Page 113 of Burning Ivy (The KORT)

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, her quavering tenor telling me I nailed it. Somehow, she’s at his mercy too. “But you need to leave.”

I hold up surrendering hands to her and the beefy men in tiny shirts. “I’m going. I got what I came for. Thanks.”

Angry sobs rack my body on the way to Celeste’s. I don’t know what to think. That’s not exactly true because the lies are stacking into a glass tower of deceit. But the fragments of my shattered heart don’t want to believe it—pieces so fractured and bruised and scattered that I’ll never be whole again, and yet they’re still begging for Wells. For his gentle touches to be the dusting of his devotion. For his rough and carnal need to be unbridled passion tethering us together. For his poetic declarations to be the lyrics of our love song.

Celeste receives me at her parents’ home with wine, junk food, and her bedroom full of computers for us to continue digging. I’m too weepy for the wine, but I down a glass anyway. The house is a seventeen-thousand-square-foot mansion, empty because her parents spend January in Fiji. As I lie on her bed, an urge to give up chills me. I’m tired. So fucking tired of everything.

But after I have an ugly-cry pity party and a wine-induced catnap, my rage grows into a looming giant.

I gave Wells my heart, my trust, my forgiveness, my innocence, and my fantasies. My loyalty. And aside from my purity and eroticimaginings, I gave Ty, Liam, and Gage the same. I will not surrender whatever I have left—fragmented or not.

Popping up, I wipe my face, still damp with tears seeping out in my sleep, and think back on the random memories my mind conjured up while I was forsaken in the hospital—breadcrumbs dropped when the guys spoke freely because I was zoned out.

There are three that my brain swirls over. There was a casual mention oftwo seatsonce when I was reading in the great room. I’m not sure how that will aid me, but any information about KORT seems advantageous. Another time, after training, we were on the back patio. I was lost to the floating clouds, the squawking birds, the weight of my aching muscles, and Gage mentioned someone named Mordred in passing. They were discussing leads on finding the person responsible for issuing a hit. The rest of the conversation is hazy, but it’s worth investigating.

The last one flickers with a glow of golden light because it coincided with an emotional afternoon.

I’m in the library with Wells. The guys just told me they have no family, and Wells explained how his was killed by a tornado. My face burrows into his chest while his fingers string through my hair. I’m nestled in his arms, reeling at the thought of such loss and hating that I can’t take it away. My mind wanders, but there’s background chatter.

Ty, Liam, and Gage are still in the kitchen, cleaning up and tossing insults back and forth.

Liam scoffs at a grumpy comment Gage made. He’s grumbling about something he lost, but Liam seems to be blowing him off.

“Jason Petrovsky spent his whole life fighting for scraps, whereas I seize the pot of gold with ease,” Liam says.

My drifting attention returns to Wells, who tells me I changed everything, that he was lost to whatever path I carved for him, like a storm. Something about it reminds me of my masked heartthrob. Wells never sees me as ordinary. After that, he finger-fucks me into a mind-blowing orgasm before I set off to train with Ty.

It’s strange how some of Wells’s sweet declarations seem more oriented toward my monetary worth now, like maybe the path he’d referred to was regarding his financial gain for finding me. And the further gain he garnered from protecting me for my father. Is that how he meant them, or are they simply shrouded by the shadows of deception now?

Researching KORT proves to be fruitless. I dig into each of the family names Wells offered, but nothing on the actual organization comes up, not even on the dark web. It’s not rocket science to narrow down who likely holds the seats, but that still doesn’t provide much for my situation.

The search on Mordred is slightly more valuable and certainly more chilling. I can’t find anything directly posted by him, but I do eventually discover him mentioned in a thread between two other men regarding a hit on the “O’Reilly girl.” The leads they share aren’t correct, but this conversation is seven weeks old.

For my own sanity, I move on to the Jason Petrovsky breadcrumb, hoping it turns up less horror-film vibes. It takes a lot of weeding out at first because I have nothing to go on besides the name and his connection to Liam. But then I check to see if maybe they knew each other in the Navy SEALs, and that’s when things get interesting. There’s no record of my guys in the Navy, but there is of Jason Petrovsky.

He died with the rest of his unit six years ago—a fireteam sent on a mission to uncover and invade a terrorist camp in the Middle East. An outraged reporter from theNew York Timestagged them the Orphan Unit because none of the soldiers had families to go home to and claimed it was a suicide mission.

There’s a picture of the men who perished. Jason stands in the middle, a hair taller than the next towering man. But the most astounding characteristic about Jason is that he looks identical to Liam Graves.

And Wells, or Chad Folsom, stands beside him—chief of theunit. Not surprisingly, Ty and Gage are there too—Andrew Michaels and Joshua Ricci, respectively. Looks as though the dead soldiers resurrected themselves to a whole new life.

It’s not that surprising, considering their career, but it feels like a final betrayal. The men who I felt were an extension of me aren’t men I know at all.

Doing a deep dive into Chad Folsom, I find out all I can about Wells’s family, even uncovering the Oklahoma town’s tribute to those who died in the tornado, including his mom, dad, and brother. His mom was beautiful. She had Wells’s raven-black hair and a smile brighter than the sun. And she feels familiar.

I open the folder on the computer of articles and pictures I’ve snipped over the past twelve hours of research, and my pulse accelerates when I reach the Cabrini clippings. His daughter disappeared at the age of nineteen, and her picture is remarkably like that of Wells’s mom.

Fuck.Wells never mentioned he was a Cabrini, which seems like it would be pertinent information.

There’s another Cabrini daughter, but according to her social media, she’s a kindergarten teacher, so I doubt she’s in the seat. Plus, Wells mentioned that no woman has ever held one, and she has no children. I’m guessing the person who possesses the current Cabrini reign is Wells’s grandfather.

Two seats.Was Wells in line for the seat? Why did he hide that from me? Is that where he disappeared to? He got his money and left to assume his position of power? Maybe that’s a jump, but it doesn’t look like it.

I share everything I found with Celeste, and her jaw tightens with each detail.

She hisses a string of expletives before adding, “Maybe it was you or the chair.”

It’s not as though that thought didn’t occur to me, but my heart is still hitched to Wells, broken but refusing to let go. “Why do all your theories immediately paint Wells as a villain?”

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