Page 82 of Banshee
When the doors closed, he locked them and turned around. Looking at me, he ordered, “Cut the fucking cameras.”
I sat down, and with a few keystrokes, the cameras in the room were cut off.
“That hurt, asshole.”
“You fucking deserved it.” With a sigh, King said, “I’m sorry about your mom, Nav.”
I shrugged. “I never knew her.”
“I never knew mine either, and mine walked away willingly. Still fucking hurt when I found out she was gone and I’d never have the chance to meet her.”
“Now what?” Cash asked. He was never one for getting overly emotional unless it came to Kytten, his old lady.
“I have to call him,” I said, rubbing my chin. King didn’t pull punches, ever. Even if it was for show.
King and Cash knew I was part of the Brotherhood. I’d told them both when we opened this chapter. I’d told them almost everything. But no one knew that. Not even my father. He believed he had me under his control.
He didn’t know there were things I hadn’t shared with him. Things I never would. But this was different. Gabriella Baudelaire had made the Brotherhood what it had become.
Kalden Baudelaire had been a controlling, sadistic bastard who put George Stone to shame. But after he was murdered, and Morpheus took over, things ramped up. Morpheus was who he was because of everything he’d lost in his life, starting with his parents, then his sister, and finally his son.
I wasn’t lying when I told Gabriella he’d lost his humanity. He was so far gone I didn’t think finding his sister would have the power to bring him back. But I had to try.
I pulled out my phone and dialed my father’s number. Putting it on speaker, I laid it on the table in front of my president and VP.
“Zach? What’s wrong?” he shouted over the noise of his clubhouse. I rarely called my father, choosing to wait for him to reach out himself when he needed answers. If he sought me out, it was easier to keep my answers direct, only giving him what he needed.
“I found the proof we need.”
“How, son?”
He always called me son. As if that made him father of the year, not a bastard who’d ignored me most of my life except for when he needed me to do his bidding.
“I have an eyewitness,” I said, looking at King. He nodded, and I continued, “There was someone who saw him kill her.”
“I need more than that, son. Morpheus won’t believe the word of just anyone.” The loud voices in the background sounded muffled over the volume of the music.
“He’ll believe her.”
“Her?” my father parroted.
“I found her. She’s at my clubhouse.”
I heard a door slam, and the line went quiet. The sound of his labored breathing told me he’d left the party in a hurry.
“She’s alive?” he asked.
“Alive and fucking well,” I snipped.
“Zach, it wasn’t her fault.” This was an argument we had often. He believed my anger toward Gabriella was misguided. Like somehow, she was the only person I blamed for my mother’s death. Whereas she was one of many.
Including my father.
“She saw him do it. He’ll believe her. But that’s not all of it.”
The line was quiet again, and I knew my father was sitting down. Bracing himself for what I was about to tell him.
“Kalden knew where she was the whole fucking time.”
