Page 110 of Heartless Legacy

I shake my head, still not wanting to believe this. Not because I think it’s impossible, but because this shouldn’t have happened. Not in the middle of a challenge. “The two of you can’t just go around-”

Finn cuts me off. “Yes, the fuck we can! Wecanand wewill. For everything Eloise has done or tries to do to Thea,I willmake sure she gets a taste of her own medicine.”

Holden tosses a thumb drive at me. “Here’s a little something to give you context about tonight.” He says before going back inside.

Finn follows him. Before closing the door, he says, “This chasm between us. Us being on opposite sides of everything. It doesn’t have to be this way, Pax. All you have to do is pick the right side.”

“Yours and Holden’s.”

He looks at me as if the idea is the stupidest thing in the world. “The right side is any side that doesn’t include you blindly supporting Eloise, or anyone else that puts Thea in danger.”

The door slams in my face and I’m left standing in the hallway, trying to work out how things keep getting more and more fucked up between us.

I head to the garage with one thing on my mind. Speed. There’s a note sitting on the driver’s seat of my car. The door was locked, the alarm set, and yet someone was in my car. Thea? I frown at the note, which is the same as the text message I’ve been getting for the last few weeks.

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Reality is an illusion. That keeps us in chains. How far will you go? What are you willing to risk? For freedom and truth

Chapter 65

Thea

Wolfe and I still haven’t talked about what happened with Finn on the beach, but I know he wants to. I have conflicted feelings about it, so I appreciate him giving me time to figure my shit out, which basically means I’m finding ways to avoid thinking about it. My most recent avoidance tactic was to call Alexz and ask if he has any information about my mother.

That’s how I wound up here at a league mixer, at the Sandstone Social Club, doing my best to keep my snark locked away. I wasn’t invited, but I used my familial ties to get in. Ryland didn’t seem to mind me asking to tag along. We parted ways at the door. Finn and Holden are hovering nearby. I haven’t seen that asshole Pax yet.

I survey the room, making note of the high council members and recruitment committee members in attendance. There are six or seven other first-year female prospects here, with gentlemen I assume are their companions.

Ryland warned me that there are cameras all over the place.No one leaves without leaving dirt behind. He said The League will manipulate situations to expose your secrets, and if they don’t already have an angle they’re working, they’ll manufacturean incident for you. Most notably, they favor recording you in compromising positions. Since this is the first time women have been allowed to join, I imagine we serve dual purposes as the bait and the mark.

As uncomfortable as that thought is, it’s also a good reminder of why I came back to Canyon Falls. Revenge. The first step in achieving that goal is to use The League’s most basic trick against them. That requires someone besides The League of the Daggered Raven having information that can harm the powerful people in this room.

I had to check my phone at the door. Alexz expected that to be the case, so there’s a diamond encrusted ruby pendant, swinging between my breasts. There are tiny little cameras inside the jewels, and the ruby is a recording device. The switch to activate it is the ruby itself. I’ll use it for personal conversations and discreet recordings.

Alexz thinks they’ll exclude me from tonight’s games, since I wasn’t on the invite list, but just in case we’re wrong, I know from Ryland to expect for my interactions to involve something I would never want revealed.

It could be sexual. Or a confession of some sort. I haven’t, nor will I ever, willingly confess to shit. If it’s a sex thing, then my plan is to figure out how to use Finn and Holden’s misplaced interest in me against them. They’ll get over it.

And if that doesn’t work out. If I’m forced into a situation with someone else, I have a tranquilizer that’s strong enough to knock out a giant. All I have to do is spin the matching ring on my left index finger around and press it against any part of the person I can reach. The diamonds on the ring are actually tiny little needles. I have enough of the sedative to take out two or three people. The person will wake up with a headache thinking they passed out from drinking too much.

Alexz is overprotective and, of course, I argued I can protect myself, but secretly I’m glad he insisted on these safety measures. I felt even better with my decision when I saw a Phoenix agent prepping for his own mission with a similar setup. His tie clip and watch held his recording devices and his cufflinks contained the tranquilizer.

The room breaks out in applause, as whatever speech the guy at the front of the room was giving concludes and the Master of Ceremonies tells us to take advantage of the night and enjoy the entertainment and the rest of our evening.

I drift through the room, smiling politely at people. Since we’re free to wander around, I’ll be going from room to room trying to figure out where the cameras are being monitored from. The tech team thinks they operate on a wi-Fi network, but the recordings are kept on site, so the room will have a server and portable hard drives.

The closer I am to that location, the easier it will be for the tech guy to intercept the signal and do his computer magic to open a backdoor into the network or whatever it was he said. I probably should have paid attention, but tech is not my forte. If you tell me how to use the devices. I’m good. If you get into all the back end hacking shit, I’ll tell you to talk to Sasha. Whichiswhat I told him. Then he gave me some shit about civilians and clearance. Like that’s ever stopped us before. But Sasha has her hands full with our business in Nags Creek, and I’d rather not bring her into this if I don’t have to. For now, I’m willing to see what the Phoenix Foundation can do.

“Prospect LaReaux?”

I freeze at the sound of the nasally pitched voice, slowly turning to face the man in front of me. I remember him from Indoc. He was another prospect’s liaison. He didn’t say much to me, but he didn’t speak up against the ways his buddies acted, either. “Most esteemed councilman Giles.”

He looks stunned that I remembered his name. “I didn’t expect to see you here this evening.” He chuckles nervously. “In fact, I didn’t expect to see you ever again.”

My spine snaps straighter. Is he insinuating that he didn’t expect to see me again because he helped Malcolm? “And why is that?”

“Because of your placement on the scoreboard. Very few prospects mingle with us with scores that low. They find it best to stay out of sight and then disappear into obscurity when they’re dropped. I believe it’s less embarrassing for them that way.”

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