The path to the truth led through the ruins of my father’s mind.
The drive away from Alistair’s manor was shrouded in a silence more profound and unsettling than the fury of our arrival. The new audio fragment hadn’t provided answers; it had detonated the very foundation of the story I thought I knew.
“He was telling the truth,” Lysander finally said, his voice hollow as he navigated the winding roads. “In his own twisted, pathetic way, he was trying to protect her. He didn’t order her death.”
I watched the blur of trees, my mind reeling. “Then Thorne acted on his own? But the audio… Thorne was told not to.”
“Which means someone else was pulling his strings. Or…” Lysander’s knuckles whitened on the wheel. “There was a third player. Someone we haven’t even seen yet.”
The thought was a
