Game of Dust and Ashes (Book Two in the Covert Operations series)

Fifteen

The Roosevelt Hotel, Manhattan, New York. January 30, 2021, 7:37 a.m.

The hotel room was silent when I walked up to the door – no sound of activity happening in the room beyond.

         For a long moment, I stood and stared at the door.  Similar.  So similar to where I'd been only hours before – standing in front of another door in a different hotel in a different part of the city.  I'd been nervous then, yet had felt a slight undercurrent of excitement.

         Now I felt dread. 

         Dread and anger. 

         Cedric was trying to kill me.  The man I loved who I'd never even said those words to.  I'd told him it was because 'I love you' were the some of the last words Daniel had said to me before he'd been ripped from my life.

         But maybe it was because of this.  Perhaps on some intrinsic level, I'd known that Cedric was too good to be true.  That there was no way that this man, who had given me purpose and brought me into my new life after my old one was destroyed, could be with me and mean it.

         Had I missed the signs? 

         No.  Of that I was certain. There had been no signs showing his true colours.  I had been vigilant, watching for any inclination that Scorpion was on my tail.  Cedric was trained, just as I was, to leave behind no clues.  To hide his intentions from the world.  I hadn't missed the signs because he had never dropped them.

         I was still a fool regardless.  Had allowed someone to break down the careful walls I'd constructed and settle there in a place within me that was safe and unguarded.  He'd taken root, growing and growing until his presence wasn't unwelcome or fearful but rather comforting, steady.  A companion that I'd craved to be around.

         And all of it had been a lie.

         Daniel had told me what he could.  He didn't know much about Cedric's family, just that they were old blood – their ties to Scorpion generations old.  Cedric was a legacy like Isadora Savalas.  Poised and ready to take over in his parents place should something befall them.

         So I'd called Carmichael as I'd left Daniel and wandered the streets of Manhattan in the dark, verifying all that I could.  Confirming who Cedric was.  More importantly – drawing Carmichael into the plan to erase Scorpion from this deadly game.  It was a game I hated playing.  A game where there were too many secrets to unfold – a game where people rose from the dust and ashes, breathing back to life, complicating all that I knew.

         Like Daniel had.  

         He'd risen from the dead as if his sole intention was to bring me this news.  To let me know that the people I trusted were trustworthy no longer and that the only person I could truly rely on was myself.

         Even if he was spearheading this plan to end Scorpion.  Even if I had brought Carmichael into it, who promised that he'd be there.  Even if I was planning on telling Lia, Max and Tasha about it because even though I wasn't sure that I could trust them all, they were all that I really had left.

         Daniel was assembling his team.  It was time that I assembled mine.

         I opened the door and stepped into the room.

         Cedric was sitting on the couch as I walked in, hunched over his computer on the coffee table.  There was a headset in his ears and he was speaking fast into it.  He looked up and saw me enter, falling silent on the next beat.  Relief coloured his eyes – fake?  I couldn't tell.  It looked real.  But maybe he was just worried about what Scorpion would do if he admitted that he'd lost me.