A Man of Honor.

Chapter 50: Truth, resentment and forgiveness.

"Fredo you're my older brother and I love you. But don't ever take sides with someone against the family again. Ever." ~ Michael Corleone The Godfather 1972.

Neo clenched her fists and looked away from me.

"When I was expelled from Beacon, Ozpin recruited me to spy on the Clan." I went on. "He thought because it was Junior's guys who helped you rob that one dust shop the one time that they were involved. My job was to observe and report, but it got a lot more complicated than that. My whole time here I've been spying on all of you and reporting back to him. He promised me if I did this I could return to Beacon."

Roman was looking dangerously calm the entire time I was speaking. I wasn't able to read him at all. Neo on the other hand just looked hurt and refused to meet my eye as I tried to hold both their gazes and hold my head up despite the shame I felt.

"Last night, I had a meeting with Ozpin, and Ironwood." I said to the two of them.

Neo moved in a flash. She closed the distance to me and whipped her leg around knocking me upside the head. I went down to the ground, tasting blood in my mouth.

"Neo." Roman said, calm but firm but she didn't listen to him. She kicked me in my ribs and stomped on my face. My nose made a wet crunch as she shoe connected

"I'm sorry!" I said my voice all nasally thanks to the broken nose, it was the only thing I could say with her pummeling me. "I'm sorry."

"Neo, stop!" Roman commanded her again, and again she didn't listen.

She grabbed Hush and drew the thin stiletto blade. I looked up into her eyes as they glared at me streaming tears. The hurt and hate in her eyes felt like a stab in the chest already. Just seeing that pain twisting her features made me almost want to be gutted by her. But the blade didn't fall, she just held it over me and glared at me.

"I said stop!" Roman said, stepping in and grabbing her arm before she decided to stick me like a pig. He wrenched the blade away from her and sighed.

Neo just looked sad as Roman kept a hold of her sword. "He's - a - traitor!" Neo signed to him aggressively. "A - fucking - snitch!"

"I know!" Roman told her, putting his hand on her shoulder. "And I suspected he might be one."

"You... you suspected?" I asked, feeling my aura heal my broken nose, painfully shift the cartilage back into place. I grabbed my pocket square and used it to stem my bleeding nostrils.

Roman nodded to me. "Only recently." He explained. "Not that long ago Cinder managed to get ahold of the Headmaster's personal data."

I raised an eyebrow. "H-how did she get a hold of that?" I asked, not sure what to make of that.

Roman smirked. "Apparently they used some distraction at some Beacon dance to get access. I'll admit that it's impressive. But she forwarded me a few files she managed to find in Ozpin's personal terminal. There's quite a bit of intel on our criminal operations all coming from a source that Ozpin referred to only as J."

"So... you were planning on getting rid of me?" I asked him.

"I was considering it." Roman admitted to me. "But I wanted to be sure, I noticed there was a distinct lack of any mention of Cinder and other sensitive things you knew about. In fact, almost all the information was out of date."

"I've been holding back on Ozpin." I told him. "That time my apartment blew up, I lost contact with him. And during that time my faith in him and my mission was starting to wane."

Neo couldn't look at me. She just kept her arms crossed over her chest and scowled at me. I tried to look more at Roman who was giving me an appraising look.