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Sarah’s eyes widen. “You found it, then? I hoped you would.”
“You…left it there on purpose?” I ask.
She nods. “After she took your parents, I wanted to…to help, somehow. Even something small. When she was getting ready to evacuate the penthouse, she shredded a whole lot of documents. I grabbed a handful of the shreddings. I would’ve grabbed more, but she walked back into the room and told me to go and slow Lyssa down.”
“Do you know anything about the list of names?” Lyssa ask.
Sarah just looks slightly more confused than she has so far and shakes her head. “What list?”
“Do you know anything about a hit list of assassination targets?” Lyssa tries, adding, “High-profile leaders of various groups. Like Hadria and Juno Bianchi?”
“I don’t know anything about that. Grandmother kept all business conversations completely private. She never wanted anyone to have too much information.”
That’s true enough. But—“Why did you try to help the Syndicate?” I ask.
“I knew you had been compromised,” she says simply. “It was my job to follow you. See where you were going. It was pretty clear that you and Lyssa were—well.” She gives a very faint smirk and for a moment all I see before me is Ariadne, and I give an involuntary jerk.
“And?” I demand harshly.
“And I decided to keep my mouth shut,” she says slowly. “I knew if anyone could take down Grandmother, it would be the Wolf. I hated you both…but I hate Grandmother more.”
From the corner of my eye, I can see Mrs. Graves making a movement, nodding her head encouragingly at Sarah, who tilts her head to one side. “Oh. Right. I’m sorry I tried to kill you, Lyssa,” she parrots.
“Okay, time to go,” Lyssa says quickly, seeing the look on my face.
“That bitch is not sorry in the slightest,” I hiss, as Lyssa hurries me from the room. “She only said sorry because her mother?—”
“I know,” Lyssa says. “I know, Scar. But you gotta give her a little time. You took a while to come around, and let’s face it—Sarah was there a lot longer than you.”
“Do you really believe her about those shreddings?”
“Yeah, actually, I think I do. There’s a war going on inside her, that much is clear. Taking that handful of paper was a tiny rebellion, the smallest one she could make—but also the biggest.”
“Why are you so eager to forgive her?” I snap. “Why are you taking her side?”
We’ve been walking while talking, but now she stops me there in the foyer of the house, taking me by the shoulders. “I’m not taking her side,” she tells me. “I’m on your side. Always.”
A little cough makes us both glance to the side, where we see Aurora standing in the doorway of the next room, staring at us with a neutral expression.
“Suzy,” Lyssa says with a smile. “I wanted to say thank you for what you did the other night—standing up for Scarlett with Hades.”
“I wasn’t standing up for the assassin,” Aurora says, and damn if she doesn’t sound just as ice-cold as her fiancée. “I did it for you, Lyssa—and for Hadria, though she couldn’t see it at the time. Because if the two of you can’t keep it together, it endangers the whole Syndicate.”
With that, she walks past us and up the staircase without a glance back. We watch her go and Lyssa gives a soft sigh.
“Can we get the hell out of here, please?” I mutter.
“Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 26
Lyssa
We go back to the motel again, since I don’t want to waste time driving around the back roads of Illinois when tomorrow night is the night. And I lose myself in Scarlett, let myself forget everything and have just an hour or two where we don’t have to worry about death and blood and what comes afterward.
Scarlett seems to feel the same, so that we don’t talk at all about tomorrow.
And I try to show her, again and again, exactly how much I really do love her.
