Chapter 33

Chapter

Thirty-Three

BODHI

C ounting the guard I took out on our way in, we found a total of four men on the grounds. They were all low-level men, hired more for brawn than brains. The people who ran the school, including Juraj Vedri?, were nowhere to be found.

A sweep of the offices showed they'd left in a hurry. Papers were scattered, computers were broken, and files had been shredded.

Someone warned Juraj Vedri? we were coming. I couldn't even get that angry about it. Too many people were involved the moment Margareta Waldemar and her people involved themselves.

The operation wasn't shut down. I could only imagine they hadn't taken the kids with them because they lacked the time to get them all into vehicles without threats of bodily harm.

Despite the locks on the doors, the kids didn't seem afraid. Uneasy? Yes. Unsettled? Definitely. They were more worried about us, though, than their captors.

Levi—Levente Cassidine Noble—matched the picture Hans had sent through. He'd finally arrived in Prague an hour earlier with many apologies. He'd been tracking down more physical data on the boys.

As it turned out, we'd found them on our own. But there was a lot to do. Margareta Waldemar had brought in more people. Lainey had Andrea wrapped up in a blanket and parked inside a car where she was still speaking to her.

In addition to Andrea, there were five boys and three girls in residence. The girls were silent as ghosts, they barely made eye contact, and didn't respond to English.

Adam hovered near Lainey and Andrea both, but he was letting the girls talk. A lot had changed in Andrea's world. Ezra was inside with the Vandals, tearing the place apart for any information they could find.

Levi had been standing with his arms folded and a mutinous expression on his face while he watched Andrea. He clearly wanted to go over there but he didn't. The other boys were all beginning to isolate themselves from each other.

Abruptly, Levi left that grouping and headed toward me. I spared him a look and took a sip of coffee. The only thing it had going for it was that it was hot.

"Are they really her family?" It came out more a hostile demand than a question. "Like her actual family?"

"Yes," I told him. "Adam is her brother. Lainey is her sister."

He blew out a breath, deflating a little. "So they'll take her back to the States."

"That's the plan." I studied him. "What about you?"

Frowning, Levi twisted to face me. "What about me?"

"Where do you want to go?"

Levi snorted. "Nowhere. Pretty much where I've been my whole life." He waved his hand back at the building that seemed even uglier with the floodlights that someone had set up. "This place…just the latest in a long line of places that take me and eventually don't want me. I'll skip the next one."

I couldn't blame him. Yet, I wanted to know more. More about what happened to him. Who…

I would need to make another list.

At the same time, I couldn't stop staring at him. Years of looking. Years of searching. Years of wondering whether he really existed. Now I could reach out and touch him.

"You could take a picture, it might last longer." The sarcasm fit, but the hostility and the damage shouldn't. Finally, he shifted and glanced behind him before looking at me again. "Why are you staring at me?"

"Debating how to tell you something." No point in lying.

"If you're about to tell me I've been sold or something?—"

"No," I said, cutting off that train of thought before he could pick up any speed. "You said you have nowhere to go. That's not true."

"Unlike Andi over there, I don't have any family."

"Also not true."

He scowled at me. "You know something I don't?"

"I know a great many things that you don't. I will tell you if you let me finish." I could see elements of me in him. The belligerence. The need to challenge authority. To push back.

My mother— our mother loved to rebel. Apparently, she gave it to both of us.

"Look, I get you're trying to you know comfort me or something. I'm not a little kid. I figured out how the world works a very long time ago. My mother dumped me on someone to pay a debt. Sold me for service. I just had to grow up to be useful."

Cold rage spread out from my center. The lies. The lies told to everyone. Him. Mother. Me. "Your mother's name was Isla."

Levi blinked. "What?"

"Her name was Isla Cavendish. You were born in New York, in the United States. She was the wife of a powerful man, but unsuited to the pressures of his cut throat world. The first time she exhibited signs of distress and mental exhaustion, he had her packed away to a facility where he didn't have to see or acknowledge her."

This time, Levi did not interrupt. He stared at me, and I could read the thoughts running through his head like he had a banner scrolling. This is bullshit. This has to be bullshit.

"Isla loved many things, mysteries. Stories. Adventures. She loved to build adventures and to tackle the bad guys and save the good guys. Some of it was painfully simple, yet the answers to some of life's most complicated issues can often be found in the simplest of games."

An ache opened under the bruise on my heart. One that was always there. Probably always would be.

"She was moved from a couple of facilities. She got pregnant once, or so she said. The baby was lost. She was never sure about the story. I confirmed it—eventually—that the first time she was pregnant in one of the facilities, she miscarried when she was about four and a half months along."

It had been in the records the doctor had kept.

"Did her husband go to see her or something?" Levi asked, a fierce frown tightening his brows. "Facility sounds like a mental hospital or something."

"No, to my knowledge, he hasn't seen her since the day he had her committed." Soon, that bill would be coming due. "He didn't want to be bothered. He paid generously to make sure she was looked after. But only one or two people ever really visited. As time went on, people forgot she was there. They stopped asking about her."

"So you're saying that someone raped her…"

"I don't know the answer to that. She never called it rape. All I know is, she got pregnant a second time. She was determined to keep this baby. She didn't want them to take it away again. She did everything she could to hide the pregnancy from her doctors and her caretakers…"

"Kind of hard to do after a while." Levi raked a hand through his dark hair.

I took another long drink of the terrible coffee. It kept me grounded to this place, the here and the now. It helped keep some of my rage at bay.

"Eventually they found out, right?"

"Yes. The baby was taken. Though everyone tried to say she was never pregnant. The records were erased. Her caretakers were reassigned or retired, they disappeared, one by one. Until the only thing left was a memory…" A memory and a letter she'd left with Lainey's grandfather.

"So how do you know that she's really my mother?" Levi stared at me and as hard as he tried to disguise it, there was a rawness to him. A hunger for the knowledge. The world had given him a lot to be angry about. Too much, really.

"Because I was one of the people who knew. Isla Cavendish was my mother." I let those words sit for a moment, the shock rippling through his expression erased the scowl for the first time since we met. "She'd told me she was pregnant. I knew it. I saw her as often as I could. My father moved her many times, tried to put her farther and farther away. He wanted me to forget her, like he had, like so many others had…"

"That means…" Levi blew out a breath.

"I'm your brother. I've been looking for you for the past fifteen years. I knew you were out there. I didn't know if you were a girl or a boy. But I knew you existed."

"Holy shit," Levi said, then scrubbed his hands over his face as he backed off a couple of steps. Truth could cure a lot of things. Didn't always make the process pleasant. "How can you be sure I'm him if you didn't even know if the baby was a boy or a girl?"

"Because you have her eyes." Eyes I hadn't seen in a very long time. "I thought I'd forgotten them. Little pieces slipped away, here and there, over the years. But when you charged out of your room—the look in your eyes. The determination. The fire. That's Isla."

"Is she…you keep talking about her in the past."

"She died." I suppose there were easier ways to say that. "She died and she left a letter with a family friend. It took a while for me to figure out what it was and who had it. But in the letter she detailed everything—and asked me to find you. One last quest."

"And—the husband isn't my father?"

"No," I said, then shrugged. "As far as I know. We can certainly do a paternity test. The idea he lied all these years is plausible. Either way, we'll figure it out."

Levi paced away and then back. His hands opened and closed. I'd just dumped a lot onto him. Maybe I should have waited.

"So what happens now?" He stared over to where Lainey was cradling Andrea now. We needed to get them all out of here. It was cold, ugly, and the gothic horror show of this so-called school made me want to raze it to the ground.

"You come home with me."

"Just like that?" He spun to look at me.

"You're my brother." I was finally talking to my brother and I didn't know what to do with the tremulous emotion that kept trying to inflate in my chest. Anger kept it in check, but at the same time…

I'd found him.

"So, yes," I continued. "Just like that, you come home with me."

"You make it sound easy. I don't even know where my passport is."

"Doesn't matter." There were ways to deal with paperwork. "I'll get you there. You'll have a home, family, unfortunately school. But we can get you caught up. Do all the normal things." Whatever the hell normal was.

"Whatever that means," he echoed my own thoughts on it. When he looked toward Andrea once more, I took a chance and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Her sister lives with me," I said. "You'll still be able to see Andrea."

One squeeze and then I turned to walk away. Better to give him time to process that. For all that we were brothers in blood, we were strangers. It would take time.

It would take all of them time.

Even as I walked I caught sight of Milo talking to Theo. He wasn't alone, Doc was there with him. I must have missed when Doc arrived on the scene. Made sense to have him here though.

"Hey," Ezra said as he jogged up. "We're doing another head count."

"Why?" I studied him.

"Cause we're short a kid. I keep getting four boys, and four girls."

I frowned, then scanned the area. Levi was where I'd left him. He watched me, though he looked away when I glanced at him. I counted.

Four boys.

With Andrea, four girls. The other three were huddled together in another car with a woman who worked for Margareta Waldemar.

"Dark haired boy, maybe 5'8," I said. "Hundred and fifty pounds, maybe. Definitely in the ganglier stage. Darker skin, more olive in complexion. No scars or significant marks that I can think of."

I'd let all of those kids out.

There was definitely one missing.

"Fuck," Ezra said. "We need to get out of here. Get Andrea back to the apartment. I'm assuming Theo over there and your brother…"

I nodded. "I'm going to do another sweep. Just make sure he didn't go inside to hide in a familiar place."

"I'll be here," Ezra said.

I didn't even make it to the first stairs to go up to the second floor before Levi caught up with me. "What are we doing?"

"One of the boys is missing. The one who was in 309."

"That's Kostya," Levi said and he turned to go back to the door and stare out at the vast number of moving parts and vehicles out front. "Are you sure he's missing?"

"Yes," I said. "I'm going to sweep the building. See if he came in to hide."

"So no one grabs him and sells him onward or worse, turns him over to the government." From the way Levi said it, the latter was far worse than the former.

"Precisely. Do you know any spots he liked to hide in?"

"I can think of a couple." Then he locked eyes with me. "What are you going to do if we find him?"

"Make sure gets home."

Levi stared for a long moment, searching my face for the truth. Whatever he saw must have settled him, because he started up the stairs and took them two at a time.

"There's a place on the fourth floor near the roof access…"