26

Jack

January 16th, 2020

I had been doing plenty of things over the last two months, despite what Rae believed. I knew she was irritated that I didn’t share everything with her, but there was a point to that. Too many questions, too many ideas. She was getting better in her training, in her thought process, soon I’d be able to let her in on the little things, but for now, there was no point in telling her that yes, we were looking into Blanchard and her father, but no we hadn’t found anything yet.

Up until the last few days.

Blanchard was an alias. For whom, we didn’t yet know, Everett was still looking into that while I came here to meet with our current assignment.

After the night of the party, I had fucked Rae to sleep before joining Max and Nora in the cathedral. I said his name and they both reacted. They knew him too. I had my doubts that he was the boss, but I did hope he might be the soldier. Once I had him, he could lead me to the one in charge. To the man who originally wanted Marla and Rae both gone. I suppose I should be grateful that the soldier wanted to play his little game with Rae, because if he hadn’t, she would be gone right alongside her mom. I never would have heard her name.

Still, he’d regret every decision he had ever made in his life for what he had done to her. Torturing her old life out of her and instilling a new one just so he could put people into her life to make it miserable. He didn’t even do a very good job at it up until his boss hired us.

Her life had been great. Mediocre, sure, but she hadn’t suffered. I think that’s what I was looking forward to the most. Just understanding what the point of all of it was.

For now, we were in Texas.

Malachi met Zo and I at the house he had rented out just for this meeting. I didn’t think it would take more than a day, so I could get back to Rae by tomorrow night and pick up where I left off.

She had done so good for me last night, and now that I had a taste of her perfect little ass, I wanted more. I was going to train it to swallow me up to my goddamn balls and she would take it like the good little princess she was, I knew she would.

“Where is he?” I asked, walking into the kitchen, my cock already throbbing at the mere thought of feeling her wrapped so tightly around it.

Malachi was making Earl Grey tea, Azrael’s favorite. “He’ll be here soon. How is everything going?”

“She’s antsy,” I answered, setting my jacket on the counter. I was antsy. “We’ve been putting it into her training, but I want this done and over with. It’s been two months.”

“Yes, two months,” Malachi agreed, “and you moved into the woods, away from where they knew she lived. It’s going to take time for them to find you again. Progress reports on your prisoners?”

“I didn’t get a long enough chance with them before we left,” Zo explained, sitting at the island. “We just brought them to the cathedral. Max and Nora are played out but having them around will help us break the others, I think. If they know all four of them are goners, someone is bound to squeal. At least one of them should have more information on Blanchard.”

Rae was smart, I knew she wouldn’t jeopardize the assignment for her own gain, no matter the desperation. She’d go and ask her questions before returning to the house to train and watch her movies. She might actually get somewhere. Seeing their target in front of them might set them off. Who knows.

So long as she didn’t finish that new horror series without me, everything would be fine.

“How is she doing with her training? Any promise?”

“Fine,” I answered, glancing towards the door. She was doing absolutely amazing. She had excelled in ways even some of the most promising Initiates had failed to do. There was instinct there you couldn’t train into people, and once again, it made me question her past. It seemed more and more like Rae had been truly a part of whatever life Marla had lived. The amount of torture she had endured to erase that?

Fuck, I could barely control the rage I felt even thinking about it.

“What’s his name?”

“Charles,” Malachi answered just as the doorbell rang.

“Ah, there he is. Zo, please,” he asked, gesturing to the tray of teacups and kettle he had set up.

Zo rolled her eyes, adjusted her mask, and picked it up with a little resentment.

I followed after Malachi, keeping my distance, making sure my own mask was in place. I wanted to see what he looked like, this man Malachi had finally found. The man who had managed to stay hidden from the best in the world.

It made me want to rid myself of the title ‘The Hunter’. How could I be worthy of such a title when I couldn’t even find my girl’s own father? Especially after they clearly named her after him.

“Good afternoon,” Malachi greeted, although his tone was far from warm. “Come in.”

I stood in the doorway, watching as Malachi stepped to the side, revealing the man.

He had light brown hair hidden under a ballcap, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. Their noses were the same, but other than that, they looked nothing alike. She had gotten all of her looks from her mother.

Malachi shut the door behind him. “This way,” he gestured as Charles glanced my way.

He stood tall, confident. Even now, in a house filled with killers, he looked unafraid.

I suppose I wouldn’t have been afraid either if I knew I didn’t have a chance to live if they decided to turn on me.

I watched him as he passed, following after Malachi towards the furnished living room.

I sat in one of the recliners, watching him carefully as he sank into the couch, Zo standing beside me, Malachi taking a seat in the other recliner.

Charles watched us carefully, refusing to take off his sunglasses and hat, which I could understand. He had been in hiding for almost a year now. It was habit, even within these walls. “So, why do you have my daughter,” he finally began.

“Because she’s my wife,” I told him, although the papers were still in the process of being drawn up. She was as good as my wife anyway, but I knew she would like proof, so I’d give it to her. She just didn’t know that I was doing it now.

Charles eyed me. “Wife?”

I nodded once.

“She married you?” He turned away, his lips curling in a way that told me it wasn’t at all what he expected his daughter to do.

Good. Unpredictable was best in this world. Even in things as simple as marriage.

“Was it payment for something? A debt perhaps?”

A debt? I didn’t take whores as payments for debt. We delt in money, art, jewels, and connections. Nothing less. The fucking audacity that he thought so lowly of his daughter that he believed she’d marry me as payment for a debt. Fuck, I wanted to kill him just for that.

“Why don’t you tell us why we have been fighting for her life while you are clearly alive and well,” Malachi said, pulling his attention over. “You’re her father, I expected this much effort coming from you.”

“Me?” he snorted. “I’ve done my part, every choice she makes after what we did is her choosing. Although, I wish she would have reached out and let us know they found her.”

“They,” I said, eyes narrowing. “Who are ‘they’?”

Charles found my eyes and shrugged. “Well, up until the moment your father reached out to me, I thought it was you, the Initiates, the Shadows,” he explained almost bitterly. “We’ve been on the run for almost two years. Separately, better odds.”

Debatable.

“It was too dangerous to have any contact, but I assumed she was fine until her mother disappeared. I had never considered she, out of all of us, would have been found.”

“Why were you on the run?” I asked evenly.

He huffed. “Marla wouldn’t tell me,” he answered, looking between the three of us. “All she told me was something happened, and The Family was after us. The best way to hide was to split up until the time was right. I was fine with that, it’s nothing we haven’t done before, but when a year turned into two, I started questioning things. After two years, I started to get worried. I couldn’t find her, I couldn’t find Charlotte—”

“Rae,” I interjected. “Her name is Rae.” We had never gone after the Alascer’s. That name is unique, I would have remembered it on accident. One of us would have remembered it. Especially Malachi. He would have remembered sending us after someone he cared about. Charles was lying and I needed to figure out why.

He turned to me, his brows furrowing. “Rae?” he asked and finally took his sunglasses off. Light brown eyes, nothing like hers. “As in Rae Bennett?”

I was irritated enough as it was. “Yes.”

The confusion that filled his eyes was enough to make me pause. “No, that’s…we burned those identities before we ran. She never would have gone back to it, she’s smarter than that.”

I studied him carefully before shoving myself to a stand and pulling out my gun. “He’s lying.”

Charles held up his hands, his eyes going wide with fear. “I’m not lying,” he rushed, which made me pause anyway.

If he and Marla were a part of this world as much as Malachi believed they were, then why did he look so scared looking down the barrel of this gun?

“Charlotte knows the rules, she knows what she’s supposed to do. She doesn’t use burned identities, in fact, she hardly reuses any identities, that’s why it was so hard for me to find her. She’s the one who creates new ones. She’s the one that gives us the information before we settle.”

I pointed the gun between his eyes. She did all of that? Then why the fuck couldn’t she remember it? What had they done to her to make her forget that? “I looked into Rae Bennett, I’ve been to events with her. Everyone knows who she is, who her mother is,” I explained tightly. “Everyone. In fact, in LA, her mother died ten months ago, and the city is allowing her to mourn the loss. Everyone knows about her. Everyone.”

Charles looked confused and terrified. “I don’t understand. We burned them over two years ago. Before we ran. There has to be a story there. Did the Bennett’s move back to the city? What was the story behind them being gone for so long?”

“There is no story,” I snapped. “I did my research.”

“Not well enough,” he whispered desperately, shaking his head. “She would have appeared in that city two years—”

“She doesn’t have solid memories before her mother died,” I bit.

He closed his eyes and shook his head, as if trying to collect his thoughts. After several seconds, his eyes found mine again. “Marla isn’t dead,” he breathed out. “I saw her four months ago, she’s not dead. I don’t know why she believes that, but it’s the truth.”

My brows pulled together, my blood running cold. “What?”

“None of this makes any sense,” Charles went on, lowering his hands. “She was safe. The Bennett’s were all supposed to be gone, moved to Ireland in 2017. Charlotte had to have given them a story.” He paused, looking between us. “You kept saying Marla, what about me? What do they think happened to me?”

I watched him carefully before lowering the gun. “Your daughter, from what we’ve put together, was tortured into believing that Rae Bennett was a real person.”

His eyes darkened. “What?”

“She has scars littering her body and whenever we ask her about something small, something that isn’t significant to whatever plot they’ve written out, she struggles, panics, can’t think straight. She’s been brainwashed. She believes her mother is dead. She believes that you were a one-night stand. She believes that she’s lived in LA her entire life with a woman named Viv as her one and only friend.”

“Viv,” he whispered, his eyes flicking back and forth as if he were going through a catalog in his mind of names he might have heard. “I don’t know a Viv.”

“Why wasn’t your name on the real birth certificate?” Malachi asked, pulling his attention away from me. “Why hasn’t anyone mentioned her father?”

“Marla’s choice. If they came after us, they would only know her name, leaving Charlotte with a parent still alive if things went south. As for why nobody has mentioned me, I don’t know. That’s the issue. You don’t know the story. Why did the Bennett’s return to the city?”

I truly didn’t care about the story, it seemed like a small fish in a large pond at this point. It was pointless, unnecessary.

“How long was she tortured?” he asked, his eyes finding mine when we didn’t answer his question.

I worked my jaw, adjusted my grip, refusing to drop the gun. “We haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Have you pushed her to remember?”

“Yes,” I stated, “but we don’t know the failsafe’s they put in her mind. I don’t want to shatter it trying to find out the truth.”

“Does she understand that she’s been tortured?”

“Well, if she hasn’t figured it out already, she’ll know about it soon. I have four people involved in this chained up in the basement back home. If you know her as well as I do, you’ll know that she wasted no time in going down there to speak to them. If they know about how she ended up this way, she’ll get it out of them.” I hadn’t trained her in torture yet, but with her instincts, with what I now know, even if she can’t remember how she knows how to do it, she’ll still know how.

Maybe it would unlock something inside of her that would bring back enough memories to help us solve the rest of it.

Or maybe it would shatter her mind in a way I wouldn’t be able to fix.

Just at the thought, I nearly put a bullet between his eyes.

Charles sagged into the couch, disbelief and anger burning in his eyes. “All this time, I thought she was safe. I thought she was biding her time, doing what she always did. I can’t believe this.”

Well, this is getting us nowhere. Completely and utterly pointless. “Where is Marla now?” I asked. Maybe I could at least bring her some good news.

Charles waved me off. “Last I heard, she was somewhere in the Netherlands.”

So long as she was alive.

“Do you know who’s behind this if it isn’t you?” he asked, finding my eyes again. “Do you know why they’re doing it?”

“You said Marla figured out something about us and you believe that’s the trigger,” Malachi stated. “Do you know what she found out?”

Charles shook his head. “No, she wouldn’t tell us. She came home that day in a panic, saying we needed to split up for a while. We asked no questions, we simply said our goodbyes and left.”

An enemy of ours then? My eyes found Malachi’s. Someone who wanted to find out our secrets so they could destroy us.

Malachi shrugged, leaning back in his chair. We had so many enemies, there was no way to tell who it could be, but if Marla found out something that could destroy us and someone knew about that, of course they would go to any lengths to get that information.

But she believed that it had been us that were after her. So someone posing as us or someone we rejected, was going after them in order to what? Make a name for themselves in this world?

Whatever the reason, they would soon find that it wasn’t worth it.

“Do you know a Blanchard?” I asked, studying his reaction.

His confusion only grew. “Blanchard? No, why? Is that who’s after her?”

I watched him for a second longer before finally putting my gun away. “No,” I lied and turned to Malachi. What was the point of any of this?

“You said she’s your wife,” Charles said, pulling my attention back to him. “Is that something she agreed to, or did you take advantage of her being in such a vulnerable situation?”

I laughed coldly. “Rae is nowhere near vulnerable. She knows what she stepped into.”

“We’ll see if she sticks to it when she remembers where her loyalties lie,” Charles stated dryly.

My brows lifted. “That sounded like a threat.”

“I know my daughter, she would never willingly pick a life like yours. A life wearing masks? A life where she couldn’t be herself. She would hate it.”

He didn’t know his daughter at all then. “She doesn’t have a choice,” I explained, finally shoving my gun away. “You know Charlotte Alascer, Charles, but you have no idea who Rae Bennett is. I’m done here.” Waste of fucking time. He didn’t have anything of any importance to give us other than it was one of our enemies. It didn’t narrow it down, it didn’t help in the slightest. We were still stuck at square fucking one.

“One last question before I go,” I said, wanting more than anything to just leave. “Viv, you don’t recognize that name, yet there are pictures of them as teenagers together, how do you explain that?”

Charles shook his head. “I don’t know, we only went to L.A. a few times over the years on jobs. Charlotte never had any friends. I can’t explain that other than photoshop.”

Some good photoshop. I ran it through my own programs, it detected nothing. “If you’re lying to me, Charles, I don’t care who you are to her, I’ll fucking kill you.” I knew he was lying. The question was why.

“I’m not lying,” he said through his teeth. “We didn’t know any Viv. D-do you have any pictures of her, any proof?”

I narrowed my eyes at him and fished the picture out of my pocket. I carried the photo with me everywhere just in case one of the dozens of times I stared at it I would see something different. Something I hadn’t before.

He took the photo from me, his brows furrowing. “I don’t know any Viv, but that girl? Her name is Beth. Beth Dorsey. We did some work with her parents back in the day, but she lost both of them a few years ago. I didn’t know she and Charlotte took these pictures together. Charlotte knows never to keep any evidence of any life we live, no matter how in depth. No evidence.”

Smart, perhaps that’s why they convinced her to keep a social media presence, make her go against her own training.

“Fine. I don’t care what you do with him, Malachi,” I said, turning on my heel. “I’m heading back.” We got all we could from him, of that I was sure. Charles was suspicious. Lying about certain things, the way he acted. If he was trained as well as he talked, he shouldn’t have reacted like that when I pointed my gun at his head.

He shouldn’t have been scared at all. He didn’t ask hardly any questions about Rae and her life now, although that could have been explained away by Malachi’s presence. If Marla had been friends with him, there was a chance Charles had known about that.

I had some answers, that was enough for now. Malachi could extract the rest if he wanted, but I needed to get home before Rae realized who she was and accidentally killed our suspects.

She was a part of this world, and I would do everything and anything I could to remind her where she came from. Her mother had put a lot of effort into her, it sounded like, I wouldn’t erase the progress just because some fuck decided to torture her.

Besides, the thought of having her by my side on assignments, working with me, fuck, it made me so goddamn happy.