She just felt the gap between them widen with every time he shut her down, and it was barely fixed when he finally offered her a normal smile or comment.
She got out of her car, watching him walk inside. He hadn’t waited on her. This was what she kept thinking about. They didn’t spend time together anymore and…he was treating her like one of the guys, or like he had when they met. Not one of his closest friends, not his lover.
Just the criminal he needed to deal with.
That thought ran through her mind like a hot poker, more painful than she considered it could be. No, she only caught glimpses of the Vincent she had come to know and love. This man was the one she’d had issues with when they met.
She walked in and saw him waiting at the front desk, the guard not there. He kept tapping a knuckle on the plexiglass, hoping to catch someone’s attention.
“You were so excited to get us moving this morning that we’re early. Sit down. They’ll have her ready when they come to get us.” She pointed at the waiting area. He frowned, apparently not liking her order.
“This was supposed to be-”
“I told you the meeting would be at ten a.m. You decided we should be here at nine thirty. This is on you. Sit. Down.”
He groaned, pushing away from the guard window, and went over to the waiting area.
She waited another two minutes and smiled as the guard walked into the back room where she could see him.
“Hey. I’m going to pretend you aren’t here for a little while longer.”
“Oh, okay,” the Magi mumbled, sitting down in his spot in the window. She just kept smiling.
“Is she ready?”
“Yes, she is. Why are you…?”
“Teaching a friend some patience,” she answered. He was forgetting the world didn’t run on his schedule or hers. Hell, it didn’t even run on Axel’s. It ran the way it ran and nothing, no amount of being an ass, was going to speed it up or slow it down for any of them.
So, she waited with the guard for another ten minutes, until she felt like that was good enough. Being early wasn’t a bad thing, but rushing was. She hoped Vincent spent the few moments of silence in the waiting area thinking about how to approach this calmly and not whatever he was now, whatever was wrong with him since James died.
She went and waved at him to follow her. He sublimated and crossed the distance in half the time of just walking. She frowned as he reformed next to her. She decided he must be feeling anxious. She narrowed her eyes on his hands, noticing how they stayed curled up until he shoved them into his coat pockets. A guard led them back to the same interrogation room she met Missy in the last time.
Before he walked in, she grabbed Vincent, knowing she needed to give him one last warning.
“Vincent, I did this without you or the rest of the team last time so you didn’t have to know this part.” She took a deep breath. “Axel had a standing order for his Ghosts and me that if we got arrested, we needed to…handle it before we gave up any information.”
He turned slowly, looking over her face. She waited for the judgement.
“He wanted you to kill yourself,” he whispered, devoid of emotion.
“Yes.”
He nodded, looking away again. “And you came here since you knew…”
“I knew seeing her and saying what needed to be said could push her over the edge. The fact that she hadn’t tried yet meant she was still hoping he would come save her. He won’t, and I needed her to tell me anything I could get. So we had a conversation between two people. Two people who used to work for him.” She swallowed.
“You were willing to be the push over the edge.” He narrowed his eyes at her.
“Yeah, because I wasn’t willing for you to be that push. Or any of the team, really. So, whatever happens in there, I need you to understand it’s not you. She’s not…the way she is because of you. Hell, while I accept some responsibility, it’s not my fault either.” She wouldn’t carry Missy around like that.
“How has she not gotten away with it yet? Suicide.”
“I’ve had the guards on watch for it. I warned them before I left last time. Just in case.”
“That’s nice of you,” he murmured. “Okay. Thank you for that.” He turned back to the door, but she didn’t let go of his forearm. “Sawyer…”
“I’m coming in with you.”
“I wasn’t going to leave you out here,” he responded, looking back at her over his shoulder. “I’m not dealing with any of these people without you.”
That relieved her in ways she couldn’t describe. At least she had that. He wasn’t going to pass over her to deal with people he didn’t know, when she had a wealth of knowledge and experience with them. That meant he still trusted her.
They walked in together, like they had when they visited Axel earlier in the month.
No…when they had inadvertently visited Missy, thinking she was Axel.
They sat across from her. She didn’t look as pleasant as she had the last time Sawyer saw her. Her hair was wild and so were her eyes. She glanced between them furiously, baring her teeth in an anger Sawyer knew had no end. Missy hated them. They were her enemy and she was theirs.
“You were my tutor. And one of my father’s advisors.”
Sawyer didn’t react, but she wanted to. Internally, she was gasping in shock. Her eyebrows would have climbed up her forehead like they were trying to escape.
But she showed nothing, just like Vincent as he said those words.
“I know this since there was a tutor who always knew certain things about my father’s business I never could quite explain. And she kept saying she was just preparing us for the future when Axel and I asked. The advisor, a man, would always make sure to spend time with me and Axel when he visited, where all the others, including our father, would ignore us. You made sure to keep interacting with us.”
Missy finally changed from anger to a smile. “You were always intelligent. Took you a decade longer than Axel to figure it out, but then, I gave him the hint a decade ago.” Missy leaned back in her chair, relaxed finally. “What does it change, Vincent?”
“I just want to know your story, really.”
Missy laughed. It was a laugh that made Sawyer uncomfortable. “My story? I could tell you my story over the last three hundred years. Did you know that we doppelgangers won’t die of old age unless we accidentally take on an old form? As long as I find a new, appealing, younger form to take every few decades, nothing can stop me from living for eternity. No, you want my story with Axel, and in a way, you. I can tell you that. It won’t help you, but maybe if I satisfy your curiosity, you’ll leave me alone.
“I was working for your father as an advisor. I’ve always positioned myself in criminal families. Government isn’t my thing and they would look too closely for me to get away with it. Becoming your father’s advisor was easy, honestly. He wasn’t the worst Castello, but the family was slowly, very slowly, losing power. Then I met you and Axel. Like everyone else, I thought you would be great at first. Then your mother died.
“Then I saw it. I saw what sort of potential Axel had and cultivated it. I knew you could be useful. I never thought you would ever want out, so I positioned him to make you his second in command, along with me. Along with the hand-picked loyal people I’ve met over the years. Talyn is still in this prison somewhere. I’ve known him for over a century. One day I went to him and said I found the Magi that could make us everything we’d ever wanted to be. Rich, powerful, immortal. With Axel, nothing would ever stop us, and when he passed away of old age, we would have a trained and hand-picked successor, one Axel taught to live on for him.”
Missy shrugged, still smiling. “It’s not a complicated story.”
“But it ends here. He’s not coming to break you out.” Vincent was staying nonchalant as well.
Sawyer was trying to comprehend how old Missy was. And she was in love with Axel, it was clear every time she said his name. She fell in l
ove with a boy and helped raise him into the man he became. Something about it made Sawyer a little sick to her stomach. It could have been Vincent.
“Yes…” Missy’s face turned sour and bitter, like suddenly she had a bad taste in her mouth. “I never thought he would leave me and Talyn here. I never…”
“He thought you were freaks,” Sawyer mumbled.
“Oh, I thought he would leave you in a prison to die. And there was a time I thought you were loyal enough to kill yourself. Loyalty. That’s what I think was always missing from you. Sure, you had that teenage girl love for him, but you will never know the depth of Talyn’s and my need for him. Our hopes for his future. Our future.” Missy had ignored what she said and continued to drive that painful nail into Sawyer’s mental coffin containing her feelings for Axel.
“Yet you’re still here and haven’t proven that loyalty,” Vincent noted softly. “He’s left you, Missy. And Talyn. Maybe we can talk to him next. From what I know, he’s been locked away in a lonely cell since the moment we caught him. We want to learn more about his kind and so we’re not bothering him about Axel. Maybe I should start.”
“Or maybe we can use Missy for the science experiments and learn more about doppelgangers,” Sawyer muttered, knowing everyone in the room was ignoring her now.
“He’ll come for me!” Missy screeched. “He has to! I made him what he is.”
“Then you should know,” Sawyer snapped. “We’ve had this conversation. If you know Axel as well as you think you do, then you should know he’s never coming for you. You are officially dead weight, damn it. Your loyalty to him might be that deep, but it doesn’t go the other way, Missy. We’re tools. You, Talyn, me. We’re all just pawns in his fucking game, damn it. Stop thinking you’re more important to him than you are. He could have tried to get Talyn out when you switched places with him. He left Talyn once already. He’s. Not. Coming.”
“Sawyer.” Vincent’s tone was patient but strong. He wanted her to stop. “Missy, we’ll stop bothering you.”
Missy had tears in her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. Sawyer had thought Missy would go down by now. Thought she would have finally followed the last order. Now Sawyer knew why it hadn’t happened. Missy wasn’t allowing herself to believe it. She refused to think, for all her centuries, that a man she helped make would leave her here to rot and die.
The power in that, Sawyer didn’t understand. Or maybe she did. She refused to die because she hated the man that much. Missy was refusing to because of how much she loved him.
Two sides of the same coin, in a really sick and fucked-up way.
“Let’s go, Sawyer. She’s not going to say anything.”
“I could have told you that,” she replied, following Vincent out of the room. “Did you get what you wanted?”
“I think? I’m not sure. I just needed to hear that. I never…She made him. She and Talyn, and my family.”
“It could have been you.” Sawyer’s mind kept going back to that. The Castello brothers were very different men, but in some ways, they were very similar. Vincent and Axel shared a cunning mind, though Vincent’s was tempered and controlled by his emotions, even when he wanted to lock them away. Axel was unbridled intelligence and cruelty and normally had no emotions. When he did, he had no control over them, unlike Vincent.
Two sides of the same coin,
“It could have been me - you’re not wrong. Weird to think about.”
“Do you really want to talk to Talyn?” she asked softly. She was willing, but by now, she figured there wasn’t anything they could learn from him. Missy was free more recently and would know recent changes to Axel’s organization where Talyn wouldn’t.
“No. He’s fine where he is. We made that deal with him. He’s on his best behavior, teaching us about his kind. One day, since he can’t change forms, we’ll parole him.”
“Why didn’t I know that?” she demanded in a hiss.
“Because he won’t be paroled until we’re all dead. He’s immortal. He’s biding his time. He knows he’s not in danger if he doesn’t give up anything on Axel, and in the long run, this helps him more and us more as a people. Funny, isn’t it? He became neutral. Why is that?”
“I would guess it’s because Axel didn’t save him from me that day in the hangar bay,” she answered, considering it. “He was using a portion of Axel’s magic and Axel hung him out to dry when he ran out. Axel always thought it was gross for Talyn to be what he was.”
“Exactly.”
“You should have told me sooner,” she said with a bite.
“I learned last night, actually. I had been hoping to play Missy and Talyn against each other and called Thompson myself about it. He let me know. He actually gave Talyn over to research teams and such. He’s technically no longer in the custody of the IMPO. Why didn’t you ever try talking to Talyn?”
“He’s been in prison too long. He wouldn’t know any relevant information.” It seemed simple to her. Vincent went through a lot to get to a conclusion she had already found. Talyn wasn’t going to be helpful.
“That’s also a valid point.”
Yeah, she knew that, so she didn’t respond.
They walked out of the prison together, Sawyer waving at the guard at the desk. When they were back in her car, she sighed, not starting it up immediately.
“We need to talk,” she admitted to him.
“About?” He frowned, his dark olive-green eyes becoming hard.
“Us.”
That got his jaw to drop. “Do you…want to…end it?”
“You’ve been pushing me away,” she whispered. “This? Vincent, you barked an order at me, even when we had made a deal to let it rest, just until after the New Year. You can’t…treat me like that.” She shook her head. “No, I don’t want to end it, but I need…”
“You need me to be…normal, and I haven’t been.” He looked away from her again. “I’m sorry. There’s been a lot on my mind.”
“I know, but I need you to not let this keep getting to you. Vincent, you’re erratic, and that could get one of us hurt. And that’s not something I’m willing to allow.”
“I understand. I’m trying.”
“You’re getting better every day, but then something comes up and you fall back into it, this obsession. This need to do everything right now, even when you don’t have to.”
“And you don’t want to get him? Right now?”
She thought about that. Her immediate answer was yes. If he were easy to get to, she would do everything in her power to finish it. But that wasn’t the answer she could give him. It was more complicated than that.
“I would rather do this right, and make sure we all get out of it on the other side, than rush it because of my personal feelings and get someone hurt.” She met his gaze and they sat there for a minute.
“Nothing I’ve done could hurt anyone else.”
“Except yourself,” she corrected.
“Sawyer…” He sounded annoyed and exasperated with her.
“I’m tired of this argument. Let’s just get back to the guys,” she said quickly, not wanting to do this again. She was tired of telling him to back off, calm down, focus.
She was just scared to see what happened when she let him off the leash. She was so scared.
11
Vincent
Vincent’s heart pounded as he sat next to her. Fuck. He’d really thought there for a moment that she was going to say she couldn’t be with him anymore. That she didn’t want to be with him anymore.
It had been the most terrifying second he’d ever experienced. He couldn’t do this without her. He would have fallen apart weeks ago. He thought he was holding himself together all right. He didn’t think it was so bad that she was that frustrated. Sure, she’d gotten hot with him once or twice, but today had been different. She’d been furious with him for needing to do this right now.
Glancing at her in the driver’s seat, he swallowed a lump in his
throat as they pulled up to the gym. He should tell her why this was driving him mad. It was everything. All of it. He didn’t just need to catch his brother. No, the team had to kill him. They were never supposed to be the executioners. This wasn’t the role of the IMPO. It had been a mess in the Amazon, assisting the IMAS because Quinn was being forced to go. They weren’t supposed to be the hand that delivered judgement.
Not him. Not his team.
Not her. He’d never wanted this for her.
They had done so well, that first case. They had caught the killer, and he was getting help. They had opened up the ability for others to come in and clean the area up. Then, it all went to hell.
He was tired and mad. Not just at his brother, but his bosses. Vincent had to run to them because they were the good guys.
Now, he wasn’t sure. What sort of good guys told a woman she had to kill and keep killing to earn her freedom? And what kind of man was he that he wanted his brother’s head? That he’d screamed for it, in retribution for James.
What kind of man did that make him?
And yet, when Vincent opened his mouth, he couldn’t get the words out. There was more, and yet he couldn’t even say a tiny bit of it. He was a ball of conflict and pain, and he wasn’t sure where to go with any of it.
Quinn kept telling him that he should let Axel go and that Axel wasn’t his brother. Not in his heart. Vincent knew that. He’d let go of that part a long time ago.
No, Axel was just a cruel man who kept hurting him and the people he cared about.
“I…” Again the words failed him.
“Yeah?” She frowned, her eyes still on the road.
“I’m sorry for my behavior,” he finally whispered.
“You’re hurting. It’s obvious to everyone, and we’ll make it through it,” she promised. “This is the hardest thing you and I will ever deal with. The guys know it. We’re not going to just abandon each other now.”
He nodded. Well, at least she understood that part. He knew she understood that part, but no matter how many times someone said it to him, he had a hard time thinking he could make it through and not hate himself for it in the end.
The Redemption Saga Box Set Page 142