Emerald Blaze (Hidden Legacy 5)

“How do you know?” Nevada asked.

“I’ll get to that. You had a choice. You could stand by Connor and go down with him, dragging our family into the gutter. We would not recover from something like that. You were the Head of our House and nobody knew anything about us. People would ask questions. How much did we know? Did we participate? Did we get off on it? Did we make money from the suffering of human beings? You could stay with the man you love and watch the whole Baylor family go down in flames with you or you could abandon Connor and publicly cut all ties with House Rogan. He told you to do it, didn’t he?”

Nevada nodded. “He did. He had divorce papers drawn up. He is completely innocent, Catalina.”

My poor sister. Every time I thought about her and Connor waiting for this to break, trying so hard and failing, my heart squeezed itself into a painful little ball.

“You decided to stand by him,” I said.

“I love him.”

It was really that simple for her. When Nevada loved someone, she gave all of herself to them.

“You knew that if you told us about it, we would stand by you. You were desperate to separate us from this nightmare, so instead you manipulated us into cutting you out. When I was in that hospital room with you, you told me that we needed the money and that just because Arabella and I owned shares didn’t mean we could tell you what to do. Then when you came back to the office the day after and I busted you, you told me again how you needed to make money for the family. You put the building blocks into my head, and I clicked them together. If I’d just had some time to think about it, I would’ve realized it. I remember looking at the accounts after you left and seeing that we had more than enough money. I could’ve figured it out, but we were all so freaked out and afraid you would die just like Dad.”

Nevada sighed. “I love you so much. If there had been any other way, I would’ve taken it. But there wasn’t.”

“And then you made the break appear as real as possible. You ran to the Keeper of Records, abdicated, and stopped talking to us. You made sure people knew we were estranged. You sacrificed everything you’d built so we could have a future.”

“I did what I had to do. You, Arabella, and the boys, all of you deserve a life. I’m the oldest. It’s my job to protect all of you.”

I felt like crying and pushed it down. Not now. I still had things to say.

“You waited for the video release, but it was never uploaded. And then you got a phone call. Nothing was said. Just a few moments of silence and then a disconnect signal. You traced the phone’s location to a house in the Third Ward, right in the most dangerous part of it. You and Connor raided the house and found Robert Merritt dead, with a confession written in his handwriting and sealed with his fingerprint, which said that the entire thing was a fabrication and a plot to get money. The only other existing copies of the doctored recordings were in a safe next to him. It was over, just like that.”

A vicious light sparked in Nevada’s eyes. “Except that Merritt didn’t have the resources to manufacture something like that. And the confession claimed that he killed himself out of guilt. I spoke to that weasel for two months. He didn’t have an ounce of guilt in him. He reveled in torturing us.”

I leaned forward. “Have you ever wondered who was behind all of that? What the point was?”

“Go on,” Nevada said.

“It was a test. You failed.”

My sister shook her head. “Is that what Victoria told you?”

“She wanted to know where your loyalty lay, so she made you choose between Connor and us. Either you put the needs of House Baylor first and proved to her that you were a suitable Head of the House or you would remove yourself so she could put someone else in your place. You chose Connor, and she got what she wanted. I know all of this because she told me exactly how she did it, step by step, every little detail, so if I ever needed to engineer something like this, I would have a detailed plan on how to do it.”

Nevada laughed softly. “She’s filling your head with nonsense. I suspected her and eliminated her from my list.”

I took a deep breath. “The combination to the safe, which you found in Merritt’s left pant pocket. 060149. June 1st, 1949. It’s her birthday.”

Nevada went white.

Silence stretched between us.

“It can’t be,” she murmured.

“She worked on it for almost two years, building this enormous complex web of bribes, blackmail, and violence. She bought Merritt for five million dollars. She had the trafficker kidnapped, broke him, and then used the information to make the deposits. She has a clan of Vietnamese illusion mages in her pocket. It’s a large family, powerful, but poor, because they have issues with the Vietnamese government. They will do whatever she asks. If you ever worried that the children in the videos were hurt, they weren’t. They weren’t even children. Like the part where they break the girl’s arms and hang her off a hook—she’s an adult woman, an illusion mage. The guy who assumes Connor’s image and rapes her is actually her husband. I’ve seen the before and after footage. They laughed about it.”

Nevada struggled to say something. “Connor . . .”

“I know that Connor would have given Merritt the money. Merritt wouldn’t have taken it. He hated Connor, because he thought Connor was the reason they were on that mission in the first place.”

“The reason they went on that mission was because they were in the military, they had orders, and it was their job to go,” Nevada growled.

“Merritt hurt his back in the jungle. The military denied him disability. The family was on food stamps. Victoria found him at his lowest, used him, and then had him killed once he’d served his purpose.”

Nevada stared at me.

I stood up. The words poured out of me, messy and stupid, but honest. “I love you so much, and Connor, and the baby. I love Arabella, and Leon, and Bern, and Mom, and Grandma Frida. You can’t fight Victoria. You don’t think like her. You don’t know her secrets. But I do.”

My sister blinked. “Catalina . . .”

I couldn’t stop. I had to make her see. “She’s grooming me to be her successor. I go there every two weeks and I learn everything I can, no matter what it costs me. I’m building my own web around our grandmother. It requires time and careful planning. When the right moment comes, I will collapse her world. But that moment is years away. If you go there tomorrow, you’ll wreck everything I’ve built, because she’ll attack you and your baby, and I will defend you with my life. We won’t win, Nevada. She has contingency plans in place in case of such an attack. Even if we kill her, we will lose. You trusted me with the responsibility of keeping our family safe, and I won’t let you down. Please trust me again. I know how much you gave up for our sake. I promise you I won’t let you get hurt. I won’t let any of you get hurt.”

Nevada stood up, her eyes wide. I hugged her, squeezing her to me, and fled the room.

I climbed the stairs past the third floor, all the way to the top, where a brick utility building offered access to the paved roof. I walked out into the night, skirted the utility structure, and came to the narrow space that served as my hiding spot.

I’d claimed it soon after we moved into the building. I brought up plants and set them along the edge of the roof—Texas lantanas with their clusters of red and yellow blossoms, wild mint with humble purple flowers, white and pink zonal geraniums, and lush golden pothos. Bern and Leon installed an overhang for me and built a stone rail along the roof, Nevada bought me an outdoor couch, and Runa helped me string outdoor lights from the overhang to the rail. Arabella found a small fire pit filled with blue glass pebbles and Grandma Frida hooked it up to the gas line. Mom made me a blanket and bought pillows.

Alessandro once told me that I was loved by many people. He was right. But right now, I felt completely and utterly alone.

I leaned on the stone rail. Below, across the street, warm electric light spilled onto the pavement from industrial-sized bay doorways. After the warehouse collapsed, Connor gifted Grandma Frida one of the buildings he’d bought when he was trying to keep us secure. It used to be a massive industrial garage where semitrucks were repaired and Grandma Frida had pounced on it, so she could keep her business running. She didn’t know how to not work. Tanks, mobile guns, and cars spoke to her in the same way computers and code whispered to Bern and she loved talking to them.

The blinds on the large window at the top of Grandma’s building were open and through it I could see the inside of the motor pool. A bright red monster of a tank sat in the center. Grandma Frida stood on its side in her blue coveralls, digging in it with some weird tool. It was barely nine, and when Grandma Frida focused on a problem, she sometimes worked till midnight.

A heavy door shut somewhere. Nevada crossed the street and walked into the motor pool. Shadow followed her, wagging her tail. Grandma Frida turned away from the tank, waved at Nevada, and went back to messing with the tank’s insides. Nevada pulled one of the metal chairs open and settled into it.

I had upset my sister and she went to talk to Grandma.

I backed away from the edge and sat on my padded couch. Around me the night mugged the city, the air no longer scorching, but still warm. My insides churned. I’d never planned on talking to Nevada about any of it. My sister dragged around a truckload of guilt for forcing me to become the Head of the House and making me think it was all my idea. Now she knew that I knew. I had no idea what she was feeling. It was all terrible and fucked up, and it felt like my soul had been shredded. Anger, sadness, guilt, and sharp wailing anxiety boiled inside me into an awful, toxic mix. I wanted to punch something and cry, but I also wanted to curl into a ball in some dark hole and not come out.