Chapter 30

Aiden woke up disoriented and with the most evil headache he'd ever had. Had he really gotten that drunk last night?

Groggy, he sat up in bed, tasting lavender in his mouth. Had whatever he'd drunk been flavored? He couldn't remember. Half of his evening was a blank and yet, somehow, he'd made it to his bed and even taken off his suit pants and vest sometime in the middle of the night.

Grunting, he massaged his cramping right shoulder and dragged himself to the lounge, not bothering to dress up. The answer to exactly how much he'd drunk greeted him from the coffee table, where an empty bottle of whiskey lay on its side.

He'd downed an entire bottle then. At least he'd done so at home rather than some place where waking up with a headache and a stiff shoulder would've been the least of his problems. The clock above the TV unit displayed 6:38 a.m., which partially explained why he was feeling so shit. But he didn't really have time to lament about his impulsive behavior last night if he wanted to drop by PI Deverson's office on the way to Horizons. He'd intended to do so after work, but the chat with Darren in the yard had been too much.

Cradling his face in his palms, Aiden rubbed his throbbing forehead, then ran his fingers through the longer portion of his hair. He moved onto the spot of tension just behind his ears and then worked on his nape before focusing on the space just below his right shoulder blade. He had little success with that and worse still, his whole body was sore and in need of a massage.

Fuck. He really regretted drinking so much when he knew alcohol and meds didn't mesh well, but he'd also needed to just mute all of this pain inside him. To blank out. The whiskey had been there and so he'd drunk it, not caring about the consequences of his impulsive decision.

Swinging by the bathroom, Aiden took a cold shower and a few painkillers. He dressed and scooped up his bag from the middle of the kitchen floor, finding all his stuff still inside from yesterday. Minus his phone, which was atop the drying rack by the sink. While scrolling through the various notifications, he dispensed himself a strong coffee in his thermos and headed to the PI's office. They had a lot of stuff to go through, especially after Marcus' visit, and Aiden was sure that whatever PI Deverson had discovered most likely had something to do with the head of the DuLaurent Corporation.

The first sign that something was wrong were the lights in the PI's office. They were off, when Aiden knew for a fact that the man rarely slept in past six. It did happen, but he'd sent a text yesterday, so PI Deverson oversleeping just seemed off.

Or maybe he was out following up on some new clue?

Aiden truly hoped so as he took the elevator up, his guts twisting when anxiety threatened to flood him. This was a coincidence. It had to be because the alternative was not something he wanted to entertain.

As soon as he entered the PI's office and saw Kim talking to two uniformed men with a grim expression on her face, he knew his hunch hadn't been wrong. He waited for them to finish, growing frantic by the minute as he counted the storage boxes lining the wall near the water dispenser.

"Kim, is everything okay?" he asked when she waved him inside PI Deverson's glassed-off office once the two men left.

She sniffled and her blue eyes went glassy for a moment. "Mr. Kesley, I… don't know how to tell you this exactly, but Mr. Deverson was in an accident last night. A hit and run."

Last night? A bolt of fear zapped Aiden, coiling around his heart. He squeezed his elbow and tried to keep the alarm out of his voice. "Is he okay? Which hospital took him?"

Kim hugged herself, training her gaze on the PI's desk. "St. Michal's. The doctors put him into an artificially induced coma, but they weren't sure it would help. I got the call that he passed away thirty minutes ago."

Aiden didn't hear the rest of what Kim said. His ears pounded with his pulse and his body sucked the air out of him. He felt sick. Kyle Deverson was dead, only a few days after he'd warned Aiden that they both needed to be careful. An accident... A hit and run on the same day Marcus had visited Aiden in Horizons. Aiden heaved, trying to keep the panic at bay, but it persisted, rising up to the surface as his ribcage tried to squish his lungs.

This was Marcus' doing. Aiden knew it deep in his gut in that same way he'd known there was something wrong with Claudia's death.

What the fuck had PI Deverson uncovered?

Aiden should've come here last night instead of getting drunk. He should've warned the PI about Marcus… Hell, he should've probably told the man to drop the case altogether the moment he'd found out about the truth from Sara.

"Mr. Kesley?" Kim's voice sounded muffled, like she was far away. "I've checked if Mr. Deverson left anything addressed to you, but I'm afraid there's nothing. I think he might've taken the files with him last night before he…"

Did it matter even if he'd left something for Aiden here? A locked door wouldn't have stopped Marcus.

Aiden stared at his fingers, flexing them. Kyle Deverson was dead because of him. Because of digging out a truth no one was supposed to uncover.

Stifling down another rush of suffocating tightness in his chest, Aiden brushed past Kim. "I'm so sorry, Kim. PI Deverson didn't deserve this," he said, balling his hands as he stopped dead in his tracks and stared at the cluttered wooden desk.

He'd been here more than a few times in the last two years and with the PI's help he'd uncovered so much. The man deserved a medal and a fat bonus, not this. Not to be killed for something that had nothing to do with him just because Aiden had dragged him into a conspiracy bigger than the two of them. Bigger than the death of Claudia.

"I have to go," Aiden muttered, taking a shaky breath. "Please let me know the funeral's time. I'll handle all the fees."

Kim started to say something, but Aiden was already rushing out of the PI's office. His shoulder throbbed and his head hurt again, the pain persisting through the effects of the meds. He didn't know what to do, didn't know where to go from here. He had no real proof Marcus was behind this, but he also didn't need it, not when this kind of coincidence simply didn't exist.

So why was he still alive then?Because he'd traded his visit to PI Deverson's office for a bottle of whiskey? Because his performance yesterday had convinced Marcus that he knew nothing? Or had this been a warning?

Aiden hit the pole in front of the building with a fist. "Fuck!"

Things were getting out of hand and fast. He was walking a thin rope and one mistake was going to cost him more than an unpleasant visit from the man who could end him with a snap of his fingers. Just like he'd ended the last Valrais.

Aiden stared at the time on his phone. He had twenty minutes to make it to the space shuttle or he would be late for work. He contemplated skipping, but he knew it would do him no good. He had to act normal today. He had to pretend nothing was wrong other than an unfortunate accident befalling his PI.

Because all it took was one wrong step, one wrong word to the wrong person, and Aiden was as good as dead.

Despite Aiden's questionable mental state, his morning lecture went by smoothly. Too preoccupied stumbling to explain marginal analysis, he managed to somewhat ignore the discomfort under his shoulder blade. Or maybe he was too out of it to register it. At any rate, by the time he wrapped up the lesson, Nyle seemed to have noticed something was off, offering him a massage he had to turn down.

Darren's gaze followed Aiden out of the room just like it had been following him for the entirety of the lesson, but he really didn't have the capacity to deal with that problem right now, so he headed straight to his office and sat behind his desk. The holographic monitor came to life as it detected his presence, but despite the dozen or so emails and tasks requiring his attention, he simply scowled at it.

He couldn't concentrate. His brain just refused to work. Frustrated with himself, he reached for one of the clipboards on the other end of the desk, causing the pain in his shoulder to flare. He winced sharply and then winced again when he fingered his way to the slight bump that had formed right below the bone.

What the…? Had he tripped last night and bumped into something? Fallen asleep on the couch after his excessive drinking, then hit the edge of the coffee table when he'd gotten up to move to his bed?

Heaving a sigh, Aiden settled into his chair. He needed to get a grip because he had more pressing matters than a sore shoulder and aggravated emotions. It was difficult to focus though, especially when it was simply too much to deal with all at once. The man who'd brought him so much suffering was still alive and didn't even feel remorseful, while the one who he'd looked up to had been lying to him since the moment they'd met.

And then there was Claudia keeping such a big secret. Little lies here and there that he couldn't help but wonder about. And when he wondered, he inevitably ended up questioning her. Them. What they had had. His heart insisted it had been real, yet his mind couldn't stop analyzing everything, from the stones they'd both been fascinated with at the museum to their first kiss.

Before Aiden's mind had the opportunity to delve further into those memories he didn't need to revisit right now, PI Deverson's untimely death displaced them. It was wrong. It shouldn't have happened. Aiden shouldn't have let it. And yet it had and there was nothing he could do now other than pretend he bought the bullshit Marcus was going to feed the public while he figured out what to do next.

Thinking about Marcus reminded Aiden of the memory Sara had shown him. Her words rang in his head, her promise to always be with her brother even if she had known she couldn't keep it. It ripped Aiden's heart to shreds. Marcus had done this. He'd destroyed a family and left an orphan to fend for himself. A boy who wouldn't be a man for a decade, who had nothing but a necklace with a capsule carrying an AI impersonating his sister. And what for? Some rumored legacy that was likely going to make Marcus more money he couldn't even spend. How was that worth the lives of so many people? How did it justify what he had done?

Aiden's soul mourned the Valrais siblings, a piece of it dedicated to them just like another would always remain Claudia's. How had she been okay with this? He'd thought he could accept that. That he would've supported her no matter what had she just told him the truth from the start, but he didn't know if that was true anymore. He would give anything to sit her down so they could talk one last time, but that wasn't possible. Just like Sara had been taken away from her brother, so had been Claudia from him, leaving behind a hole and sleepless nights spent in futile wondering.

A beeping notification ripped Aiden out of his thoughts just in time so he could recognize the anger he was trying and failing to push down. Its familiarity settled into him, hijacking his senses one by one, and he let it, knowing it as intimately as he knew the grief and anxiety that lived inside the darkest parts of him. They lived in Darren too, in those haunted indigo eyes that he sometimes wished he could simply drown into.

Aiden opened the last e-mail and scrolled down to the first of the attached directives from Central Management. It was a list for prisoner relocations for tomorrow evening. After inputting the information into the system, he opened the second directive.

A humorless laugh left him as his eyes scanned the contents. Perhaps he should've been at least a little surprised, but as he read through the notice of contract termination effective tomorrow that was addressed to him, he found that it made sense. It was the logical next step, an easy way for Marcus to remove an obstacle. To rearrange the board.

The only question was whether Aiden still had a place on it if Marcus had such a roundabout way of getting rid of him, or if what he did next was going to be his last turn ever.