Enemy of my Enemy

𝕱𝖔𝖗𝖙𝖞 𝕺𝖓𝖊

Present Day

In less than a month, Crescent Cliffs had been razed to the ground.

Bianca didn't react when she received word of the destruction and the deaths, of the thousands upon thousands of humans who had lost their homes overnight.

She didn't know how to.

Frightened of what she would find, or rather, not find, Bianca walked into her office, kneeled down by her safe, and clicked the gears into place with a shaking hand.

It was gone. The file was gone.

There was no trace that the safe had been broken into, and still, her brain refused to connect the dots. The fact that Grayson was the only one who knew the combination to her safe was of no significance. He would never have betrayed her like this. It must've been someone else, something else, anything else...

"Bianca." Grayson appeared behind her, his voice hoarse and barely audible.

"No," she said firmly. "Someone found a way to get into my safe. Someone managed to put it in the wrong hands. We need to find them, Grayson, we-"

"Bianca," he whispered again. "You know who it was."

She shook her head furiously. This couldn't be happening. He was supposed to be the only one she could trust, the one who had meant it when he'd sworn he would never betray her trust.

"I didn't know. I didn't know Vargas would do this." He took her hands in his. "I don't know why they targeted..."

She couldn't bring herself to pull free of him. Acknowledging the reality of the situation would mean having to turn her back on him forever, and she didn't think she could withstand that kind of pain.

"They're people who reached their place in society by killing those who stood in their way," she gritted through her teeth. "What did you think would happen?"

"They promised us a way into their inner circle. More power than what we'd know what to do with."

This was wrong. He didn't sound sorry at all. If anything, it was like he was trying to soothe her, trying to make her see that she was wrong.

"Wasn't that always the dream?" he breathed. "To be so out of their reach that no one would be able to hurt us?"

Bianca brought her trembling gaze to his eyes. Those dark pupils that had watched her with desperate longing since day one- She marveled at her own blindness, wondering how she hadn't realized until now that it was the exact same way he looked at power.

He'd always been so ambitious. She'd helped him achieve everything he wanted to and more. In doing so, she'd convinced him and herself that she, too, wanted all the power he hungered after.

The truth was, though... The only thing she'd ever wanted was to be able to trust.

"You're right," she said. "I wanted to be so out of their reach that I couldn't get hurt. But who knew the person I needed to protect myself from was the one who was beside me all along?"

"Bianca, don't be like that," Grayson sighed. "It was a small price to pay for the future that's now set for us-"

"A small price?" she laughed. "An entire city has been reduced to rubble. Does that mean nothing to you?"

He didn't answer her.

"When will it stop, Grayson? If blowing up hundreds upon thousands of innocent men, women, and children is a small price to pay-" She gasped, brushing away the tears that were dropping out of her eyes, "Would you give me up like that, too? If someone offered you the world, would you shove me straight into destruction along with the rest of them?"

"What?" he exploded, absolutely livid. "How could you say something like that? You're my life, Bianca, I did this for us!"

"The Six could've just as easily used the Quinn Project to kill me! And deep down, you knew that."

"You're being ridiculous-"

"You knew you were gambling with my life," she screamed, "And you played their game, anyway!"

"That's not true!" he roared back.

Both pairs of eyes glowed a fiery shade of scarlet. They stared at one another, daring the other to back down first.

"Prove it, then," Bianca whispered. "Call Alaina Vargas, and tell her you don't want the seat in their circle anymore."

"That doesn't make any fucking sense."

"Do it. If you love me, if I really am your whole world, then it should be easy. Give up your chase for eternal power, and tell me you're content with the life we're living now."

The silence stretched on for what seemed like hours, months, years.

He didn't give her an answer.

The television that was playing in the background reached the news segment. Footages of what Crescent Cliffs had been reduced to flooded the screen: Dead bodies and crumbled buildings. Those who had miraculously survived had created a gridlock on the streets leading out of town. So many people who'd lost everything they'd ever known, being motivated to move forward by humanity's most primitive instinct: The need to survive.

She wanted to scream at him, to pound her fists on his chest until his ribs snapped to dust.

But Bianca needed him to choose her. She needed him to show her that she could still rely on him, so that he could comfort her and they could help the survivors and everything could go back to normal. Bianca was willing to forgive him for what consequences his actions had wrought, if only he would choose her over power.

"I'm sorry," Grayson whispered. But he didn't say anything more than that.

Bianca left Redwood House the next day. She sent word out to all the Blackburn wolves that she wanted them in Crescent Cliffs. Naturally, they were reluctant to come, and some even tried to side with Grayson in what seemed like the couples fight of the century. But Bianca put an end to all the dissent by killing four of her own traitorous wolves. Maybe a display of such brute force would've called for problems in other organizations, but this pack had been led by Lorenzo Blackburn for decades. Her wolves answered well to brutality.

She had given him everything. She'd poured her heart and soul into his, she'd let herself trust even though she'd had every reason not to. She'd believed him when he'd told her he loved her, over and over again.

Bianca had been a fool. And Grayson had torn her heart out for it.

Unfortunately for him, she wasn't the type to take offenses lightly.