Page 26 of Oblivion
“What do you mean?” I frowned.
“The traffic cameras caught you and my system recognized your face immediately. I thought you were finally running away from them, that he was right. I didn’t know—”
“Are you telling me that you wouldn’t have been able to find my exact location if it wasn’t for that traffic camera?”
“Well…” he murmured. “Yes and no.”
“Vince.” I grinned and stabbed the knife into the armrest, right next to his arm. “You better start talking or this knife will end up going into your throat next.”
“There is a mole inside Sons of Hades,” he exclaimed. “A girl. But she went rogue. She didn’t want to tell him your location.”
“A girl?” I narrowed my eyes on him. “What girl?”
“I only saw her once to give her a fake ID. She managed to get in as a bartender.”
“A bartender?” My eye started twitching because I could see where this was going. “What was her name, Vincent?”
He looked up at me, fear evident in every pore of his face. “Natalia. Natalia Asterova.”
I knew that name. I knew that there were other kids in my family, but I’d never met them. Never even saw them in a picture. Our families weren’t exactly close over the years.
“Which name did you give her, Vince?” I kneeled down in front of him.
“Nova. Her new name is Nova.”
Fuck my life.
“Was she the one my father was working with?”
“No.” He shook his head. “She was just the mole. But there is another person.” I stood up and walked behind him. “I swear to you.” He shook in his seat. “I’m not lying.”
“Who is this person?”
My voice was calm, but the rage burning inside of me was waiting to explode.
“Her name, Vincent!”
“I don’t know, okay?” he cried. “They called her Belladonna, but that isn’t her real name.”
“What does she want?”
“She wants to kill you. I only overheard their conversation once, but it was clear your father didn’t want the same thing. He was bargaining with her, but she had something on him.”
“What?” I asked, pressing the blade to his throat.
“I don’t know. Please, you promised.”
“I never did such a thing. Besides, how do I know you’re not lying?”
“Check my computers. Everything is there. Everything I ever did for them, it’s there. I have her picture, but that’s it. That’s the only thing I have.”
I pressed my lips to his pulse point and whispered, “Thank you, Vincent.”
He never managed to say another word. I pressed the blade to his throat, the sound of the skin breaking apart filling in between us. He gasped, choked, as the hilt went all the way through, cutting through his larynx, through his vocal cords.
He looked up at me, question after question in his eyes. Regret after regret, yet I had none as he took his last breath, gurgling on his own blood.
“Say hi to my father.”
