Page 85 of The Wicked

I had gone straight to the point, telling him I needed his help to pull my family’s name to the ground. I needed his information on us to do it myself.

Apparently, I had taken him by surprise because he stared at me like I was from a different space and time.

When he asked me why, I told him I wanted to see that look again—the one my father had worn after exiting his home.

He had a question in his eyes that clearly asked how possible it was to compel a facial expression from someone who was supposed to be dead. He didn’t ask it. Instead, he told me he would have loved to help me, but he had his own plans,and that I would be informed of them wheneveryoneelse was informed.

The moment I received a letter after his death, I registered the man as a crazy person, even though I partially understood his motive.

His dog had been his only family, and everyone avoided it like the devil’s spawn.

What better way to seek justice for the chihuahua than having people hunt for it like it was their salvation?

So, he had an artist paint her. Created a map. Turned every single one of his assets into gold, roughly 300 million pieces of solid gold. He gathered dire information he had gotten about six of the most prominent criminal families and world governing bodies, turned it into software copies, and placed them on custom-made flash drives. Then, he duplicated the painting into ninety-nine reproductions, inserted a map to find the gold along with those flash drives inside the frame of the original artwork, and then distributed them around the world.

This was his way of making people hunger for the painting of his dog; the dog they’d feared and made fun of was now the very thing they had to find to get their hands on the gold… and those flash drives.

Although 99 percent of the people gunning for the painting were there for the gold, only a few like myself needed those flash drives; this was because people who were hunting for the gold had no clue about the flash drives.

Therefore, whoever found the original painting first got the gold, the flash drives, and the key to being as powerful as Arturo was in our world.

The ultimate power. The final key to my puzzle. I’d find it. Let my father know that I had achieved the power to make anyone bend to my will. I would dangle what could have been right in his face.

Then I’d burn it all.

When Zahra had mentioned the painting in that supplycloset, I knew it was the same one perilous people were looking for. When she showed me the picture, it took everything in me not to snap her neck right there, kill the rest of Street, and send Elia far away from the chaos.

But I reined it in because I knew the painting that would be in the gallery was a fake. I had checked even before it arrived at the gallery.

The people who sent Street to retrieve the painting had cheated them. But I would have done the same. There were so many fakes and one original.

Each of these paintings was treated with equal attention and importance.

It was clear how Arturo had achieved all that he desired and more through this ridiculous quest.

The more paintings were released, the more crafty and dangerous people got in on the quest. A decent example of this was how we were ambushed and how curiosity had made Zahra fight to keep the painting, to get in on whatever it was about.

I knew I was close to finding it. This was precisely why I couldn’t afford any distractions. Zahra was a distraction, and that would not do.

I couldn’t kill her.But that didn’t mean I couldn’t let her get herself killed.

Having left the clearing to get the painting and bring a car to get us back to the compound, I genuinely didn’t think there would be such a huge turn of events.

She had been asleep when I left, and I couldn’t bring myself to wake her. Sleep was a luxury I didn’t get to have in abundance. I admired people who could do it without restlessness and the need to make it permanent.

On getting to where the car broke down, I stopped when I saw a white van by the side of the road, a small distance from where I stood.

I’d shoved both hands into my pockets when I caught movements at the corner of my eye.

Leaning casually on the SUV, I watched about five men in black clothing and masks emerge from the woods and walk towards the van.

One of them held an unconscious Zahra over his shoulder, and the other quickly opened the back of the van, where they filed in, dumping her body.

They spoke in another language. I couldn’t hear much from my distance, but I knew it was a language I didn’t understand.

They locked the back doors, started the engine, and swiftly drove away.

I stood there for a couple of minutes, just watching them disappear down the road.