Page 47 of The Devil's Bargain
They didn’t actually know what was going on. For all they knew, Calix was choking on a meatball in the cafeteria.
But it didn’t matter what was happening.
All that mattered was that it needed to stop.
The corner of Zane’s lips quirked. “The only one allowed to kill you, brother, is me. I don’t know what’s going on, but if there really is someone trying to harm you and your pod, I’ll help you.”
Chapter 20:
“You aren’t exactly innocent,” Mitri told Calix, his voice fading in and out as Cal struggled to focus. “Even if you were found innocent at the trial. Even if Nero is willing to forgive you. That doesn’t change all the stress Amory was under because of you guys.”
“Then why isn’t Nero here having a heart attack as well?” he clipped.
“I told you. Amory wouldn’t like it.”
Amory was dead, so…But he wasn’t going to tell the psychotic forensic scientist that.
“Why are you so certain she’ll come back if you do this?” Yes, that was the right question. Calix needed to stall, but he also wanted to understand. If he really did die here, on the cold floor of a tiny room in the hospital morgue, he’d at least like to know the reasons for it.
Before this, he would have called Mitri a friend.
Mitri hesitated but then seemed to come to a decision. “You’re going to die anyway. I can give you this much at least, in the name of our friendship.”
Ah, so he’d thought they were friends too.
It shouldn’t be comforting at a time like this, yet it was.
“She left because of me,” Mitri divulged, continuing when he saw the perplexed look on Cal’s face. “She didn’t like what I did, and then when she ended up accused of it…Of course she ran. She didn’t have a choice. But I really thought she would have reached out to me by now, you know? We’re best friends.”
The two had seemed incredibly close, but the somewhat manic glint in Mitri’s eyes—a similar glint to one Cal had caught in Aodhan’s gaze a time or two—made it seem like there was more too that relationship than pure friendship. Especially considering he’d just referred to them as friends as well, and yet he didn’t seem all that bent out of shape about having poisoned Cal.
He—
Hold up.
“She was accused of something you did?” It had to be the drug making him think crazy thoughts, because there was no way—
“I’m the one who killed Bruce.” Mitri at least had the good sense to hang his head and sound regretful. “It was an accident.”
“…He was strangled to death.”
“I lost my temper.”
“That’s not an accident.”
“He confided in me that he thought Amory was involved with the serial murders,” Mitri said. “Can you believe that? After how she’d looked the other way for him, even though she’d fully believed he’d helped you evade justice those years ago, he dared to suspect her.”
That was the whole reason they’d been able to link Amory to Bruce’s death and explain away her “disappearance”. The night he was murdered, she was set to meet with him. He’d told a few people that he was going to question her about her involvement with the criminally run parties. Calix had gotten the tip from Aodhan and passed it along.
At the time, he’d truly believed Aodhan’s claims, but now he knew it’d all been a lie.
Did that make him culpable?
Was Bruce dead because of him after all?
“He was asking me to hang around in case something happened and she didn’t take it well, but I could tell what he really meant. He thought she was going to turn on him. She’s been in love with Nero since you guys were kids, did you know that?”
Calix almost couldn’t follow the sudden curve in topic, but he didn’t need to reply to satisfy Mitri anyway.
