Page 110 of The Ruling Class

“I told him not to enlist. I told him to go to college. He could have been an officer—but he didn’t listen.” Keyes ran a hand roughly through his hair. “Adam thinks I pushed Tommy away, pushed him into joining up by forbidding him to go. Tommy died. I lost both sons.” The kingmaker’s sentences got shorter and curter. “And then there was Ivy.”

Adam’s father—Tommy’sfather—began to pace. I watched him, hyperaware in that moment that it was almost like watching myself. I’d looked at Adam, wondering if there was any of him in me, and now I knew.

It wasn’t Adam.

It was never Adam.

“Adam must have known Tommy was seeing someone,” Keyes continued, his voice raising a decibel or two as he paced. “And somehow, he found out about you.”

Me.The pieces fell into place in my mind. All of those times I’d felt like Adam was looking at me like I reminded him of someone—I’d assumed I reminded him of Ivy.

But what if I was wrong?

What if, when he yelled at me, when he told me that family didn’t bolt just because things were hard—what if those had been the times when I’d reminded him of his brother?

His dead brother.I’d lost so much in the past few weeks:Gramps, my home, my identity, who I thought my parents were, Ivy. I’d read a poem once in English class, about what it meant to master the art of losing.

I was an artist.

And now—now I would never know my father. I would never get to meet him, never know if he would have looked at me and seen pieces of himself, if he would havewantedme.

If I could have been a daughter he would have loved.

I couldn’t stay here. I started for the door with no plans of what I would do when I walked out. I’d gambled and I’d failed, and now I really was going to be an orphan. Tommy was dead, and Ivy—

Kostas is going to kill her.

I tried.

“Hold it right there, young lady.” Keyes barked out as my hand closed around the doorknob.

“Why?” I asked, whirling around, caught between sorrow and a smoldering anger I wasn’t sure would ever go away. “If it wasAdam, I had something to offer. But my father is dead. Dead men don’t win elections.”

Dead men fathering illegitimate children was barely even news.

My father is dead.It hurt. All I’d ever seen of him was a picture, and it hurt.Ivy might die.I hadn’t saved her.

Just this once, I wanted to save someone.

“No matter what Ivy and my son might have told you”—Keyes crossed the room to stand in front of me—“I’m not so heartless as to send my only grandchild away.”

Hisgrandchild. There was something in the way he said that word that was almost manic, as if my importance were larger than life.

My heart clenched.

“You’ll do it?” I asked, terrified to hope for even a second that the answer might be yes. “You’ll get the pardon?”

You’ll save Ivy?

William Keyes—my paternal grandfather—put a hand under my chin. He tilted my face toward his. “That depends,” he said, “on whether or not you’ll do something for me.”

CHAPTER 63

Back at Vivvie’s place, I told the others about the deal I’d struck, and I waited. Eventually, Asher got a text from his sister. Without a word, he flipped on the news.

On the television, a pretty Asian American reporter stared directly into the camera, her hair whipping in the wind. “Again, I am standing outside the Washington Monument, where a SWAT team is closing in on what we are told is a hostage situation.” The camera panned to show a blockade—and beyond that, two dozen men, armed to the teeth.

“Ivy,” I whispered. She had to be okay. Shehadto be.You have to get through this, I thought fiercely.You have to, Ivy. I’ll never forgive you if you don’t.