Page 15 of Duality (The Archers #1)

Evelyn’s gaze softened as she looked at each of us, her voice dropping.

“I didn’t tell you, because I wanted to protect you.

Not just from the danger, but from the moral weight of what I do.

Your sense of morals and honor, it’s good, but it’s unrealistic.

” We stiffened, but she continued. “It’s your weakness, wanting to view everything in black and white, and I…

I play in color. You hired me to be your assistant, to help you and your company.

And I did my job in every way I could. But yes, I did use your company for information. ”

She took a deep breath, her voice firming again.

“I never wanted to deceive you, and I do apologize for that.” She stopped and looked at me, her face sincere.

“But I did it to protect you. SDS does good work. Your sense of morals and honesty is refreshing but not common. I knew you would disapprove, and I knew you would view it as a betrayal. But I honestly can’t say I wouldn’t do it differently.

The information about the city’s wealthy that I had access to saved a lot of lives.

It helped us stop things before they happened.

But it wasn’t done legally. And I couldn’t risk dragging you into my world until I had no other choice. ”

Silence fell on the room as we took it all in.

Begrudgingly, I understood why Evelyn hadn’t told us.

While she kept her explanation high level, I could read between the lines.

The Archers served justice to people who couldn’t get it elsewhere.

It was a noble mission, even if she went about it in dishonorable ways.

Surely, after a year of working with us, she could have told us though. We could have helped.

Would you have? a small voice whispered.

When we first started SDS, I was reeling from my time in the military.

The military trained me how to fight and kill and then they discharged me back into the world after the worst betrayal I could have imagined.

I’d tried school, but I’d been on the brink of failing for getting into fights.

Alex had started SDS to give me an outlet, and we had grown it to what it was today.

Six years ago, I was still too fresh off the end of my military career.

I would have fired Evelyn on the spot if she came to us and confessed.

“So what really happened at Geoff Young’s clubs?” Alex asked quietly. “It wasn’t just a drug ring.”

Evelyn shook her head, her hazel eyes flashing.

“They were drugging and raping women.” She seethed.

“His head bar manager and bouncer were in on it. They—” Her breath caught.

“They videoed it and would blackmail the girls to prevent the videos from coming out. If they didn’t have money, they told them they could pay it off in other ways. ”

I froze at her words. They did what? Sebastian turned to granite next to her, and Evelyn side-eyed him carefully, her eyes assessing the cold darkness that radiated off the usually happy-go-lucky man. I waited for her to shift away, but she just put a hand on his arm and squeezed softly.

“They’re taken care of,” she murmured.

Adrian shifted next to me. I had almost forgotten that he knew who Evelyn was before today.

He caught me looking and sighed, looking at Evelyn.

Evelyn nodded, and he straightened in his chair, gathering his thoughts.

Adrian’s betrayal was sharper than Evelyn’s.

We had fought in the trenches of war together.

He had saved my life and knew about the events that had led to my strict code of honor and truth. He knew, and he still lied to me.

“The Archers saved my mom.”

My jaw dropped at Adrian’s words, and my brothers both zeroed in on him, their gazes confused and searching.

“Oh shit,” I breathed.

I remembered Adrian talking about his mom.

He never mentioned his dad, only to call him a “mean bastard”, but I knew he joined the military to get away from his old man.

His mom had stopped writing to him for three months, and Adrian had been meaner than a cranky grizzly bear.

And then one day a letter arrived, and it was like the weight of the world had been lifted off his shoulders.

I was quickly putting the pieces together.

“Wait, you—?” I swung my gaze to Evelyn, who nodded. “How?” She’d gone after Adrian’s dad? I had never met the man, but I had seen pictures. The guy was massive, and Evelyn barely came up to my shoulder.

Evelyn’s face was carefully blank, her professional mask in place. I wanted to crack it.

“We keep a…network of informants throughout the city. Melissa ran into one at the corner store, and she shared our number with Melissa. We got her out and…relocated her husband to a different city.”

“Is he still alive?” Sebastian asked the question I was dying to.

Evelyn nodded, and a smile spread slowly over her face. It was a cold, satisfied smile that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. “He saw…reason and agreed to be relocated after signing the deed of the house over to Melissa.”

He saw reason? That was a load of bullshit. But how did Adrian figure out who Evelyn was? Did Melissa tell him?

Adrian picked the story back up. “Mom never said a word. Just that a local organization helped her. That’s pretty common among the people the Archers helped.” He glared at Evelyn, who smiled and shrugged.

“We try to keep anonymity the best we can. Obviously, as we’ve grown, that’s been harder, but usually the people we help have no interest in sharing information with people who are part of the system.”

“Like the police?” I guessed.

Evelyn nodded.

“When Mom wouldn’t tell me anything, I went digging. It was a complete fluke that I figured out Evelyn was a part of the Archers. I started digging into the times when the Archers were involved and realized there was a pattern. Then came Charles Baker.”

Alex’s eyes widened. Charles Baker had been a client of ours only briefly.

He had hired us to install a security system because he was afraid of something but refused bodyguards.

We had installed the system, then a few weeks later, he was raided by a federal agency who found trafficked women in his mansion.

SDS had been under federal scrutiny for months before we could prove we had no idea what he was doing in his secret rooms. We just thought he was a paranoid bastard.

“I realized that the only people who could have had access to his mansion’s schematics and knew about the hidden rooms or could make an educated guess about the hidden rooms was someone at SDS, and the circle was small.

I traced Evelyn’s keystrokes and found she had accessed the plans after the system was installed. ”

Evelyn shook her head, rolling her eyes. “I am usually not that sloppy, but I hadn’t slept in weeks at that point. We had been trying to nail him for months and could never figure out how he got the girls in and out.”

“So you confronted her.” Alex put the pieces together. “But you didn’t say anything.”

“I confronted her about it, and she let it slip that I was exactly like Melissa described me. I realized she knew who I was, and more importantly, she had helped my mom.” He winced and glanced at me.

“I know you’re angry, but when she explained what she used the information for…

To help people like my mom. I made her swear to me that any information she gathered would never bring harm to any of you or SDS. ”

“You didn’t have to make me.” Evelyn shrugged.

“That was already my plan when I took the job. At first, I thought you were like Citadel, but after only a few months, I realized that wasn’t the case.

But like Adrian said, the information I gathered helped people, so I justified that in my mind.

” She straightened her shoulders and looked at me.

“I understand if that doesn’t justify it in yours, however. ”

I stared at her but didn’t say anything.

I didn’t know how to explain it, and I wasn’t sure I wasn’t going to bite her head off still.

I get that she lied to us for what she thought was a good reason, but that was how it started.

Who knew how much other information she withheld?

I understood that she was protecting her people, but I had to protect my brothers, too.

And I couldn’t trust her when she’d lied to us. Secrets got people killed.

Evelyn sagged briefly when I didn’t say anything, then she straightened. “I am sorry that you got dragged into this, but we’re taking Citadel down. They protect the rot in this city, and they need to go so we can clean up the rest of it.”

There was something she wasn’t telling us.

Something that had happened recently, maybe?

The way she spoke about Citadel… Rage flickered in her eyes every time she said their name.

That type of rage would make her sloppy and would put her in danger.

But at the same time, I knew she wasn’t going to give up on this fight.

And even if I was pissed that she lied to us, I also didn’t want to see her dead, either.

I leaned forward. “Like Alex said, not without us, you aren’t. You’re right, this is personal. But you’re also right that we have morals and a sense of duty, and we aren’t going to let the Archers do this alone.”

“We’ve wanted to go after Citadel for a while,” Alex admitted, something we had only discussed in the privacy of our own home.

“Coming after you was the final straw,” Sebastian said, uncharacteristically serious.

“Coming after your brothers, you mean,” Evelyn corrected, and I hid my grin. That was so not what Sebastian meant, but I wasn’t about to get into an explanation of his brand of crazy. Not when we had a rival to take down.