Page 89 of Temptation
Judah’s office held more secrets than I assumed it would, and I guessed that he never thought that he would have to hide anything there. Dylan trusted him, his wife never really cared about the things he did, and Skylar was too scared to try to do anything. His ego was going to be the end of him and I couldn’t wait to be there to see the look on his face once we finally destroyed his empire of blood. But I couldn’t stop thinking about all the files we saw once we finally tore through the lock on his drawers.
File after file with the names of every single person who ever submitted to the Order, and some more. The victims, the executors, the ones that wanted nothing to do with his vicious world, yet they were pulled in no matter how much they tried to resist.
Eleara.
Gabriel.
My parents.
Skylar.
Dylan.
My brother and me.
And the biggest surprise of all, my uncle. My hands shook when I pulled the manilla file from the drawer, my eyes focused on his name at the top of it. I didn’t dare open it, but the look on Dylan’s face as he went through it told me everything I needed to know—Uncle Neal lied to me.
Judah kept files on every single member of the Order and their children, so if he wasn’t involved as he always claimed, why would his file be there?
I looked to my right, to the drawers on my dresser, and took a deep breath before I pulled myself up from the bed. The darkness of the room hugged me, almost soothingly, pushing me toward the dresser. I didn’t want to look at it. I didn’t want to have my life shattered and everything I ever believed in. But I had to. I had to know, had to understand Uncle Neal’s connection with all of this, and why Judah Blackwood had his name there. It wasn’t a coincidence that he knew so much about the Order, and my gut always told me he knew more than he was letting on, but why lie to me?
As soon as I got home last night, I knew he wasn’t here. His car was gone and when I asked Sebastian he didn’t know where he went. I was too tired to go to his room, but I had a feeling that I wouldn’t like what I would find there.
Not one bit.
Crows cawed outside my window, and even though I wasn’t a superstitious person, I couldn’t help but wonder if they were here for a reason. Maybe everything we were trying to do was useless and none of us would get out of this town alive.
Maybe Winworth truly was a place from which you couldn’t get out.
Maybe everything I was led to believe was a lie and all my anger was directed toward the wrong person, while I lived with the real snake, the real culprit.
I went toward the window and unlocked the hatch. My skin pulled tight from nerves racking through my system. The morning cold trickled into the room, and the mist surrounding our house danced above ground, touching the plants that were still there. My hands trembled as I approached the dresser next and pulled the drawer open, seeing the manilla file on top of my clothes. I didn’t want it in front of my eyes when I came back home last night, but now I had to be braver than my demons. I had to see.
Sleep evaded me for a long time, tossing and turning in my bed, with my eyes always going toward the dresser where it lay, waiting for me. And when I finally closed my eyes, the nightmare took over my mind.
Every single one of us tried running away from things that haunted our souls, but inevitably, we always ended up at the place where we had to face our demons. I tried forgetting, tried using revenge as a coping mechanism, but it didn’t really work. I’d spent half of my life running away from Winworth only to end up here again.
Pulling the file out, I walked back toward the bed and sat down, staring at Uncle Neal’s name written on top of it. The file was old, the color faded away from time, but it was as thick as mine was. We took the files with our names and the one Skylar found about the Red Manor.
My fingers pressed against the cold paper, and taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and opened it up. Seconds passed before I finally dared to open my eyes, and I wished I never saw it.
He was young in the picture, maybe a few years older than I was now, but it was him. His dark hair and haunted eyes stared at me from the file. The picture was attached to the paper where the rest of his information was written by what looked like a typewriter, but I already knew all the information written there.
What, however, pulled at my attention was the section at the very bottom of the page that knocked the breath out of me.
Black Dahlia Association, it said. My fingers traced the faded ink, trembling from rage, because this here… He never mentioned he was part of the Order.
“Neal Carwith, age twenty-two, from mother Jessica and father Hudson, joined Black Dahlia as a Descendant and rose to the position of the Acolyte.”
My vision blurred, and my fingers curled into a fist. He lied to me. He lied about everything.
He always said that he was never part of the Order, but this here was proof enough that he was connected to them.
I continued reading, my eyes skimming over the portion that explained his accomplishments in the Order, until I reached the last part.
“Neal Carwith - suspended from the Order on July 15th, 2001, after he failed to fulfill his task. Suspension is final until stated otherwise.”
That motherfucking son of a bitch.
