Revealed

by Zoe Allison

  Vale groaned and drank from his tumbler. There wasn’t any point in discussing it. It wouldn’t change what had happened or how things had ended up.

  “Vale.”

  He glanced up at Amber.

  “Remember when you spoke to me that time I ran off to the Maldives?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. Amber had struggled with her feelings for Hayden, and he had convinced her to reflect on them rather than running away.

  “Well, now it’s my turn to help you,” she said.

  He took another sip from his glass. “It is not the same, sorella.”

  “Isn’t it?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “Hayden didn’t betray your trust.”

  “He didn’t,” Amber said. “But I betrayed him, and he forgave me.”

  Hayden squeezed Amber’s shoulders as she spoke.

  “You didn’t betray him,” Vale said.

  “Of course I did. By running away, I hurt him,” she said quietly. Hayden pulled her closer.

  Vale watched them for a moment. “That is not a comparable situation.” Or is it? Perhaps Vic had run away because she had been struggling with her emotions, much like Amber had.

  Hayden sighed. “You’re the most forgiving of us all. I don’t understand why you’re being so hard on her. Why can’t you give her a break? Let her say her piece?”

  Vale paused to reflect. That was a good point. He normally did find it easy to forgive and forget, so why was he struggling? He sipped at his drink to buy himself more time before trying to answer. “I think,” he said slowly, “it is because I’d never invested in someone the way I did in her. I had a connection to her, and I took risks because of it.” He swirled the contents of his glass. “I broke the rules for her, which is something you know I never do.”

  He caught them nodding at each other as he said that. “Anyway,” he continued, “I even let her discover my true identity. I wanted her to find out. I let her in fully and showed her my deepest secret. I laid myself bare. I thought I knew her in return, but the whole time she was keeping something even bigger from me.” He paused.

  “Go on,” Amber said.

  “That would have been the ideal moment for her,” he said, his voice catching, “to tell me her secret in return, but she did not. Therefore, she cannot have truly cared for me or trusted me at all.”

  “Then why did she behave like she did?” Hayden asked.

  Vale shrugged, swallowing down the lump in his throat. “I suppose I was her way in to fulfilling whatever personal vendetta she had against her brother.”

  Amber frowned. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive. She could easily have cared for you and wanted to thwart Harvey.”

  Vale sighed. “There is no escaping the fact that I judged the situation poorly. I think my guilt is also driving how I’m feeling. What if I had revealed myself and she had turned out to be a malevolent? The whole of The Organization would have been compromised.”

  “But that didn’t happen, did it?” Hayden said. “You are a good judge of character and a great leader for The Organization.”

  “What about Glassmarsh and Lorenzo?” Vale said.

  “We all make errors sometimes,” Hayden said. “They both had the rest of us fooled too.”

  “Not you,” Vale said. “You suspected Lorenzo in the past.”

  “That was when he used to act like a dick,” Hayden said, smiling. “After he turned on the charm offensive, I thought nothing more of it.”

  “Clearly a new tactic to stay hidden,” Vale muttered.

  “Anyway,” Hayden said. “You knew about Angelique. You suspected her but I didn’t. So that proves we all misjudge people. It doesn’t impair your ability to lead.”

  Guilt stabbed Vale’s chest at the mention of Angelique’s name. He still hadn’t told them about her.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Amber said.

  He hesitated. “Perhaps I have.”

  Amber raised her eyebrows. “You’re being cryptic again.”

  Hayden sighed. “I feel another head fuck coming on.”

  “Come on,” Amber said. “Spill it.”

  Vale rubbed his face. “This one is big.”

  Hayden frowned. “How big?”

  Vale took a deep breath. “Big enough for the both of you to get really mad with me.”

  They both stared at him silently for a couple of seconds.

  “Vale,” Amber said.

  “Okay,” he said. “Just give me a minute.” He thought desperately how to phrase it in order to break it to them gently and failed. “Angelique is alive.”

  He reluctantly dragged his eyes from his whiskey glass to their open-mouthed expressions.

  Hayden’s eyes were wide. “What the hell?”

  “Alive?” Amber said. “How do you know?”

  “Because I had her taken and imprisoned then unstaked,” Vale said quickly, before he could change his mind about telling them.

  There was an unbearable silence for a few seconds.

  Finally, Vale could no longer stand it. “Say something,” he said.

  Amber glanced at Hayden. He shook his head. “I’ve got nothing. There’s not one single word I can say to that.”

  “I am sorry,” Vale said. “I didn’t tell anyone, not even Priyanka.”

  Amber raised her eyebrows. “Did you tell Vic?”

  He glanced away, afraid to admit to that.

  “You did tell her,” Amber said. “Hence your little speech earlier about breaking the rules for her.”

  “But why?” Hayden asked. “Why keep her alive and not tell anyone?”

  “I wanted to extract information about Glassmarsh and Moore from her,” Vale said. “She had set Moore free before—or so we thought. We didn’t know he was just a decoy at the time.”

  “And?” Amber said.

  “And what?” Vale asked.

  Amber raised her palms. “And why not tell anyone?”

  He almost felt sheepish about it now. His paranoia had ended up being unfounded. “I didn’t want the wrong people finding out and risking a jailbreak. I figured that she had sprung Moore, so he could do the same for her. That fear was groundless in the end.”

  Amber and Hayden were silent again, no doubt trying to process that momentous piece of information.

  “So,” Hayden said, “are there anymore bombshells that you need to drop? Because I don’t think I can take anything else.”

  “No,” Vale said, relieved to have finally told them. “That is it.”

  Amber stared at Vale. “You bloody hypocrite.”

  Vale raised his eyebrows. “Me?”

  “Yes, you.” she said, her voice rising. “You’ve kept the most secrets of us all, told the most lies. You’ve kept everything from me and Hayden, even this earth-shattering news, and you have the gall to judge Victoria?”

  Vale made to protest but then hesitated. Am I a hypocrite? His rationale for holding back was genuinely benign and for everybody’s good. “I had my reasons,” he said, “and they were good ones.”

  “Piss off, Vale,” Amber said. “Stop being so sanctimonious.”

  Vale was shocked into silence as he took in his sister’s angry response.

  Hayden leaned over to squeeze Amber’s hand as she breathed heavily. “I know you’ll have had your reasons for holding back,” Hayden told Vale, “but so might Vic. You just never gave her a chance to tell you what they were.”

  It was Vale’s turn to be on the receiving end of a head wreck. His heart rate picked up as he tried to process all that. He knocked back the rest of his drink in an effort to calm his inner turmoil, but it proved unsuccessful. Amber’s anger had taken him aback somewhat, not because he hadn’t been expecting it but because it was mainly centered on his attitude toward Vic rather than regarding his secret about Angelique. What was more, he could see her point and Hayden’s. A sickening guilt crept into his gut. His emotions were building and threatening to overwhelm him.

 
He got to his feet. “I think I need to be alone for a while. I am going to read in my room.”

  He turned to go.

  “Just think about it, for God’s sake,” Amber told him.

  He left the living area for his bedroom, closing the door behind him. He leaned against it, the floor suddenly seeming unsteady. Were they right? Had he judged things too hastily? He had been so sure of his actions before—or had he? He remembered seeds of doubt being sewn here and there, and if he were truthful with himself, some of hope—hope that Victoria might care for him the way he did for her.

  He’d been secretly hoping she would come back. That was why he’d been looking for her at Gareth’s funeral. As time had gone on and he’d gotten over the initial shock of her secret and the fact that she hadn’t confided in him, despite him revealing himself to her, he’d started to feel sympathy with her position. Perhaps if he did hear her side of the story, it would be easy to understand.

  It occurred to him that he hadn’t really disclosed anything to her, at least not outright. She’d guessed his identity. So he was also guilty of not being fully honest. With a gut-wrenching remorse he realized that she might have been hoping he would do the same for her, by guessing her secret. But he had failed, thereby failing her.

  Stressed to breaking point, he decided to get ready for bed and do some reading as a distraction. He undressed, trying not to remember what it had felt like when she had undressed him.

  He climbed into bed and opened his book. He flicked through the pages and gradually his eyes grew heavier until he fell asleep, dreaming of a woman with yellow-blonde hair and emerald-sky eyes.

  * * * *

  Vale awoke suddenly. He was sure someone had said his name. He lay in the dark, listening. Hayden’s voice became apparent. “Don’t you think we should tell him?”

  Vale blinked. There was nobody in his room, so he must be overhearing the others in the living area. He closed his eyes again.

  “We can’t.” Amber’s voice. “I promised.”

  “I think he has a right to know,” Hayden said.

  Are they talking about me? He tried to tune out their voices. Their conversation was private.

  “She needs to be the one to tell him,” Amber said.

  Vale opened his eyes. She? Were they talking about Victoria? He listened for further details, but they had gone quiet again. He could tune in to his vampire hearing to hear more but decided that would be dishonest. He had accidentally overheard a few things so far, but deliberately eavesdropping was another matter entirely.

  Eventually he managed to sleep again. His usual recurring dream from the day he’d taken the baton of Mr. X resumed, but there was a difference, something that had never happened in real life. At the end of the dream, the screen hiding Mr. X’s identity was lifted, to reveal Priyanka sitting behind it.

  * * * *

  In the morning, Vale was the first up. He showered and dressed then went to fix himself a coffee. He sat at the table, mulling over his dream. It hadn’t changed for months, so why now? He swirled his coffee and watched its circular motion. He was going in circles himself, about this and regarding Vic. He sighed and lifted the cup to his lips.

  “What’s up, bro?”

  Vale lifted his gaze to where Hayden was standing in the doorway. He smiled at him.

  “Want some company?” Hayden asked.

  “That sounds great,” Vale said.

  Hayden poured a coffee and sat across from Vale. “Spill it.”

  The corner of Vale’s mouth flickered. “What? The coffee?”

  Hayden smiled and sipped his drink. “Ha-ha. No, I mean spill whatever is making you frown like that. You’re going to end up with lines as deep as the Mariana Trench.”

  Vale let his smile fully emerge but remained silent.

  Hayden raised his eyebrows. “Playing hard to get?”

  Vale laughed and took a drink of his coffee.

  “What are you laughing at?” Amber asked from the doorway.

  “Nothing,” Vale said. “Hayden just thinks I need Botox.”

  Amber raised her eyebrows. “Not unless you stop drinking blood, you don’t.”

  She made her own cup of coffee and sat with them. “Sleep okay?” she asked Vale. He knew that was her way of offering an olive branch, even though she wouldn’t be sorry about what she’d said because she’d stand by it. And what was more, he could understand that.

  He shook his head. “Not really.”

  She eyed him over the rim of her cup. “Same dream?”

  “Not quite,” he said. “But now I think about it, I may have had an epiphany.”

  Amber paused, cup en route to her lips. “About Victoria?”

  Vale hesitated. He was getting there with that subject too, but it wasn’t what he’d meant. “About The Organization.”

  “Oh yeah?” Hayden said. “What about it?”

  Things had clicked into place. “I think I know why I keep having that dream. I’ve realized after it changed last night.”

  “How did it change?” Amber asked.

  He leaned back. “The screen came up, and Priyanka was behind it.”

  Hayden frowned. “How is that a breakthrough? That didn’t happen in real life.”

  Vale sipped his coffee. “I think I have been dreaming about it repeatedly because the role no longer sits properly with me. I think I am struggling with keeping my identity from those I love.” He looked at the two of them pointedly, and Amber took his hand. He squeezed it, then continued. “It had always bothered me, but never so much. I think it was getting Hayden back that was the final straw. I had two people to hide it from, rather than one.” He met Hayden’s gaze. The blue of his eyes was shining with emotion. He reached across the table and took Hayden’s hand as well. “I also feel that I have had enough of the responsibility of the role. But it was not until last night’s dream that it hit home.”

  “How come?” Hayden asked, a slight crack in his voice.

  Vale took a deep breath. “I think the reason Priyanka was behind the screen is my subconscious telling me what I need to do.”

  Amber nodded, her eyes wide.

  “How do you feel about that?” Hayden asked.

  Vale focused his gaze on the middle distance, thinking about it. “I feel at peace—like I have finally found the correct answer.”

  He adjusted his eyes back onto Hayden, then Amber. They were both smiling, which made him feel even more content regarding his decision.

  Amber let go of his hand to wrap her arms around him. He hugged her close as she rested her head on his shoulder. She had become more demonstrative since being with Hayden, and he was grateful to him for that. He lifted his gaze to his brother’s and got the feeling that Hayden’s emotions were spilling over, judging by the way he was rubbing the side of his face. Vale smiled, and Hayden left his seat to join them on their side of the table, hugging Vale from the other side.

  Vale laughed. “I could get used to these group hugs.” They both squeezed him harder in response.

  Amber leaned back to search his face. “So, what will you do? The Organization has been everything to you.”

  “No,” he said, a warm feeling filling his chest, “not everything. That is you guys.”

  Amber hugged him again.

  Hayden kept his arm around Vale’s shoulders. “You can travel with us, for a while at least?”

  “I would love that,” Vale said, smiling. “Though I need to be careful not to outstay my welcome. I do not want to be the third wheel.”

  Hayden squeezed his shoulders. “Never.”

  “Although,” Amber said, still leaning her head on his shoulder, “if there were four of us, you wouldn’t be a third wheel…”

  He frowned. “Four?” He realized she meant Vic. “Amber, I am sorry that we argued about it, and I know that there’s truth to what you were saying.”

  She pulled away from him and met his eyes. “And?”

  “And I am pretty confused abou
t it all,” he said. “You have given me plenty of food for thought. I need to process things and reflect.”

  “Okay, that’s it,” Amber said, banging down her coffee cup and giving him a hard stare. “You need to listen.”

  He heard Hayden let out a slow breath from next to him. “You’re in for it now,” he muttered.

  “Shush, Hayden,” Amber said. She turned her attention back to Valentino. “I’m telling you that if you don’t see her and at least hear what she has to say, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.” Her eyes flashed with determination. “I mean it, Vale. You have to go to her.”

  “Why?” he asked, anxiety washing over him. He didn’t even know where she was. “What is wrong?”

  He caught Amber exchange a glance with Hayden.

  Vale frowned, his pulse quickening. “What are you not telling me? Is it something to do with what you were talking about last night?”

  Amber’s eyes widened. “What did you hear?”

  He glanced between them both. “I was half asleep at the time. But it was something about you having something you did not want to tell me.”

  There was a moment’s silence. He had caught her on the back foot with that information.

  Hayden sighed. “Just tell him, Amber.”

  Amber frowned at Hayden. She hesitated. “Okay. I will.” She looked at Vale. “Victoria is sick.”

  Hayden made a sharp intake of breath, but Vale hardly registered it because a heavy dread was falling through his gut. Panic started rising into his throat. “Sick? In what way?” Vampires didn’t normally get sick. Unless…she sustained that wound on her arm from Lorenzo’s tainted spear. He closed his eyes for a second. She wouldn’t have been able to get it tended to because he had told her to go. He opened his eyes again and tried to combat the feeling that the room was caving in around him.

  Hayden cleared his throat. “Amber—”

  “Shh,” she told him. “I haven’t finished yet.” She turned Vale’s face toward her. “You need to go see her.”

  He tried to focus on her. “You know where she is? Is she going to be okay?”

  Amber didn’t answer his second question. “I do know where she is. I’ve spoken to her.”