15. ~Caspian~

"That's not viable intel, Jace. No deal. Dig deeper and give me something concrete."

I hung up and grunted.

That slimy fuck wanted something for basically nothing. He was trying to use my desperation to find Caleb to his advantage. The hell I would allow that to happen. I'd already come far too close to considering Elijah's demand for King.

Fortunately, I'd had help from a certain someone with veering off that path.

Not just in that aspect either.

Since I'd brought Asher in, he'd been there every step of the way. Not just on-mission either. For me. He'd actually been there for me. He'd had my back. And, unlike everybody else around me right now, he saw things my way.

I hadn't allowed myself to consider it before as my issues when it came to him and Caleb had gotten in the way. But with him here in person now, spending time with him, working with him, and strategizing with him, it had become undeniably apparent that there was a depth of understanding there that I wasn't used to having. Well, aside from with Dante. But that relationship was strained with him condemning my recent actions.

But this new connection, it was borne from a similar thing. He and I were both leaders who carried heavy burdens on our shoulders, who had to be virtually infallible to those under our charge. He knew the pressure of it. More importantly, he understood the complexities. He was the strength to his foursome like I was to mine. We had a great deal in common. It was something I hadn't wanted to allow myself to acknowledge before because of the way he'd delved so deeply into the dark and embraced it. More than that, he'd used it as a source of his power. It was something I'd worked hard to avoid, to ensure I didn't allow the temptation of it to get its claws into me.

Things had shifted now, however. It was what I needed to be in order to defeat the enemy.

What I'd seen at that mansion a few days ago combined with failing to bring Caleb back, had solidified that and erased any doubts I'd still had remaining of listening to Dante and Luke's warnings—along with Skylar's pleas—to step away from the edge and pull myself back.

There was no pulling back.

Sometimes it took a monster to destroy a monster.

I needed to let the dark swallow me.

It was the only way to end this.

There was no room for my humanity.

As I made my way to the sub-level, my phone buzzed with a text notification.

I opened it to see a message from my other ex-military contact.

Boris: Nothing on Wheeler. Those rumors Jace heard are bullshit, don't trust it. Wheeler is off the grid. Got movement from another ghost.

King: Name?

Boris: Riley Hutchins.

King: No records on her.

Boris: Not surprised. She's beyond ghost status. But she's on the move, taking a risk. Only person she'd do that for is Frank Bennett.

King: She's searching him out?

Boris: Somebody's asked her to. She wouldn't actively interfere otherwise. Not in this risky way either where her movements have been picked up on. I'm good, but she's another level.

King: All right, keep me posted.

Boris: Will do.

I pocketed my phone.

Somebody's asked her to.

I headed down into the sub-level and found Asher moving back and forth from keyboard to keyboard as he continued working away like a machine compiling every shred of data and intel we'd acquired so far in the search for Caleb, so he could feed it into a program he was coding rapidly.

Jesus. I'd thought Caleb had been a whiz at this sort of thing, but Asher was another level.

He was so immersed in it all that he didn't even hear me walking in and approaching. The center two monitors concerned the program he was working on regarding tracking Caleb. But the one on the right caught my attention as I approached from that angle.

"What are you doing?"

He swung his head, managing to hide his surprise that someone had been able to sneak up on him. He followed my line of sight to that monitor where details regarding Caleb's businesses were all over the screen. "You granted me access to everything," he answered, matter of fact.

"Everything that pertains to the task you agreed to take on."

"This is adjacent to that," he insisted. "Caleb's holdings. His facilities. They require managing in his absence. You're stretched thin, I'll handle it in his stead."

"I need you focused on tracking him."

"And I will continue to be. I'm an excellent multitasker." He sent a final command that had a whirlwind of information, photos, maps, financial records, witness statements, police reports, flashing one after another on the screens, then he stepped away, obviously done with coding that portion of things, and told me, "Caspian, if I don't intervene, Caleb could be returning home to a shitshow of epic proportions. He's worked too hard for us to allow that. With my efforts regarding my father's dollhouse network, I'm familiar with this sort of thing. I'm in a position to manage it. I've already reached out to his heads of staff, as well as Sven Nielsen."

"All right. Thank you."

"Great. I'll continue." As he spoke, I noticed him veering toward the far left monitor, seemingly trying to block its view with his body without drawing my attention in the process.

With how good he was, normally that would have worked, but I was in a highly paranoid and intensely alert state.

"Asher," I spoke deceptively calmly, as I drew closer. "I trusted you with access to my entire system because I was certain that you had no interest in acquiring any part of King for yourself, given your refusal to take the seat of power at your father's company when the opportunity was thrown at your feet recently. And because your focus was on Caleb." I stopped in front of him, right up close, looming over him and fingering the collar of his black designer shirt. "My judgment is known for being virtually infallible. Although, that has taken a hit with Elijah's actions lately, I've failed to predict his movements, to see certain things coming. So maybe that wasn't a one-off."

His enthralling silver eyes held my gaze steadily. "It is a one-off."

"Prove it. Step away from that monitor."

He snagged my hand on his shirt.

Just as I was about to react to the rough and aggressive move, he startled me as he stroked my fingers up and down. "We need to focus on Caleb and Elijah. What I'm working on beyond that doesn't pertain to any of that. It needs to be dealt with later. It will only complicate things, something you absolutely don't need, that none of us need."

I frowned. "Does this concern Caleb's ask of you concerning investigating Dante?"

"It does, but my investigation isn't complete."

"I saw your text. You told him you'd found something."

He gritted his teeth.

"Didn't expect me to be able to crack his phone?"

"No. Not this quickly. Respect to King-Tech."

I eased my hand from him, ignoring the rush of heat that rolled through me as our fingers lingered before I broke away fully.

I blinked and stepped back. "Asher, just show me."

"You're not going to let it go."

"You know I'm not."

He scrubbed a hand over the sexy rough stubble on his chin, then stepped aside. "As you wish."

I peered at the monitor, startled by what I saw. "What the—why do you have a scanned copy of my Birth Certificate?"

"It's not a copy. It's the original."

"That's even worse. What does this particular document have to do with looking into Dante?"

"This was forged." He eyeballed me. "By somebody in Mancini Syndicate employ."

I studied it. "What are you… no."

"It's an exceptional forgery, very hard to determine the falsity. Fortunately, I have more experience than most when it comes to this particular thing. I spent a long time trying to prove that I wasn't the son of Carson Monroe. It didn't pan out how I wanted obviously, but it's helping you out now, because I can tell you without a doubt that this is a forgery. Not just this either. All the information surrounding your birth. You weren't born in Rossun General. It wasn't a natural birth for Laura King."

"Wasn't a natural birth… so a C-Section then? What of it? All of the rest was them likely playing the press game, trying to protect their son from the media and their enemies alike."

"Oh, it most definitely was. But it wasn't them spearheading the efforts. It was Dante."

Our eyes locked.

"Like I said, I'm still looking into it, my investigation isn't complete."

"He was close with my father… those were turbulent times back then, especially for the Mancini Syndicate… it could mean any number of things," I murmured aloud to myself, trying to reason it all away.

The locket… it… no.

Dante's… no.

The photo on the left was of a young woman in her twenties with long caramel hair and beautiful hazel eyes. She was smiling widely wearing a veil, and I could make out the top of what was certainly a wedding dress, before the picture cut off halfway down her shoulders. It had to be his fiancé, Bianca Greco, the woman who'd been killed years ago. There were absolutely no files or photos of her anywhere. Dante had wiped away every trace of her existence, it likely being a painful reminder for him, I supposed was his reasoning. A rather extreme reaction, but everybody grieved in their own way. I knew that better than most, unfortunately.

I angled the bag a little and peered at the other photo.

My breath hitched. It looked oddly familiar.

"Caspian?" Asher spoke, pulling me back to the moment. "The most likely conclusion is—"

"I know."

In the next moment, I spun from him and bolted out of the sub-level, hearing his calls to me as I went.

I ignored them, only focused on one thing as I made my way through the mansion toward the only person left alive who could give me the answers I needed immediately.

I knew he was seeing Matteo off as he was well enough to head back to the Mancini Syndicate and oversee it in Dante's stead while he'd stubbornly insisted on remaining here until Elijah was finally dealt with.

I found him stepping back from the manor entrance and fingering his pendant with a deeply pensive look on his face, his shoulders slumped. He was dressed down in a white open collar dress shirt and a pair of designer dress pants. Dressed down for him, anyway. The fact that we were dressed the exact same had me gritting my teeth, and just added to all the shit I'd just seen from Asher's investigation. It wasn't exactly the first time either.

"Dante!" I bellowed out through the entryway.

His gaze shot right to mine and he went stock-still at my aggressive tone.

"Show me!" I demanded, striding up to him.

"Caspian, what—"

"The locket. Show me."

He was so shocked that he couldn't move and I was there in the next second, opening it myself. I looked right past the photo of Bianca Greco and focused on the one I'd noticed a familiarity to at the hospital. With everything happening, I'd thrown it to the wayside. I'd had to. But now… now it was right front and center.

A baby, a newborn.

As I stared at it, that combined with what Asher had just shown me, along with Dante inserting himself into my life, it had me making the connection.

I released the locket. "Come with me. Right fucking now."

I spun and took off through the mansion, hearing his footsteps after me, and a couple of curses from him too.

I burst into my home office and stormed toward the far back, one of the locked filing cabinets in the corner.

"What are you doing?" he called from the threshold.

I unlocked the cabinet, then started rifling through rapidly, searching for one thing in particular. "Get in here and shut the door," I ordered over my shoulder.

Finally, I found what I was searching for and pulled it out.

I spun and slapped it down on my desk.

A photo that matched the one inside his locket exactly.

He stared down at it, his eyes wide. "This isn't supposed to be here."

"Shortly after my parents died, I found it in my mom's things. There were never any newborn photos of me anywhere while I was growing up, which is startling considering my mom made a photo album for every year of my life, right up until she was murdered when I was a teenager. Now I see why." I gestured at his locket. "Because she knew you were carrying around that. She didn't want any chance of a connection being made. Or, was it my father who insisted in order to protect you?"

"He would have, yes. But it wasn't to protect me, Caspian. It was to protect you."

When I just glared at him, he blew out a breath, then pulled off his locket and turned the photos toward me, holding it out between us. Gesturing at the photo of Bianca, he told me, "Twenty five years ago, the love of my life was stolen from me. My fiancé. The queen to the kingdom I was building. My everything. At the time, I was in the process of fighting my father, Marco Mancini, for control of the Syndicate. He'd become unhinged, making dangerous moves, committing horrific atrocities—horrific even by the standards of our world. I had a lot of support, I was right on the verge of taking control, and I was so completely focused on it that I was blindsided by an underhanded move from him." Emotion swam in his eyes. "He came for Bianca. She was heavily pregnant at the time. He shot her and left her to die like trash in the streets. I arrived on scene just as he'd fired… I saw her fall… I was able to get her to the hospital." He sucked in a breath. "They managed to stabilize her, remove the bullet, but our baby was in a great deal of distress. We both knew it was a risk for her to endure more surgery, but she insisted… she couldn't lose our child. So… she underwent an emergency C-Section, the baby was saved. And she… she wasn't… she bled out… they couldn't save her." He ran his fingers over her picture reverentially. "As I explained, I was in the midst of war with my father at the time. It was dangerous. I'd just lost my fiancé. It wasn't safe for a newborn baby. So, I called on a powerful and influential friend for help, one of the very few people I could actually trust back then."

"Jameson King," I choked.

"That's right." He took a moment, then went on, "Together we manufactured a carefully constructed cover up. Everyone, including my father, was led to believe that the baby had died along with Bianca that night too. And I… I had to give up my child." Our eyes met as he revealed. "To Jameson and Laura King."

I tugged at my hair, struggling to wrap my head around it all.

It had me slumping down into my leather chair.

"The Kings had been trying for a child for a long time, but Laura had miscarried several times. Another had actually befallen them a week before I showed up at their door. As awful as it was, we were able to use that as part of our cover up, so the public and everybody in their lives believed the pregnancy had made it to term." He looked out at me. "That my child was theirs."

"Jesus fucking Christ."

"It took two years for the Mancini Syndicate war to end, for me to put down my father. For it to be safe again. I came back for you at that point. But when I saw you with Laura and Jameson… you were so happy and cared for… so well-adjusted… so secure and loved by them… I realized that your best chance was with them and not me, not what I was caught up in. There might have been a period of stability right after the conclusion of that war, but in my line of work, it would only ever be a matter of time until all hell broke loose again. Bringing you back as mine would have painted a target on your back immediately, endangering you forevermore." He shook his head sadly. "It was best that you lived as a King, not a Mancini."

"Dante… fuck," I muttered.

He grasped my hands on the desk, his eyes burning into mine. "Caspian, you are my flesh and blood. My son."

I jerked my hands away. "I can't… this is…"

"I wanted to tell you so many times. So many."

"But you didn't. Not even when they were murdered!"

"That would have been the worst time for me to intervene. It would have impacted you taking over King. My grief and rage and thirst for vengeance at the time would have infected you. I couldn't allow that. But I was there watching, always watching and ensuring you were well. The idea that you would be poisoned by my legacy, my reputation… it repulsed me. But then Elijah came into the picture. It shifted things. You'd become so powerful, so influential and delved into illegitimate operations similar to mine, that it pushed me to break my vow to myself. You needed my help. Advice, direction." He slumped into the chair dejectedly. "I'd planned to tell you the night of the takedown once victory was ours. But then things went to hell."

He smiled sadly as he gazed at the locket photos. "You have her hair and her beautiful hazel eyes. My build, though, and—"

"Stop," I said, shooting to my feet.

"Caspian, wait, I—"

It was too late, I was out the door in the next second.