Rage and Ruin | 2

5 | 4

D E L P H I N I U M

      "Are you sure everything was gone?" Hunt asked Jaxon, Finn and Arlo as we all sat around a table at the compound.

      "Yes. There was nothing inside but empty tables."

      "And apparently explosives," Kane remarked in a dry tone, leaning back in his chair. 

      "They were going to lure you there and kill you," Hunt spoke almost more to himself than to us.

      "But," Finn said, holding up a finger, "The most worrying part was that there were no cannons, none of those Scorpions. They'd already shipped them off to the fortress."

      "So now they do have Scorpions," I said, my heart sinking, "The one thing that could make them even stronger." My mind went back to the discussion Jake and I had with Benny yesterday in which he'd said that once they had enough firepower, Imperium was going to begin taking over the surrounding areas. I met Jake's dark gaze from across the room. We both knew what this meant. If Benny's prediction for Imperium's rise was correct, then it was going to be coming very soon.

There was a moment of silence. "At least we still have Benny locked up, right?" Finn asked weakly, trying to bring our spirits up. It didn't work.

"As well as Gigi," Riley added, crossing her arms and looking around with slitted eyes.

If it was possible, that put an even bigger damper on the mood. I thought about her sitting in a cell for all these days. "What is she like?"

Hunt gave a half-shrug, looking pained. "The usual. She's still violent, unstable and needless to say, dangerous. I'm simply glad that we got her back to her cell."

"What's going to happen to her?" Finn's voice was soft.

"We still don't know. The council doesn't know what to do with her, especially given the circumstances surrounding her growing madness."

"But that power she displayed that day..." Jaxon shook his head, at a loss for words. "No wonder she didn't tell us about it."

"Did you know about it?" Riley snapped around to face Hunt. "Did you know she could do that? I mean, she was killing Delphinium from the inside out." Her eyes lingered on me for a second too long. I still wasn't sure of her thoughts on me after what Benny and Gigi had revealed.

"We knew some of it, not to the full extent."

      I sat up straighter. "You told me that something happened when she was younger, something bad enough to make you aware she could do these things."

      "I did say that."

      Leaning forward so that my knife-wielding hand was resting on the table, I asked, "What was it?" What could Gigi have possibly done to put herself on a government watchlist as a child?

      All eyes went to Hunt, who sat back in his chair. He seemed to be grasping the words to explain what had happened. "As a child, Gigi was...well, you know how she used to be. She was quiet, timid. A target for the other children in school, especially with the rumors that she was some sort of witch. We know that she was bullied badly for it."

      I could foresee where this was going and was dreading the words coming out of Hunt's mouth. "When she was eleven, there was one day where she finally tried to fight back against her harassers. A boy was later brought out of the school in a body bag with a crushed windpipe and internal bleeding. Gigi had inadvertently killed him." Bowing my head, I thought about how my first kill had been at age fourteen. Gigi had been three years younger.