〚FEATURED + WATTYS SHORTLIST 2021〛
Someone tried to kill him. Someone nearly succeeded.
A traitor walks among them.
The question is, who?
⭒⭒⭒⭒⭒
"A sky full of stars and he was looking at her."
He was a man with a deep and profound love for the stars...
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KYRELL BLACKWOOD ONLY STARES AT THEM.
A few seconds pass. A minute.
And then he laughs.
Really laughs.
Scarily enough, there's no humor in it, but it's so cold that it sends a chill across the room.
It's a bone-chilling, bitter laugh- and for a second, Axel is almost worried that the lunch hadn't been going as well as he thought it was.
"You think," as abruptly as he had begun to laugh, he stops, leaning forward with an icy, hard look, "that I'd have Feds working with me, even after I got fucked over by one?"
What?
"So, you aren't working with a Fed, then?"
"Why would I ever work with a fuckin' Fed?" Kyrell sneers, as anger begins to overtake his features, "Huh?"
Axel raises his hands in mock surrender, even though there's a twinge of panic that's starting to flare in him.
Kyrell wasn't getting defensive. He was only getting angry- for reasons Axel already knew. There was a perfectly valid reason for him to not ever trust a Fed enough to work with them, so he was most likely telling the truth.
But if Kyrell Blackwood wasn't working with Feds, why was there a signal in their systems that led straight to him?
A sense of dread slowly begins to rise up his chest.
He forces his body language to remain calm.
"I'm only asking a question, Mr. Blackwood," he says as nonchalantly as he can, "The criminal world knows you've been in association with a Fed in the past-"
The glass in Kyrell's hand shatters.
Shards of crystal drop to the marble floor with small clinks, while Axel and Stella look at him bewildered, nearly breaking character for a moment.
Silence fills the room, until-
"She liked daisies," his voice is quiet, but still angered, "and you know what I did? I picked a whole fuckin' bunch of whoopsie-daisies."
Axel hated that he knew who Kyrell was talking about.
"And no one," Kyrell's dark eyes look up to meet his, narrowing in fury, "absolutely no smart person, brings it up in front of me. Not if you don't want me to blow your brains out."
His hold around her waist tightens in the slightest, but Stella doesn't move.
Her eyes are firmly fixed on the man before her, and while she could easily read the anger in his expression, she couldn't for the love of stars, figure out why there was pain concealed behind it too.
