Only Him

Chapter 32

I was out the door and thundering down the stairs, package and its contents thrust under one arm, before I'd even processed what I was doing. I vaguely heard Dimitri call out a question when he heard the resounding slam of the front door hitting into the wall but I didn't pause to answer.

The Moroi on duty at the reception desk looked understandably startled as I slammed the box down in front of her and demanded "Who dropped this off?"

"I-I, excuse me—" she stuttered, eyes as round as quarters.

"It's a simple question!" I roared. "Who the hell dropped this box off?" I jabbed my finger at the box in accusation. "Who told you to put it in my mailbox?"

"Roza—"

"I don't know!" the Moroi gasped, cutting off Dimitri's call as he made it down the stairs and into the lobby. I was attracting the attention of everyone passing through the lobby but I couldn't find it in myself to give a damn at that moment. Anger burned in my veins like wildfire. "I only came on duty an hour ago! We don't staff the desk during daylight hours. It wasn't dropped off to me."

"Check the security footage," I commanded. "I want to know and I want to know now!"

"The system is down for maintenance this morning," the Moroi whispered, unwilling to meet my eyes. "One of the camera's was broken last week and a few others have been freezing up. We have a maintenance crew working on it now."

"Damn it!" I swore, sweeping the box off of the desk and sending it crashing into the wall to my left. Dimitri went to fetch it as I began to pace.

"They knew!" I muttered to myself as I began to run through all of the implications in my head. "They knew it was out. They probably messed with the system themselves. They have to blend in to avoid notice but with crews in here that would be easy enough. Or they could pay someone to do it for them and—"

Dimitri's hand came down on my shoulder, stopping both my pacing and my muttering. I looked up at his face and could tell by the grim look there that he'd come to the same conclusions I had about the package now in his hands. The note was clearly visible on top.

"We should call Hans," he said.

Twenty minutes later our apartment was overflowing with people. Hans had shown up with a few guardians to take our statements and begin an investigation. Only a few minutes after their arrival Lissa and Christian burst through the door, the remainder of my guardian team and mother in tow. We had yet to replace Alan and Xavier but my fathers spare guardians also made an appearance.

"How the hell could this happen?" Lissa demanded of no one in particular. She went straight to the dining table where the box and its contents were clearly laid out.

"Don't know," I said with a sigh. I was on the couch, resting heavily against Dimitri's side. I felt thoroughly beaten. We hadn't heard anything from Marlen in weeks and I'd begun to silently hope that he'd been too devastated by the guardian raid to recuperate and make an attack again soon. That note changed things.

"He knows it's a boy," Lissa whispered, reading the note. "But only the people closest to us know that!" I nodded. That was the fist thing that had caught my attention. Even Hans and my team hadn't known the baby's gender up until this moment. If anything I should have felt assured that none of them were the spy but I wasn't. I knew for a fact that none of the people who knew the baby's gender were working for Marlen—who had obviously sent the package. That meant that whoever had passed him the information had been able to get it for themselves. They'd either been unassuming enough to sneak a confession from my friends or they'd found it out for themselves through my medical records or in my apartment.