The Secret Six

by Evie Del Mar

  A scream started building from deep within that forced its way out of my mouth, the sounding shrills were like a banshee. Sensing my distress, the waves crashed angrily against the shoreline. My scream turned into full blown sobs. If I thought I experienced heartache two months ago, it was nothing like the extreme grief I was feeling now. It surged with every breath I took, emptying my heart and crushing my chest. What had I done to deserve this? Everything seemed so perfect when I woke up this morning, but now, the day did a complete one-eighty.

  You’re not alone. A quiet voice inside my head whispered. My breathing finally slowed as I pictured the twins, Lily, Drake, and Cole. I thought back to the story Tony had told me on my first day, that his house looked to have been robbed while he was away. I gasped. Does that mean The Brotherhood killed Cole’s mom? Poor Cole.

  I replayed Tony’s words from the kitchen, hoping to find comfort in something, anything he may have said. “Do you remember the tree that fell down on the road that made your father take a detour?” I stopped short. Wait a minute… I never told Tony that the reason we had to take a detour was that a tree fell down the road. How could he have known that? Cole never mentioned it. He simply said they had found our car wreckage and pulled me out.

  I repeated more of Tony’s conversation. “We need to be prepared for The Brotherhood. We need to put the key together, but to do that we need your crystal piece. I promise I’ll take good care of it.” I’ll take good care of it… Where have I heard something like that?

  Against my will, scenes from my accident played through my mind; like a dam had broken inside and memories were being seen with crisp, clear vision. A pair of feet walking next to the passenger side, Mom’s side, and knees kneeling down next to her. A voice had said, “But don’t worry, we’ll find the key and finish what we started. I’ll take good care of her.” The owner of the voice reached inside the car, toward Mom, with something sparkling; metal.

  For the third time today, my breath left my lungs.

  “Holy. Shit.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  No. No way in hell was this happening. I began pacing back and forth along the shoreline, my head pounding as it tried making sense of things I was having a hard time coming to grips with. Why would I even consider the thought that Tony, the man who took me in when I had no one, could be a member of The Brotherhood? I ran back over everything, hoping to piece together something that would prove me wrong, but came up with nothing. There was no way he could’ve known about the tree falling down on the road unless he personally knew it was there, forcing us to the alternative route back home. Could he have done something to have caused Dad to swerve off the road when Mom yelled at him to watch out? Scared an animal into crossing into our headlights? Or put something on the road, like the fallen tree from our original route home?

  Hearing the voice from my dream made my skin crawl. Why had I not figured it out sooner? Probably because the voice from my dream was filled with so much hate and anger that I never put two and two together when I first met Tony. Now the phone conversation I overheard last night made sense. He was talking about Jasper messing up something he had worked on.

  The sleek way he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out…I gulped…a knife. So, Mom was alive after the car rolled. My knees crushed the sand as a new sob pierced through my chest, thinking of her last moments. Seeing a pair of feet walking near her window and hoping it would be someone to help pull her out to safety, only to find out it was a sworn enemy from her past come to end her life. And for what? For some damn, measly crystal? I definitely wasn’t going to hand over my crystal piece now.

  I was so sick and tired of this rollercoaster of grief, my insides going through the motions and taking my emotions along for a ride. No one ever told me how traumatizing it was for your heart, making you think it would never beat exactly the same way again. I would gladly take my chances with Jasper again than to continue feeling this heavy, emotional pain. At least with Jasper, I would get physical pain that would go away with time.

  The more I thought about it all, the more it really pissed me off. I was foolish to think Tony actually cared for me, or for any of us. How could he do this to his own son? I had plenty of questions for our director and I was going to find out.

  I stood and stomped back up to the academy, planning to confront Tony, personally, and demand for him to tell me what exactly what his main goal was. I had a better handle on my powers and knew he couldn’t hurt me even if he tried. I was tired of being taken advantage of, the feeling of being used in their cruel game. I was done being a pawn for The Brotherhood. For all my life, I stood by and just went with the flow; always stayed in the shadows, embarrassed that I wasn’t good enough to have friends.

  Well, I had The Brotherhood to thank for how they changed me. They helped me discover the power that was hidden within me and gave me the confidence I lacked months ago. The flame that was scorching inside was filled with the need for revenge. It consumed me until it was all I could think about.

  Mom taught me how to play chess when I was younger. The pawn is the least powerful piece on the chessboard, but has the potential to become equal to the most powerful one. If a pawn gets all the way across the board, it can become any piece the player wanted. The Brotherhood was about to experience what it was like to ignore the importance of their pawn and watch it become a queen.

  I threw open the backdoor and collided with a hard chest. I would’ve fallen back on my ass if strong arms didn’t catch me. I looked up and what I saw extinguished the inferno I had inside. Cole’s eyes, that normally filled my stomach with butterflies, were now swollen, and his cheeks were stained with trails from his tears. When he sniffled, my heart broke all over again. The Brotherhood was going to pay for all the pain they had caused.

  I reached up and wiped the wetness off his cheek and tried to smile. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” he croaked. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry I was so short with you earlier. It was just a lot to take in.”

  I wrapped my arms around his waist and placed my head on his chest, wanting to comfort him and take his pain away. I couldn’t imagine thinking for almost twenty years that your mother’s death was just a simple break-in gone wrong, only to find out that it had been orchestrated. I scowled. Was Tony responsible for the death of Cole’s mother, too? I was glad Cole couldn’t see my face because I wasn’t one hundred percent sure if I wanted to tell him about Tony. Was he even Cole’s father?

  “I’m sorry to hear about your parents’ accident,” he whispered as he stroked my back soothingly.

  Should I tell him? I bit my lip, contemplating. He had every right to know because Tony was, possibly, his father, after all. But he had already gone through so much… I wasn’t sure he could handle this. I sighed. That wasn’t for me to decide. If the roles were reversed, I would have rather heard it from him than to find out from someone else. I would be hurt if he knew something, especially something that pertained to me and my life, and kept it from me.

  I pulled my head away from his chest and looked up at him. “Um…Cole?”

  “Mhmm?”

  “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  He looked at me questioningly as he pulled me away from the door and guided me to one of the benches out on the back porch. We sat down slowly, uncertainty filling us both. He was worried about what I was going to tell him, and I was afraid of his reaction.

  “Is everything ok?” he asked.

  Well here goes nothing. I took a deep breath before starting, but instead of sounding calm and collected, like I wanted, everything came out in a rush. “I’m not sure how to tell you this, or even if I should tell you this, but I know I would want you to tell me if the roles were reversed. I don’t even know how you’ll take the news, but I’m one hundred percent sure I’m correct, and you have a right to know, and…”

  “Woah, Melody, slow down.” He held his hands up to try and calm me down. “What are you talking about?
What news?”

  “Promise you won’t hate me?” I begged with my eyes.

  “I could never hate you.”

  Afraid to look him in the eyes, I looked down at my lap as my hands clenched and unclenched into fists, while my knees started bouncing. God, I was so nervous. “I have reason to believe that Tony is working for The Brotherhood.”

  When he didn’t say anything, I looked up to meet his eyes. His face showed no sign of emotion. “Why in the hell would you think that?”

  “Before you and Tony got me out of the car, I was sort of conscious. I remember seeing a pair of legs come to the car and bend down. I heard a voice saying something about finishing what ‘they’ started and that he’d take good care of ‘her’. And then I saw something metal, like a knife, come near my mother and then the person walked away.”

  “But, how do you know it was my father? You said yourself that you were ‘sort of conscious’.”

  “Do you know why my parents and I were on the road that you found me on?”

  He shook his head.

  “When we were in the kitchen and he was telling me the story about how The Brotherhood was involved in my parents’ accident, he had asked me if I remembered the tree that had fallen down in the road. I know now that The Brotherhood knocked that tree down, causing us to change routes. Tony shouldn’t have known that was the reason my family and I had to take a detour.”

  He closed his eyes, and his jaw suddenly clenched. Uh oh. He was getting pissed, so I hurried on. “The Brotherhood was responsible for all of our parents’ accidents because they wanted us all together to find the crystal key for them. You saw Tony’s reaction when I said that I was going to keep my piece for a few days. He was upset because he wanted the pieces together.”

  He abruptly stood and began pacing. After about thirty seconds of silence, I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Please say something.”

  “What the hell do you want me to say? That I agree with you and think my father is a murderous lunatic that works for our enemy? You expect me to believe that the man that has raised me all of my life isn’t who I think he is?”

  I flinched at his tone. “I know. It didn’t make sense to me at first, but everything fits.”

  “This is complete bullshit!” he shouted. “My father did not kill your mother! I was with him the whole time that night. I think I would’ve remembered seeing him kill someone.”

  It was my turn to stand up now. “You already told me that he asked you to wait in the car for a minute. I know you guys didn’t park next to my car because we were in a ditch off the road, so you didn’t have a clear view.”

  He stopped his pacing and looked at me. His nostrils flared as his chest heaved with each breath he took. “You’re wrong. He told me to wait while he went to look for a pulse.”

  The feeling of my chest being crushed again took me by surprise, like it did this morning. I inhaled deeply, trying to gain back control of my breathing. What the hell was happening to me?

  “Cole, you’ve got to believe me,” I begged. I reached out for his hand, yearning for the safety and comfort of his hold, but he recoiled away from me. Devastation and denial was etched on his face.

  “No,” he seethed. “I refuse to believe that.” He stormed off the porch and ran into the forest behind the academy. With each step he took away from me, the pain in my chest increased. I half expected him to react this way, but it didn’t lessen the hurt he caused. I sat back down on the bench and tried to collect myself. Maybe he just needed a few minutes alone. Yeah, that was it. He’d come back. Hopefully…

  I shook the pain away, remembering what I was going into the academy for. I stood up, squared my shoulders, and walked into what I was expecting to be a very serious, possibly heated, discussion.

  ◆◆◆

  I walked through the kitchen and headed down the hall toward Tony’s office, but had to stop by the stairs to lean against the railing. I stood up straight and forced breath into my lungs. In. Out. In. Out. Once I was done with Tony, I was going to figure out what was going on with me and why I kept losing my breath.

  After a minute of forced breathing, that didn’t do much good, I continued down the hall. I knocked on Tony’s door, half of me praying he wasn’t even in there so I could get my breathing under control before confronting him.

  “Come in,” his voice said from the other side.

  Well, this was it. I needed answers from this man, so time to put my big girl panties on and be a badass. I mentally rolled my eyes, like I even knew how to be a badass.

  I inhaled one last huge time, hoping it would suffice until I was able to leave, and opened the door. Tony was sitting at his desk, his glasses pushed down his nose, as he looked at papers skewed all over his desk. A small teakettle sat next to two teacups.

  “Ah, Melody. I was hoping it was you,” he said with a smile that made my blood boil. “I’m really sorry for springing that story on you earlier, but I felt like you needed to know the truth.”

  “Speaking of the truth,” I started, “I wanted to talk to you about something that’s been bothering me.”

  He gestured to the chair in front of his desk. “Yes, by all means. Tea?” He poured the contents from the teakettle into one of the teacups and offered it to me.

  Taking more deep breaths, I walked over and sat myself down, taking the teacup.

  “Are you ok?”

  Damn it. Had he noticed my breathing troubles? I took a sip of the tea, hoping to calm myself down before speaking. Ugh. The tea was extremely bitter. “I’m ok, but I have something serious to talk to you about.” I sat the teacup back onto the desk

  He set his glasses down. “Is everything ok?”

  This was it. “I had a dream the other day about my parents’ accident, but something was new and different about this one. I remember seeing a set of legs walk toward my mother’s side, bend down, and reach inside the car. Then I remember hearing a voice.”

  “And what did this voice say?” he questioned.

  “It said that he was going to finish what ‘they’ started and that he was going to take good care of ‘her’.”

  He crossed his hands in the middle of his desk. “You were in pretty rough shape that night, Melody. You were unconscious when Cole and I found you. You probably imagined it.”

  “Maybe.” So he was going to play it like that. “How did you know the reason my parents and I took a detour on our way home that night? Cole said he didn’t know anything about the tree that fell down, and I didn’t tell anyone.”

  For the slightest second, his eyes grew. Got you, you bastard.

  Tony stood from his desk and slowly walked over to the door. “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about, my dear,” he said as he closed the door. “Are you accusing me of something?”

  My heart began to pound so loud, I was sure he could hear it. Shit. Maybe I hadn’t thought all of this through. “I think you know. The Brotherhood was responsible for all of our parents’ deaths because they wanted all of us here, at the academy, so we could figure out how to get the crystal key. And what better way for The Brotherhood to know everything about us than through a person on the inside.”

  Tony came back around and stood in front of his desk, leaning back on it as he towered over me. He crossed his legs at the ankle and then crossed his arms over his chest.

  “And what proof do you have?”

  I swallowed. I didn’t have any solid proof, but he didn’t need to know that. I knew what would push his buttons. “Plenty, but Jasper’s mention of you yesterday was damning.”

  “You think that pathetic parasite knows what he’s talking about?” he seethed. “He shouldn’t have even been on that damn boat, in the first place.” He looked down at his crossed arms and sighed. “I knew you were going to be trouble from the very beginning, especially when Cole mentioned he had a dream about you.”

  At the mention of Cole’s name, my chest constricted again. Tony looked up f
rom his arms as I tried to gasp for breath.

  “Oh, tell me you both didn’t?” he laughed. “Of course, I knew it was only a matter of time, especially when Cole told me he had a dream about you, and then your reaction to him when you first came here. Tell me, have you and Cole been intimate?”

  I gaped at him. “Excuse me, but that’s none of your business.”

  He laughed even harder. “Well, you don’t have to answer. Your difficulty with breathing tells me that you've, at least, kissed.” He placed a finger on his chin, like he was in deep thought. “I don’t think you’ve completed the bond, or Cole would be here with you now."

  I sat in silence, unable to move, think, or even speak. When had this conversation turned to Cole and me?

  “What? Now you have nothing to say?” he taunted, snickering. “The infamous ‘Chosen One’ is speechless.”

  Wait…what? Chosen One? I was really beginning to regret my decision to come in here and confront him. Where was all that confidence I had just a few minutes ago?

  “Ah, yes. The ‘Chosen One’,” he said, using his fingers as quotation marks around the words. “You must’ve really pissed off Cole if you’re having trouble breathing. What you’re feeling right now is the result of your mate’s strong emotions.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Mate? Chosen One? This guy must be crazier than I imagined. He bent down and was now eye level with me. I could feel his icky, warm breath on my face. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry. My brain felt like it was going to explode.

  “That’s right,” he whispered. “Not so smart now, are you?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”