Page 102 of The Arbiter
"I cared about you. But I didn't know the rabbit hole went this deep. I thought I was searching for a stalker, a serial killer... I didn't think I was investigating my own damn DNA."
I look out the window. The car is still there, idling like a predator in wait. Sterling is leaning against his car, lighting a cigarette, watching us like we’re lab rats in a maze he built.
I watch Madeline’s eyes as she processes the sheer magnitude of the situation. I see the gears turning, her forensic mind frantically trying to reconcile the cold, calculating man she’s been seeing with the biological truth of my existence.
"He doesn't know," Madeline whispers, more to herself than to me. Her voice is hollow, trembling with a new kind of realization.
"Lu... he has no idea."
I frown, my protective instincts flaring up.
"What are you talking about?”
"Charles Vane is a master of compartmentalization," Madeline says, her gaze flickering to the car outside.
"Deimos talked about his father like a ghost he's trying to exorcise. He’s spent his life trying to hunt him down, but he thinks he's the only one. He’s been using you as leverage against me, Lucy. He threatens you, he tracks you... but he thinks you’rejust my 'vulnerable best friend.' If he knew you were his sister, his own blood, he wouldn't be using you as a pawn. He’d be terrified of you. Or he’d be trying to own you in a completely different way."
I look at her, the weight of the secret pressing down on us like a physical force. Madeline looks like she’s carrying a mountain on her shoulders. I can see there’s more she’s not telling me, something about the man that Charles Vane actually is, but she’s shielding me. Again.
"If he doesn't know," I say, my voice low and dangerous.
"Then we have the only weapon he hasn't accounted for. Information."
"No, Lucy," Madeline says, reaching across the table to grab my wrists. Her grip is frantic.
"You don't understand. To him, secrets are an insult. If he finds out we’ve been keeping this from him, if he finds out Charles hid an entire life from him, he won't just be angry. He’ll burn everything down to find the 'truth' at the center of the ashes."
I look out the window. Detective Sterling is still leaning against his car, exhaling a plume of smoke, seemingly oblivious, or perhaps just waiting for the explosion.
"We can't tell him," Madeline urges, her eyes pleading.
"Not yet. We have to play the roles he’s assigned us. You’re an innocent friend. I’m the broken doctor. If we break character now, before we have a plan, we’re both dead."
I swallow hard, the taste of my own family’s lies bitter in my mouth. I’m not good at playing the victim. I’m the one who fights back. But looking at the terror in Madeline’s eyes, I realize that my stubbornness might be the very thing that gets us killed.
"Fine," I hiss, just as the bell above the door chimes.
"We play his game. But the second I see an opening, Madeline, I’m taking his head off. Brother or not."
Through the window, I watch Detective Sterling. He’s mid-exhale when his phone vibrates. He snaps it open, listens for exactly three seconds, and his entire posture shifts from predatory to urgent.
He doesn't look back at the café. He doesn't even glance at us. He just throws his cigarette to the pavement, kills the engine's idle, and peels away from the curb, his tires screeching against the asphalt.
He’s gone. Our only shield, however thin and crooked it was, just vanished.
"He's leaving," I whisper, my voice hollow.
"Sterling just left us."
Madeline’s head snaps toward the window. Her eyes go wide, the pupils dilating until they nearly swallow the iris. She starts to shake, a fine, rhythmic tremor that rattles the silverware on the table.
"Everything is falling apart," she gasps, her voice rising into a pitch of pure paranoia.
She starts frantically checking the corners of the ceiling, looking for lenses, for microphones, for any sign of him.
"Lucy, this doesn't happen. Sterling wouldn't just leave a lead like this unless someone higher up pulled the leash," she continues.
"I still can't wrap my head around it. You. Him. The same blood. How is it possible that my best friend, the only person who keeps me sane, is part of that... that lineage of monsters? It’s like a sick joke the universe is playing. If he’s your brother, Lucy, then the darkness I see in him... is it in you too?"
