Page 33 of Inside the Wicked

I’m panting shallowly now, braced on a razor’s edge of anticipation. That shocks him enough to snap his eyes from Kenna to me.

“He’s alive, and I need your help to get him back.”

Silas’s eyes flex. “So you’ve had an agenda for me this whole time, and it started with Alistair Lanshall?” he says darkly.

“No. I didn’t know I’d be meeting you, but I think that has always been Alistair’s idea with me. He staged Rhett’s death and thinks all this time I’ve believed it. Honestly, I had no real help or proof until recently.”

“Let me guess—Xoid?”

“You know of it?”

“Of course I do. I actually might say I admire their work.”

It’s a small trickle of relief amid the tension to explain what I can while Silas balances all our fates in his hands.

“They have a guy who made it into Alistair’s network to confirm Rhett is being held somewhere. Then Alistair told me about you—his plan forus—and I had to come up with something. Truthfully, I didn’t have high hopes after what I’d been through with Matthew and what I’d heard about your father. I thought you would be just like them, and that I would have no hope here. But you’re not like them. At least, I really still hope you aren’t.”

I can hardly breathe, and he must notice. Silas takes me by the elbow over to the sofas, a little farther away from Kenna. Someone brings me a glass of ice water.

“You’re not what I expected,” Silas says.

I huff a laugh because Rhett told me that before, and I still don’t know what it means.

“What did you think I could do for you?” he asks.

After the ice water numbs the pain in my throat, I try to pick up from where I tapered off in panic. “Jacob knows I’m with Alistair. I’ve been feeding him information to keep him satisfied. Alistair doesn’t know about my meetings with him, or I’m sure I wouldn’t be sitting here. Before you, I planned to tell Alistair something about Jacob and have him believe it was intel I gained for him through the skills he taught me. I wanted to get it right and watch them tear each other apart before I stepped in and finished the job. If Rhett were truly gone, all I wanted was to avenge him. Then, when I knew he was alive, I asked Jacob to find him, and in exchange I would get you to meet with him instead under Alistair’s radar.”

I laugh at myself, because this must sound like child’s play to him. A woman in over her head in a den of vipers. It’s too late to stop the confession now.

“I hoped to ally with you. As me, not for either of them. I wanted you to help me by meeting with both of them of your owninterest, as a ruse to keep them content and busy. Then help me get Rhett back.”

Silas takes a long, deliberate breath when I finish. Then he takes out a cigarette, even offers me one, but I decline, and he leans back, folding his ankle over his knee and hooking his elbow over the back of the sofa.

My knee starts a nervous bounce as I watch him. It shakes the water in my glass, and I’m starting to get too cold, so I place it down and rub my arms.

Silas doesn’t speak. He’s thinking deeply over every detail I’ve so brazenly spilled and deciding if I’m worth his efforts to save. He’s taken three drags of his cigarette, watching the smoke as usual. Sometimes he blows it out carefully, deliberately.

Then he chuckles, as if he’s gotten to a part in my story in his mind that amuses him.

“I’ve given you several sides of my coins,” I say. Maybe it’s pitiful, but I’m crumbling here.

“Indeed, you have. I’m bathing in my riches right now,” he answers with a smile.

“Please.”

“Don’t beg, Ana. You’ve come this far without it, and I much prefer the woman who stormed in here with the confidence of this rather ... interesting plan. I could be exactly like Matt. I could be far worse. What might you do then?”

“I would have still tried.”

“So what’s in it for me?”

“You want to relocate to D.C. You have this club, but you’ll want to expand. I want to take down Alistair and Jacob, and once I do, their empires will be waiting, full of power, influence, and money, for someone to step in.”

“I have no interest in the trafficking business.”

“Come on, Silas. You may be a criminal, but you’re a businessman. I’ve seen the meticulous control you have in here,how they fear you, but they respect you more. You’d know exactly how to keep what you want out of the wreckage we make of their networks. Kill off the pure evil and pluck at the bones that are left that will still hold astronomical roots of wealth throughout several states. You’ll have done something your father never attempted. People won’t hear the name Balenheizer and think Damien first—they’ll think of Silas, the man who single-handedly took D.C. all for himself.”

“Single-handedly?”

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