Dark Promise by Annika West

47

The answer was in less than a day. As things usually work with Overlord billionaires.

Hux prepared his private jet for takeoff. It would be smaller, more comfortable, and more secretive than using an airline.

To everyone’s surprise, Adair insisted on coming with us. Even though he could get there on his own with a portal, he wanted to add more weight to the flight and take up fuel energy.

But really, I knew he just wanted to talk to Mom.

I sat beside Hux in the plane. He kept reassuring me that everyone was going to be okay, but I didn’t need that.

He was scribbling notes on a piece of paper. “Your false sense of confidence would usually concern me, Aster, but in this instance, I’m quite glad for it.”

“Rude. I told you I’m fine.”

“It’s better to admit when you’re fearful.”

“I’m a flexible person,” I reminded him. “I adapt. When something scary comes my way, and I can’t control it, there isn’t any use in being nervous. Nerves are intrinsically absurd when there is so much screwed up shit around you.”

He made a thoughtful hum that went straight to my soul room and rattled my energy around.

Good gods, I was pathetic. This man did stupid things to my body and brain.

He tucked his arm into mine, further melting me. “You know that we are together, correct?”

“Really? Must have slipped my mind.”

“Don’t be smart. All I mean is that you can relax. Around me, you never need to pretend. Also, you’ve been a little… distant since the meeting.”

I cringed.

He had a point. I was purposefully putting him in the ‘buddy’ category and doing the metaphorical bro-arm-punch thing instead of treating him like my mate.

I’m fucking awkward, okay?

“We aren’t ever like… together together in front of people. Unless we’re fighting. Now, my parents are here. All three of them! And Marigold, and your murderous brother. By the way, aren’t you still mad at him?”

Hux glared at the coffee table in front of us. Because obviously, jets had damn coffee tables.

Clearly, the next step would be to make a bad butler joke. He invested in a jet and didn’t include a butler?

What a waste.

“I am,” Hux answered. “Though, I distrust him less. I know my brother well enough to see the truth in him. He did not kill our parents.”

“He said he ‘caused’ their deaths,” I recalled. “And that can be interpreted in a lot of different ways.

“And he was in pain because of it,” Hux added. “That is enough to sate my anger. My curiosity. For now.”

“It shouldn’t.”

Oz stood beside us. I guessed with the crazy plane noises and our focus on the conversation, neither of us heard him coming.

Or Hux did, and being a sneaky bastard, pretended he didn’t.

Oz sat on the coffee table. “I want to explain.”

“Then do so.”

The normally upbeat and lighthearted dragon shifter was tired. Self-loathing did that to a person.

“If you ask me to relive the details, I’ll tell you to screw yourself.”

“I’m choking on your generosity,” Hux mocked.

Oz’s brows hiked up. “A joke? Sarcastic and dry as it was, I daresay that was a joke!”

I cleared my throat. “You can thank me for that character upgrade. But focus, Oz.”

“Right.” He deflated, his sparkling blue eyes cast downward. “I told you I caused Mom and Dad’s deaths, and I was telling the truth. They are dead because of me.”

“You did not personally take their lives,” Hux stated.

Oz shook his head.

“Well?”

“Mom was in her artifact destruction business, right? Right. Same as you, now. Well, she was always so secretive. So careful and cautious, and she missed so much because of it.”

Hux frowned. “She was never the cautious type.”

“Maybe to you! Sure, she was careful and smart, but sometimes, she’d work for years tracking down one item. But if anything felt even the slightest bit off, she’d step back and let it go. It drove me absolutely crazy because she’d go off and sulk for a few months and call it quits.”

“I don’t remember it like that.”

“Because you’re worse than she is! Of course you’d think she was reckless and wild. But I saw how she sacrificed years of her life to ‘missions’ that defeated her. It’s no use arguing over perspective, though. Just listen.”

He took a deep breath and rubbed his face, sending blooms of color over his cheeks and nose. “I made a contact during my time in Italy. Some leader of a global company that worked with museums and private auctions. He said he’d heard of Mom’s interests and wanted the chance to meet with her. At first, I was skeptical. So, I asked her.

He sighed, his face pinched with the memories. “She refused. I was pissed. She said something about leaving her to her process. But this man, he had connections. It’s not like Mom was opposed to paying for the artifacts she was searching for. So, I set up a meeting without telling her. I imagined he’d show up, introduce himself to Mom and Dad, and a fruitful relationship would happen. I wanted to help her. To give her some relief. Something to celebrate.”

Oz’s eyes glittered with something else, now. Tears.

“The next morning, they were found dead and harvested.”

Silence fell over our little group.

I felt sick.

Hux asked, “So, your contact wanted to harvest dragon materials. That was the truth of it, wasn’t it?”

Oz nodded, his throat working through what I was sure was a lump of grief.

He replied, “Long story short, I found the man and killed him. Discovered, much too late, that he was in charge of a black market harvesting organization. That he’d already invaded Mom’s safe. I used his body to stage my death. It only took me a week to obliterate his organization, but by that time, the artifacts and dragon materials,” he gritted his teeth through the last word. “They’d already been disseminated to his connections. The man worked fast.”

Hux met my gaze for a second.

My mouth fell open. “Gavin Hawk.”