Page 79 of Midnight Legacy

Several hours later in London, Dad and Matteus sat across the table from Ash, Jordan, and me. They stared at the random pieces of paper from the safety deposit box minus those we’d found the hidden messages on. Uncle Lucas had had duplicate books created with important details removed from them, so that it looked like we were giving them something.

All we were giving them was the run-around.

My stomach churned as I watched the glee on their faces as they pawed over what they thought was the contents of the safety deposit box that Cassandra’s parents died for. Little did they know that the real information was in her family home for years and years. A fire would have destroyed it forever if only they’d thought to take a can of petrol and a match. Malcolm had searched the house, but hadn’t known what he was looking for. Frank Jenkins had been smart to teach his daughter his secrets as a game in her youth.

My father taught me the business world and how to avoid the sexual touch of his wives. They’d claimed not to know that Frank was dead, but their reactions showed their true knowledge. The Council hadn’t looked for him because he’d been taken care of, all his linage gone in one fatal accident. I was starting to understand why he was trying to get rid of Cassandra from my life with the offer of ten million pounds. She looked like her mother, and it wouldn’t take long before questions started to be asked.

“You were right to bring this information to us,” Dad said, his finger skimming down the information in the small red diary. Uncle Lucas had explained that the dates related to significant world events that had been orchestrated by the higher-ranking men on the Council. Twelve ancient families who held the power over life or death, their symbol the hanged man from the tarot, which was the major arcana card number twelve. In the past, I believed our actions to be noble because that card was the one that depicted ultimate surrender and sacrifice. I’d seen us in the role of protectors.

Now, I felt used and dirty.

Used by the people I had trusted. Dirty because I had carried out their wishes.

“Any idea what it all means?” Jordan asked, his face set in the perfect expression of confusion.

Dad glanced up at him. “It’s hard to say after all this time. Frank kept meticulous records, but I can barely remember what was happening at that time. My wife was ill, and I was hauling my business empire onto its feet. Xavier was only a child at the time.”

“Dad?” Ash queried.

“Some of the references stir vague memories, but I would need to cross reference them with my journals.” Matteus had always kept huge leather-bound journals with his own strange shorthand in them. Ash and I used to sit flicking through them when we were young, trying to work out what all his lines and squiggles meant.

After Cassandra fell asleep last night, I lay for hours running this over and over in my head. “Is this why you wanted Cassandra out of my life, Dad?” I asked in a deceptively low tone. Right now, I was barely holding my shit together, and wanted to reach across the table and drag him over by the throat.

He leaned back in his seat, his gaze locked on me. “Her being alive paints a target on you, Xavier. You are my only son and heir, and I wanted to protect you. Frank disappeared under a huge black cloud of conspiracy and a massive amount of cash and assets going missing. We believed him to be living a new life somewhere in a sunny location.”

“His being dead refutes that theory,” I pointed out. “It also means that someone else took the cash.”

“Or maybe he already had it in a secret bank account ready to use?” Matteus interjected. “His brother has now turned up at the same time as his daughter. I tend not to believe in coincidences.”

“I don’t believe in Santa Claus, but he crept into my house every year and left presents,” I quipped.

Dad laughed. “You believed in him at the time.”

“My point is that if he didn’t have the money, where is it?” I stopped for a dramatic pause. “Do we have a mole on the Council? Because right now I don’t know what to think after finding out that Malcolm was a sick pervert with his own supply of personal slaves.”

Jordan slipped into his role of head of security. “I’ll start pulling files. Do we know when these assets went missing? There should be a trace even after this amount of time.”

Dad waved his hand. “We drew a line over it a long time ago.”

That was total bullshit. The Council didn’t draw a line under anything. In fact, it tended to sit and fester until the situation turned toxic. Then someone like Jordan had to step in and sort it out.

If money was involved, they would have chased it until the last penny was found.

There was something rotten here that smelt like a ten-day-old corpse that had been decomposing.

“How come no one ever came looking for Frank and the money?” I asked, my gaze trained on my father. I was the only one in this room who knew about the diamond mine deeds and the photographs from the past in my safe.

On cue, his nervous tick started under his right eye that told me he was devising a lie. The majority of people had a tell. Uncle Lucas had beaten our tells out of us until they no longer existed. He took three feral boys and turned us into warriors. We tended to keep our mouths shut and our eyes open in the Council, watching everything and cataloguing it.

“He’d disappeared. I believe the security person before Jordan looked into it but there was no trace of him, no passport activation. The entire family just vanished with the money.”

Jordan looked up from typing on his phone. “Anyone worth their salt would have gone to the house and tore it apart to find something, anything to go on. The accident was well documented, including the descriptions of the victims. It wouldn’t have taken much to join the dots together and discover that the two people were one and the same. Did anyone speak to Clive Brown?”

“Who?” Matteus tried to look casual.

“Frank’s business partner,” Jordan elaborated. “He took control of his entire business after he disappeared. He was also the one who found the car on the night of the accident, and took Cassandra to the hospital.”

There was no way that Dad and Matteus didn’t know who he was. It would have been the first place a Council member would have visited if they didn’t already know that the person involved was dead and no longer of concern to them.

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