Page 114 of Revere
“I’m surprised you didn’t meet me upstairs.” I glare. “Isn’t this place some kind of sacred ground for you?”
“There is nothing holy here.” He lifts off the table, taking a step toward me. “But like I told you, no more secrets. You want to know where I am or what I’m doing”—he waves his arms out—“here we are. So are you ready to talk to me now, Patience?”
“I don’t know.” I huff out my annoyance, crossing my arms over my chest. “Are you finally going to be honest with me,Ezra?”
His stare ices over at his real name. One my mother let conveniently slip because she’s so good at playing games.
Driving over here, I picked apart the other half of the lie he’s been telling me. His real name. His complicated family history. There’s a reason he easily gained this position in the House even though he’s been in LA for the last couple of years. It’s like Maddox said to me at the party. There is only one thing all Sigma Sin members follow: the House. Brick by brick.Stone by stone.
That last part wasn’t referring to a structure. It was a last name. While the Lancasters, Pierces, Donovans, and Christiansens have held control of the Sigma House fraternity in Bristal, the Stone family made a name for itself nationally, always holding a seat on the Council, usually as president.
Jacob isn’t just a legacy of the fraternity. He’s a legacy to the family that controls it all. The source of everything evil in Sigma House.
“I haven’t gone by that name in a long time.” Jacob tips his head to the side, watching me as I start to circle the room.
“But you did go by that name once,” I say, skimming a finger over the handle of a blade sitting on the long table against one wall. “Ezra Stone. The same Ezra Stone from the police report you had us studying during the summer program. You were Molly’s boyfriend.”
My stomach turns as he nods.
“How much of the report is true?” I pause, facing him. “You. Molly. The affair. Why would you have us studying that? It’s your history.”
“It’s a story.”
“Then what’s the truth, Jacob? Or Ezra. Whatever your name is. You said you wanted to talk. Well, here I am. Talk to me.”
Jacob tips his head back, rubbing his palms over his face. “Molly was my college girlfriend.”
His gaze meets mine, and through all my anger, I don’t miss that his defenses are finally down in this moment.
“You loved her?” I don’t know why that’s the question I ask when there are far more important things.
“I thought I did at the time. I was young?—”
“You were my age.”
He smirks, moving like he might make a step toward me and then deciding otherwise. “Your age doesn’t come close to counting the rings on your soul. We both know that. You’re smarter than I ever was. And nowhere near as naive.”
It’s hard to picture Jacob as naive. I’ve only known him as this. And even before I saw the Sigma Sin power flowing out of him, I felt it. A presence that can’t be ignored.
“I was a different person back then. One who wanted to believe things could be different if I resisted what the House’s plans were for me. I wanted to believe I had control over my life. You and I are similar in that, I suppose.”
“You didn’t want to pledge?” My eyebrows pinch.
“I wanted to make my family proud, and that won out. But I never liked the political games. And when you’re raised with my last name, that’s all there was. You aren’t a person. You’re the role that you’ll eventually fill. I was raised to take my father’s place in the House, but then I met Molly.”
My stomach tightens at the grief in his tone.
“She was a transfer student who got into Briar on a scholarship, so she didn’t understand this world.” He glances around at the bloody dungeon around us, a room that probably should terrify me more than it does. “She didn’t trust Sigma House, and she didn’t like that they called all the shots, so she refused to come here. It didn’t help that they looked down on our relationship since she didn’t come from a legacy family. Molly warned me Sigma House was after her, and the longer we were together, the more paranoid she became until she refused to go anywhere near the House or campus. That’s when we got an apartment in town.”
“You lived with her.” It’s not a question because I knew that from the police report.
But now that I know Ezra is Jacob, I’m seeing the full picture and hating the flare of jealousy that rises over his dead girlfriend. It’s ridiculous. But also, she’s gone. What if he can never care about anyone as much as he cared about her because of what happened?
He must hear the doubt in my tone because he steps forward and tucks my hair behind my ear. “Yes, we lived together. And that’s also when she started cheating on me.”
“So that part was true then?” My eyebrows scrunch. “I don’t get that.”
His eyebrows pinch. “Why?”
