We dragged Knox back to Blackridge in chains.
Thomas Kane carried him—one mechanical hand clamped around Knox's throat, the other sparking and failing. Albert leaned against me, his wound hastily bandaged but still bleeding. Victoria drove in silence, her face pale with the revelation that her entire life had been Knox's manipulation.
"He really is my father?" Victoria finally asked. "Knox is actually my father?"
"Yes," I said. "He told me. Used you to get close to me. You were his plant without knowing it."
"Everything I did. Every piece of intel. Every solution." Victoria's hands tightened on the wheel. "I was helping him destroy you."
"You did not know. You were manipulated like everyone else."
"That does not make it better." She looked at Knox through the rearview mirror. "I shou
