Page 126 of Outcast’s Return

But someone grabs me before I hit the ground.

Clement.

My brother is holding me in his arms. But he’s too tight and too desperate. His fingers dig into me. He’s holding me back. Holding me back from Fabien. Holding me back from my love.

I want to go to him. Every part of me lunges forward. But my brother is too strong. I’m screaming his name.

Fabien!

“Jolie. Jolie. You have to listen to me.”

My brother is barking into my ear, his arms shaking, but I’m not hearing him.

My man in pain. My man. My love.

“Let me go! Let me see him!”

“There’s something I have to tell you, Jolie,” Clement says, his breath hot against my temple. “Something important. Something you need to hear.”

I freeze. I feel wetness on him. Blood. More than what was on him after the gallery fight.

Fabien’s blood?

My brother’s next words come out in a whisper that doesn’t sound like him at all.

“It’s about Father, and what he’s just done...”

51

JOLIE

I’m sitting in a white room, waiting. I don’t know how long I’ve been here for.

The hours have stretched into each other.

The minutes have felt endless while days have somehow disappeared.

I stare blankly at the white wall opposite me as my ass goes numb from the cheap plastic chair I’ve been sitting on. My leg jitters as I reflect on the news.

My father... Cromwell Auclair... is... was the man we all feared. On the steps outside the Castaways' mansion, as he held me back from running to my motionless man, Clement revealed all, and I didn’t believe it.

I don’t want to believe it.

It’s been days, and the news still needs to settle in my stomach.

It was him all along.

Father murdered people out of some misplaced idea that it was for us. For the Castaways.

He killed Elwood. He killed Fabien’s parents. He lied to all of us, and he did it so that he would become Supreme Elder. That’s why he did it. Not for any of his bullshit excuses. Not out of love for anyone but for himself.

It seems like all I have done in the last few days has been to listen to men explain who my father truly was.

And I hate him now.

I would say it to his face, but he’s dead – stabbed with the same knife he used to stab Fabien. Brought down by the man he helped raise. Brought down by his own arrogance and greed.

I grieve for the man I thought he was, and yet I hate the man he turned out to be. He tried to kill Baptiste. He tried to kill Fabien.