Page 87 of Betray Me
Your grandmother, Margaret
P.S. The account password is the date you first refused to obey them. You know the one.
I stare at the screen until the words blur, my chest tight with emotions I don’t have names for. My grandmother didn’t die of cancer. She was murdered—silenced before she could share whatever intelligence she’d been gathering. And the money, this impossible fortune, represents decades of her fighting back in the only way she could.
“Belle.” Max’s voice is gentle, understanding. “The password. Do you know what date she means?”
I think back through my childhood, through the endless parade of gatherings and performances and calculated submissions. Then it hits me—the memory so clear it might have happened yesterday instead of seven years ago.
“November twenty-seventh,” I whisper. “I was eleven years old. Morrison wanted me to… to go upstairs with him during one of the parties. And for the first time in my life, I said no.”
Max nods slowly. “What happened?”
“My father was furious. Said I’d embarrassed the family, damaged important relationships. He locked me in my room for three days without food.” The memory tastes like ash and oldfear. “But my grandmother smuggled me sandwiches through the window. She said she was proud of me for being brave.”
I type in the date: 1127. The account unlocks immediately, revealing not just the staggering balance but additional files my grandmother left for me. Financial records showing the network’s true scope. Names and addresses of safe houses. Contact information for allies I never knew existed.
And at the bottom of the digital treasure trove, a folder labeled simply: “The Face of Evil.”
My hands shake as I open it, revealing a collection of old photographs that make the air in the motel room feel suddenly thin. Black and white images from what looks like the 1970s and 80s, showing a tall man with sharp features and pale eyes addressing groups of well-dressed people in elegant settings.
He looks familiar. Disturbingly, impossibly familiar.
“Max,” I breathe, enlarging the clearest photograph. “Do you recognize him?”
Max leans closer, studying the image with the same growing sense of recognition I feel crawling up my spine. “I’ve seen this face before. Recently. But where…?”
The answer hits us both at the same moment, our eyes meeting in shared horror as the pieces fall into place with sickening clarity.
“The school portrait,” I whisper. “In the administration building at Shark Bay. The founder’s gallery.”
I stare at the photograph until my eyes water, the familiar features seeming to mock me from across decades of carefullyburied history. The man in the image has the same sharp cheekbones, the same calculating stare, but he’s younger here—maybe in his forties, addressing a room full of well-dressed people with the confidence of someone born to command.
“I’ve seen this face before,” Max says, his voice barely above a whisper. “Recently. But I can’t place where.”
My blood turns to ice water as fragments of memory surface—not clear recollections, but impressions. A profile glimpsed in passing. A gesture that seemed familiar. Something about the way this man holds himself that I recognize but can’t quite identify.
“The ring,” I breathe suddenly, remembering my morning run conversation with Mrs. Harpsons. “Max, she was wearing a platinum ring with a distinctive design. I couldn’t place where I’d seen it before, but now…”
I point to the photograph, to the man’s left hand, where an identical ring catches the light.
“That’s the same ring,” Max says, leaning closer. “But Belle, if Mrs. Harpsons has that ring…”
“Then she’s connected to him somehow. Family, maybe. Or she inherited it from someone who was.” The pieces swirl in my mind, but they don’t quite fit together yet. “But that doesn’t make sense. She’s been trying to keep us away from campus, remember? After my parents’ trial and my testimony during the Queen’s, she practically begged me to consider taking a leave of absence.”
Max nods slowly. “That’s not the behavior of someone who wants us under surveillance. If she were part of the network, wouldn’t she want us close where she could monitor us?”
“Unless…” I trail off as a more disturbing possibility takes shape. “Unless she was trying to protect us. Or protect the school from us.”
“What do you mean?”
I think about that conversation outside Pemberton Hall, about Mrs. Harpsons'genuine-seeming concern for my well-being. About how she emphasized that the university would support me, but suggested, I might be happier elsewhere. Not the words of someone hunting me, but of someone who knew danger was coming and wanted me safely away from it.
“Max, what if she knows about the network but isn’t part of it? What if that ring connects her to someone who was, but she’s been trying to distance herself and the school from whatever’s coming?”
“Or,” Max says grimly, “what if she knows exactly what’s at Shark Bay and was trying to protect us from it?”
The implications make my head spin. If Mrs. Harpsons has been aware of the network’s connection to the university, if she’s been trying to shield students from something larger and more dangerous…
