Chapter 171

Charles and I finished our dinner in silence. There wasn’t much else to say that we wanted to share in the open space of the living room. Everything else would need to be dealt with more privately.

Besides, from the tightness of his jaw and stiff set of his shoulders, everything else he had to say wasn’t in favor of what I wanted to do next.

After dinner, Charles made a show of turning on the TV and sitting down in the living room. I doubted he was really watching, though. He selected some boring program about yachting, and I’d never seen him anywhere near a boat.

I snuck off into my room and onto the dark web. I opened up where I left off and prepared to see if I could draw a connection between the king and Anthony Bellwether.

I was also very quickly losing confidence that Anthony had any sort of redemption for his actions. If there was a puppet master pulling the strings, then I wanted to know who that was because I was taking them down, too, even if it meant exposing the king.

This set my heart thundering in my chest. Those who went up against the king tended to disappear or have untimely deaths. It was amazing how many people who spoke out against him ate bad fish, or wrecked their car, or committed suicide shortly thereafter.

But, honestly, it was getting to the point where I didn’t feel like I was really living anymore anyway. I hadn’t really internalized those thoughts before throwing them at Charles, but the more I thought about it, the more I found them to be true.

Even when I was supposedly being held as a hero, I was being attacked. In the last six months, I had almost been murdered. I’d been constantly running for my life. I had people watching me 24/7.

I admittedly did get along with my bodyguards. But it wasn’t the way that I wanted to spend the rest of my life. So, I was going to end this mess once and for all. Either I was going to do the right thing, and I was going to expose the bad people and maybe lose my life for it, but at least I’d know that I’d made a difference. Or I was going to get to the bottom of this, and the king wasn’t involved, and I was going to stop whoever it was without further incident.

To my surprise, I had a message in one of my inboxes on the threads, a private chat. I opened this app and got a heartbreaking summary from a subscriber who’d been following me for quite a while. Their handle, TheoryOfTruth, had popped up in my threads ever since I found my way onto the dark web.

My head drooped, and my eyes wanted to shut. My goodness, how long had I been at this?

The pieces were all finally starting to fit, but the weight of all my findings and everything riding on me was getting exhausting. My heart and head hurt under the pressure. That’s why I was ready to make a sacrifice, like tangling with the king if need be.

And this message from TheoryOfTruth was exactly what I was talking about. The writer detailed a heartbreaking story about their sister.

She had been seduced by Anthony Bellweather, used for his purposes, and then left with his bastard child, whom he refused to claim. Now, she was raising this child all on her own in a city that was prohibitive to anyone living outside the standard family.

TheoryOfTruth swore they were trying to help their sister hang on. And nothing would help her more than having Anthony Bellweather brought to task for his behaviors. Then they requested a meeting tomorrow.

My blood pounded in my ears as I typed back. “Of course, I’ll meet you tomorrow.”

My message got an instant response. We arranged a meeting at a park about halfway across the city for lunchtime. My head buzzed so much that I couldn’t focus on finding more dirt on the king—if there even was any to be found.

The vibe I got for the places I’d searched on the dark web so far was that the king wasn’t any better than the people that I’d already exposed. But even on the dark web, it seemed like everyone was carefully covering their tracks so as not to directly to speak ill of him. If I wanted to find evidence against the king, I was going to have to dig a lot deeper than I’d ever gone into the dark web.

The next day, shortly before lunchtime, I made my way to Theo’s door and knocked. I needed him to escort me. David answered the door.

“What’s up?”

“I have a meeting with somebody that I’m interviewing for a story,” I said. “I need Theo to go with me.”

David made a face. “Theo’s sick today. He hasn’t left the bathroom in hours. You’re going to have to go with me.” He looked over at Charles. “Are you leaving the house today?”

Charles shook his head. “No. You already know that that work has been nothing but lip service lately. Now that the interviews with the alphas are over, they don’t need me there for anything. They pay me a salary just to keep me under control.” He bit his lip and looked away as if he’d said too much in front of David.

David gave a sharp nod. “That all settled then. I’ll go with you, and he can stay here with Theo. If there’s any trouble, Theo can throw up on whoever decides to break into the apartment.” He gave a chuckle and disappeared, a moment later returning with this jacket. “Are you ready to go?”

I nodded and grabbed my jacket on the way out the door.

David didn’t say anything as we navigated our way across the town to the park, one of Packhaven’s many. By this time, I was beginning to learn which ones were where.

Sun shined across nearly naked trees, illuminating a beautiful, late fall day. It wouldn’t take long before the full chill of winter would settle in, but for the time being, it was beautiful, just being outside. We’d picked a perfect day to meet the park.

David and I parked the car and walked in, and I began looking around for the individual. TheoryOfTruth promised I’d see someone sitting on the bench in a gray jacket, reading a gold book, and holding a coffee.

While none of those things would stand out enough to draw any unnatural or unwanted attention, putting the three together meant that it was unlikely that I would confuse this individual with anyone else.

I still didn’t know whether I was looking for a male or a female, though. I strolled through the park with David at my back, trying to figure out how I was going to ditch him, when I ran across TheoryOfTruth.

But David, much like Theo, was quite reasonable. So I figured, ultimately, I would just have to ask him to step away so that we could do a private interview, especially since most of the people that I would be contacting like this would be skittish bodyguards for any number of reasons.

But I knew that there was no way I was going to get him to leave me by myself, not after having been drugged yesterday.

Through the thinning leaves on the bushes, I caught sight of a person sitting on a bench in a gray jacket, hunched over, looking at something on their lap. It might have been their phone, or it might have been a book. I’d need to go around the bushes to the other side to find out.

When I cleared the clump of shrubbery, my jaw dropped open. There was a person sitting on the bench reading a gold book, holding a coffee, and wearing a gray jacket. But never in a million years would I ever have expected the individual that I saw.

Theo looked up and gave me a shy smile, waving me over.