside of the housing fee that’s included in tuition. If they bribed their way in, the school wouldn’t be forcing them to change dorms. They’d keep them in Vale Tower to protect that secret.”

Loyal and defending them without question. This is why we’ll never be a team. “How do you know? You weren’t alive back then. There were no computers, and I’m willing to bet the bookkeeping and records were shoddy. The only people who would know what really happened are the ones who lived through it.”

He repeats his earlier statement about the archives being the best place to go for answers, so I ask, “Which one?”

They share a three-way look. With an uneasy frown, Holden asks, “What do you mean, which one?”

“Nice try. We all know there’s more than one archive.” Don’t they?

Finn asks, “Have you been to this other archive, Pet? Or is this something one of your lower legacy buddies is gossiping about at their hypothetical family reunions?”

I send a text to my guards, letting them know to be on alert because Pax knows I’m competing for the fourth bloodline. I gather up my stuff, and as I head towards the stairs, I say, “I have a general idea where another archive is.”

Chapter 102

Holden

Thea never shared what she found in the binders she took from the office, so I had to recreate her steps. Pax was happy to tell me their clue. He’s just as disappointed as Finn and I are that his team went home empty-handed. Something about this whole team building challenge doesn’t make sense. From what I can gather, less than ten percent of the teams found what they assumed were their challenge items.

Their clue is what’s brought me here to Colorado, the thirty-eighth state, to join the union. My father said all challenge clues for the fourth bloodline lead to dead ends. I didn’t think he literally meant dead, as in standing in the middle of Forge Hollow, Colorado’s oldest gravesite, which opened in 1940.

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