Page 50 of Atlas and the Traitor

“Ask my brother after you fuck him one last time.” Evan’s sly smile made the urge to strangle him harder and harder to resist. Made stealing the bottle back from his hand too easy, Evan turning on his heel and tipping the bottle up as he’d done. “Good day, Mr. Whelan.”

Robin’s head spun all the way to the parking lot, distracting him such that he missed the fact his car doors were unlocked. But he didn’t miss the smell of intruder. He whipped around in the seat, prepared to strike, but Dyami slowly straightened with his hands raised, his palms outs.

“I’m here to help!” the pretender said.

“Since when?”

“Since I realized I was wrong.” He handed Robin a folded piece of paper. “The real altar is here. Just call, and my people will be there. For peace.”

Thirty-Four

Robin didn’t think twice about walking into Atlas’s glitzy Sunset Hill high-rise. Evan had all but told him to go confront Atlas, to fuck him one last time. Robin intended to do both, and he hoped like hell it wasn’t the last time for either.

He opened the door to Atlas’s unit, wondering which would come first—fight or fuck. Finding Atlas in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows in nothing but a towel, water still dripping from the ends of his hair seemed to indicate a fuck was up first.

Until Atlas spoke and his voice was ice cold. “You lied to me.”

Fight, then. “So did you.”

Robin tossed his phone, wallet, and keys on the kitchen island where his mother’s letters lay open and scattered. He’d left them at the condo when they’d swung by the other day. For safekeeping and for Atlas to read, hoping he might connect more dots for Robin. Seeing them strewn from one end of the island to the other made him regret the ask, brought his own anger back to simmering. He withdrew the photo of Willow and the Shaw women from his pocket and crossed the living room to Atlas. “Explain this to me,” he barked, shoving the picture in Atlas’s line of sight.

Atlas glanced at the photo, then back to the ocean outside his tinted windows. “You first.”

The asshole still wouldn’t give him anything.

Fine, he’d put his cards on the table first if it meant getting to the truths he wanted sooner. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t know Canton was your brother until that day in the vineyard. I don’t think Mary or Icarus had made the connection until then either.”

“Nature doesn’t always tell her everything.”

“Well, as soon as I found out, I tried telling you what happened, that day and on that rooftop in La Purisima.”

Atlas whipped his gaze to him, and Robin was relieved to see his irises were green, the deep mossy shade he loved, no hint of yellow. “You couldn’t just tell me?”

“Would it have made a difference?” he bit back, then regretted the tone when Atlas retreated, turning his gaze back to the waves. Robin tempered his tone and added, “I didn’t mean to betray you.”

“They were best friends,” Atlas replied.

“Who?” Robin asked, the non sequitur catching him off guard.

He nodded at the photo in Robin’s hand. “My mother, your mother, and Daphne’s.”

Except he’d never seen the other two women in that picture. Not in the flesh and not in any photo albums at the homestead. “If they were best friends, why weren’t they around after Mom died?”

“Jasper forbade it.” More dots connected: his uncle’s distrust of outsiders, his skepticism of witches, his reluctance to travel any farther south than YB. “They kept their distance, and then they died.”

“Casting Chaos out of Lila and behind the veil?”

Atlas nodded. “It’s why Canton had to be the one to channel Nature into Mary. Mom and Vanessa, Daphne’s mom, couldn’t know who the new vessel was, in case they lost control of the spell and Lila got the information out of them.”

“And where were you?”

“Keeping Evan distracted. He was keen to use the disturbance as cover for killing the woman who’d spurned him.”

“Deborah.”

“I stopped him that night. I couldn’t that day. I’m sorry.”

Robin turned from the view of the endless horizon, too much when his world was already starting to spin, and sank onto the living room couch. It was boringly modern and not particularly comfortable but it was squarely within the walls of the condo. “He said you were meant for me, and Deborah was meant for him. That our mothers had made it that way.”

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