“The three of us will go together,” Michael said as he grabbed his leather jacket and an extra hoodie off the chair for me to wear.
Adam looked at him in surprise. “You mean you aren’t going to join in the hunt?”
Michael stared him straight in the eyes. “No.”
I don’t think Adam expected Michael to go against his mother and all of Lineage. The shock was written all over his face. It didn’t shock me, though.
Not after what Michael and I shared together.
“We’ll go to Julian’s together. She’ll stand a better chance with all three of us there to protect her,” Michael said. He tossed the hoodie to me and grabbed me by the hand as he went out the door. When we got outside, and he saw Adam looking at our clasped hands, he dropped my hand at my side and led the way for us off-campus.
“What was that about?” Adam asked me as we ran behind him.
“Change of heart, I guess,” I said. I wasn’t ready to get into any of it now as we were running for our lives.
When we showed up at Julian’s apartment, he was already aware of what was going on. He was, however, incredibly surprised to see Michael with us.
“He’s here to help,” I reassured him as we walked inside.
Julian gave Adam a look of confusion, but Adam just shrugged his shoulders before locking the door behind us.
“What if we just leave the city?” Julian suggested. “We can hop a train and get the hell out of Charleston for good.”
“I’m totally down with that,” Adam said. “I’ve never really liked it here.”
“No,” I said as I shook my head. “I’m not leaving until I do what I went there to do.”
Michael was the only one who knew that I knew about him killing my mother. Adam knew what Michael had done, but he didn’t know that I knew about it, too. And Julian was basically completely in the dark about it all. The entire thing was one giant, convoluted mess.
But I was not leaving until I exposed Lineage.
“Lisette is right,” Michael intervened. “If we all just bail now, then there’s nothing to stop Lineage from continuing what they’re doing, and more importantly, there’s nothing stopping them from following us wherever we go and still trying to get at Lisette. These people have serious money, the kind of money that can make things happen anywhere around the globe. She’d be constantly looking over her shoulder.”
“Since when did you start to care?” Julian asked.
“Yeah, I’d kind of like to know that, too,” Adam said.
Michael looked down at the floor. “I told Lisette that I’m the one who killed her mother.”
“Shit,” Adam said as he rubbed his head with his hand.
“What?” Julian shouted. “Lisette, is that true?”
“Yeah,” I said as I stared at Michael.
Julian scoffed. “Then what in the world do you still need to go back to Lineage for? If you’re trying to avenge your mother’s death, then just kill this asshole now and let’s get out of here!”
“Julian, it’s not that simple,” I said.
His face burned with anger. “And why the hell not?”
“I—I don’t really know,” I stammered. “But there’s a whole system there that did this to my mom, and Michael was just a tool they used to do it.”
“Whelp, calling him a tool was probably the first correct thing so far,” Adam said sarcastically.
“What matters now is that we keep Lisette safe,” Michael said as he ignored their comments. “We’ll stay here and take turns keeping watch on the apartment until we figure out what to do next.”
“This is ridiculous,” Julian said, shaking his head and walking into the kitchen to get the stiffest drink he could find. “We need to leave,” he mumbled under his breath.
“I’ll take the first watch,” Michael said as he walked outside.
And I found myself thankful that at least someone wasn’t barking their backtalk at me every second of every moment I existed.
16
Things were very awkward and uncomfortable in the apartment.
I tried to sit and think, and both Adam and Julian both came to sit down on either side of me. Both of them tried to talk to me and reassure me that everything would be okay. Both of them tried to hold my hand and sit closer to me. I wasn’t even paying attention to any of that right now; I was solely focused on how I was going to get my revenge before the chance was completely missed.
Eventually, thanks to the whiskey Julian pulled out from the cabinet, the two of them fell asleep. I, however, didn’t sleep all night.
In the early hours of the morning, before the sun even came up, I made a pot of coffee so that I could try to stay at least a little sharp in order to face whatever the day was going to bring. Everything had been eerily quiet all night, and I was kind of surprised that no one at Lineage would have thought to track us down at Julian’s apartment yet. I poured two cups of coffee and went outside to take one to Michael.
I didn’t see him at first, but then when I looked up, I saw him sitting on the corner of the roof, keeping watch.
“I brought you some coffee,” I said.
