Chapter 926
“I don’t know who to trust anymore,” she said, burying her face in her hands. “Everyone has an angle. Everyone is playing a game.”
“Not everyone,” Julian said softly.
He tried to reach out, his hand trembling with the effort, but he couldn’t bridge the distance.
“Stay here,” he said. “For a few days. No politics. No schemes. Just quiet. Until the bleeding stops.”
Skye looked at his battered hand, then around the sterile room. The quiet hum of the machines shut out the world.
“Why does this place feel so familiar?” she asked, watching the shadows fall across the high ceiling. “I feel like I’ve been here before.”
Julian’s smile was sad — a fleeting thing that didn’t reach his eyes. “We all have ghosts, Skye. Sometimes they live in the architecture.”
𝘞𝗲 𝗎p𝘥𝘢𝘁𝗲 𝖾v𝘦𝗿𝘺 𝘸𝘦𝖾𝗄 𝗼𝘯 𝘨а𝗅ո𝘰𝗏e𝘭s.𝖼𝗈m
He closed his eyes, exhausted.
Skye watched him. There was a peace here, but underneath it ran a current of sadness she couldn’t name. She closed her eyes and breathed in the antiseptic air, trying to scrub the smell of Liam’s betrayal from her mind.
The morning sun filtered through the heavy curtains of the library, but it brought no warmth to the maps spread across the table in front of Julian. He was in his wheelchair now, wrapped in a thick blanket, defying the doctor’s orders to stay in bed.
Skye stood over his shoulder, a mug of tea in her hand. Her eyes were puffy, but her spine was straight. The night of crying was over. Now it was time to learn.
“This is the spiderweb,” Julian said, tapping a large diagram of Sea City’s power structures with a trembling finger. Red strings connected photographs of politicians, CEOs, and gang leaders. “You think you defeated Silas? You just cut off one leg of the spider. The head is still out there.”
“The Mastermind,” Skye said.
“And to beat him,” Julian said, pointing to a cluster of nodes near the port, “you need to understand the flow. Not money. Information. Leverage. Shame.”
“Liam uses leverage,” Skye said bitterly.
“And that is why he wins,” Julian replied, his tone neutral. “You don’t have to like the game, Skye. But if you want to protect Alistair, you have to play it better than Liam does.”
Skye’s hand drifted instinctively to her pocket, fingers brushing the cool metal of the encrypted smartphone Julian had given her that morning. Her old one had shattered during the escape from the safe house, a casualty of the chaos. This new device was safe from Liam’s eyes.
The heavy oak doors creaked open. The butler cleared his throat.
“Master Julian. Mr. Thorne has arrived. And… a guest.”
Skye stiffened. Alistair. She hadn’t spoken to him since she fled the hospital.
Alistair walked in looking exhausted, dark circles beneath his eyes like bruises. He wasn’t alone.
Trailing behind him, like a bright pink balloon drifting through a funeral home, was a girl.
She was young — perhaps twenty-two — wearing a Chanel suit in bubblegum pink, matching heels, and a headband that cost more than a car. A tiny, fluffy dog peered out from her purse.