Semua Bab Fool Me Once: Bab 71 - Bab 80

Cassie’s POVI woke up in a hospital bed with a heart monitor beeping next to me and a metallic aftertaste in my mouth. Everything was muffled, white-washed, and excessively clean. My shoulder hurt from the bullet wound, and my head pounded as if I were hit by a train—but what roused me wasn't pain.It was the shortage.Jeffery wasn't there.I struggled to sit up, swallowing a groan. My arm was slung in a sling. A fresh IV pumped clear fluid into my vein. 3:47 AM flashed on the wall clock. A nurse station hummed just beyond the door, but nobody entered.He promised he wouldn't leave.My gut twisted."Where is he?" I rasped out audibly, the voice sounding like sandpaper.The door squeaked open. Andrew peered in, his eyeliner smudged and his face grim."Oh good," he said, entering with feigned good humor. "Sleeping Beauty's finally awake.""Where's Jeffery?" I croaked again.Andrew didn't say anything right away. He placed a takeaway coffee on the side table and looked anywhere but at m

Jeffery’s POVCassie and I crowded into the back of a taxi, soaked, out of breath, and clutching the sole item of evidence that could be used to topple Edward Richards' empire. The flash drive burned my palm as if it contained a live fuse—a circumstance that was most likely true. The more we had it, the more we became targets.The cab driver continued to glance in the rearview mirror. We didn't seem normal. Cassie's wet ringlets clung to her cheeks, her blouse torn at the shoulder where blood had dried and flaked. I had my hand gingerly on her thigh, but not for comfort only—my gun holster was strapped under her seat. We couldn't afford anything unexpected."Where to?" the driver inquired."Seventy-third and Lexington," I replied quickly. "The long way. No bridges."He nodded and got into traffic. As soon as we did, Cassie let her head drop back onto the seat. Her chest moved up and down, but her eyes never lost that open, too-aware look—too awake to sleep, too upset to relax."Cass,"

Cassie’s POVI'd never seen Vermont so desolate—mist-clad hills rising like phantoms, trees stripped bare by winter winds, and the railroad tracks cutting across them like arteries on a corpse. Beautiful, in a ghostly, icy way. Fitting, as we were arriving in the cemetery of all that I'd ever loved.We avoided Cavendish by noon. Jeffery forced us to hike the last five miles, avoiding roads and cameras. The silence between us wasn't a sign of tension or anger—it was armor. The more that I knew, the more I had to keep myself together.We traversed a frozen path, crunching through the snow as we went. Jeffery was slightly in front, shoulders tense beneath his black coat. He kept looking back to see how I was faring. I had no clue whether he thought I was going to run or fall apart. Neither of those was going to happen—not yet."How much farther?" I finally asked."Half a mile. The estate's over the ridgeline," he replied, his voice low.I nodded, wiping a bead of sweat away from my foreh

Jeffery’s POVI was losing my grip on Cassie.Not in the body—her whole form remained braced against me, her breathing shallow and choked—but in her mind, in her heart, she was disappearing into somewhere I could not go. Somewhere, her mother had locked her, somewhere in code, threat, and secrets that seeped into her like ink under the skin."She's synching," I snarled, observing the veins along her temple throb unpredictably.Her eyes had glazed a few moments earlier, but now they fluttered—like static between two stations.And then she spoke.But it was not her voice."Authorization granted. Neural alignment at 62%.""Cassie!" I shook her shoulders.Nothing.The overhead lights pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat as if the entire complex was synchronized with her bodily functions.This was not tech. This was possession.There were footsteps from the other end of the hallway.I spun around, holding my gun.A man stepped out of the shadows.Emmaline Shaw.Cold. Calm. Attired in tactic

Cassie’s POVI never imagined coming back to Richmond like this—on the eve of war, with this cargo of secrets trailing behind me like chains that are corroded with rust. The city itself hadn't changed that much. The skyline still slovenly scraped the grey sky, and the ancient sycamore trees along Franklin Street still whispered the same tired lullabies they'd been whispering when I was growing up.But I was not the same.I arrived prepared then, armed with knowledge, wounds, and a man who possessed my past, present, and future in the calloused fingers of his hands.Jeffery drove in silence. There was tension between him and me that was so thick, it was a thing you could almost taste—smoke and metal, sorrow and loss. Every curve of the wheels carried us deeper into where it all began. My childhood home was a memory now—long since gone after Mom disappeared. But something lingered: the church.St. Vincent's Cathedral. The last location where she was spotted before her disappearance.And