Another's Demise

Unravelled Motivations

Cameron

If there was one thing, I was thankful for, it was that our accounts were still linked to one another.

Alara's phone had a shared storage system with mine, and I had never used it in a way to disturb her privacy. But there was always a limit for confidentiality, namely if someone was in trouble.

I hadn't meant to see it.

But there was an email, a message that to the untrained eye looked like spam, a deliberate misuse of language made to be overlooked. And I would have overlooked it if Alara hadn't responded to it, in the same fragmented English, different words capitalised when they weren't supposed to be.

And I knew Alara, she loved books and had studied Computer Science, this was a cipher if I ever saw one, she would have never misspelled anything if it hadn't been on purpose, and nothing good came from an encrypted message.

"You were right," Echo's voice floated through the receiver, "It's an encrypted message, someone wants to meet with the Blood Queen,"

"And she accepted," I cursed into the cold air, the burning of my dying cigarette stub flickering in the pale moonlight, "She's not, she's not that reckless."

"She's been taking a lot more risks since you guys, uh..." Echo trailed off.

"I know."

"It's good you caught this though, this is likely someone from the Dark Web, the listings for her are still there. And they get worse by the day-"

"Hey, can I talk to Cam?" It was Connor's soft voice that cut Echo off.

"Yeah sure."

I remembered the softened look of my brothers eyes the fear instilled in him by our father. The erasure of him from my entire memory, held hostage for when he was needed.

"How are you Con? How's Ma?"

"We're good, but when are you and Alara coming home?"

I swallowed hard, "Soon." And I believed it, my own fickle terrible lie. A quality I had sworn against, but if you were lying to yourself, did that even count as a lie?

Yes.

"Because it's kind of lonely here."

"I'm here Connor," Echo interjected voice on edge for a moment.

"Yeah, but we don't really speak much, your always busy, Mum's well-"

"How is she Con?"

"She needs you Cam, she needs you to come here and be with her. Because she always says she's fine but that's what I used to say all the time. And I'm not fine, I haven't been not since, Dad-"

He took a deep breath, "I'm getting help. Echo suggested someone,"

"You are," a wash of pride ran through me, it was so important to not do what I had done my entire life, to bottle up the hurt, shove it down until it overflowed, into a mess of manic emotion, "That's great Con."

"She's really nice, she is."

"That's good, Con."

There was a muffled noise down the line, "Connors gone," Echo said after a moment, "Your Ma's she needed him. So he's gone to help her but, you need to help Alara."

"I know, and the updates on her father."

"The Falco leaders' history is very murky, but it's as though everything prior to the past five years has been erased. Family history, everything. There is normally something on the inception of a Mafia, a lineage that should be accessible, but it's been wiped."

"You don't think, this was a Mafia that was forcefully taken over?"

Mafias were usually family lead, from father to son traditionally the responsibilities passed on.

"And if what Leo found out is true, it may have been that Vincent Torres wasn't even Isobel's uncle. That he killed her father, for the Mafia, to overtake it."

"Surely if that was the case, there would be some account of it."

"Not if you have enough resources to silence the history you don't want to be taught."

I felt the tightness in the back of my throat, "I need to find out more then. Thanks for the help but this must mean the records will have to be physical ones. But first I need to stop Alara from getting herself killed."

"Or you need to stop her from killing someone."

"Alara-" but before I could shove the sentence from my lips, I realised that that in itself would be a lie.

Alara could kill someone.

Her eyes said enough, there was rage in them, rage that I had felt and mourned myself.

A dangerous thing.