Rogue Betrayal Read online

  Rogue Betrayal

  Godslayer Academy, Book 3

  Isadora Brown

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Newsletter Information

  Did You Like Rogue Betrayal?

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  “Well?” Charley asked from the driver’s seat of her Nissan Maxima. We were already on M-140, driving back to my place in the darkness. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  No.

  No, I hadn’t.

  I thought back to Eddie Ronin, about the story he told about Robert. I couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t.

  Sure, I believed Robert dated a goddess. He dated everyone. That wasn’t a surprise. And I believe he genuinely had no idea who she was at the time of his indiscretion.

  But did he know who she was eventually?

  There was no way he could be the traitor. He built the academy in order to train students to fight, to utilize their strengths in order to fight for something they believed in. He handed out scholarships to those who couldn’t afford it, which included housing and food. And he invested all of his time and energy into crafting technology that would only help the looming war between the very gods themselves and us humans.

  There was no way he would betray us.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. I sighed, closing my eyes and leaning back against the seat behind me. “Charley, do you ever think you know someone, and then you find something out about them, and it changes your perception of them completely?”

  I didn’t want to judge Robert based on his past. And I didn’t think he would betray everything and everyone for a woman even if she was a goddess. But what if he was some kind of indirect catalyst for this? What if she was punishing the school, Dean Rogers, because of him?

  Maybe that wasn’t fair.

  Maybe that shouldn’t be put on him.

  But still.

  The thought was there.

  “No.” She shook her head.

  “Really?” My eyes snapped open and I shifted, watching her gesture.

  “Everyone has a past, Lara,” she said. “And that past made them who they are today. So, if I like someone, I have to appreciate where they came from. If I don’t like them, I have to send them love because they must have had a rough past. Either way, I try not to judge them for it.”

  I blew out a breath. I wanted to be as forgiving as Charley, but even as I teased the idea, my chest tightened and my ego started screaming at me in my head.

  The silence was overwhelming. The rest of the ride was smooth. I still didn’t understand how well Charley could see in the darkness, but by the time we got to Coloma, I was nearly drifting off. I couldn’t imagine how I could be so exhausted after what happened, but it was like the past few weeks had caught up to me, and I was ready to sleep for twenty-four hours.

  And maybe…maybe I would.

  “Thanks for taking me, Charley,” I murmured as I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the window. I closed my eyes. “I really appreciate it.”

  “Of course,” she said. “You know I’d do anything for you, Lara.”

  “And I’d do the same,” I said, though I didn’t register saying the words because I was already on my way to falling asleep.

  Until we pulled up to the apartment complex, and Charley said, “What’s Robert Lannister doing here?”

  My eyes snapped open and my heart shot out of my chest like a hot potato. Robert? Was here?

  “Um…” I had nothing because I had no idea what was going on.

  But there was Robert’s distinguished car right in the parking lot.

  “Good luck with that,” Charley said as I unbuckled my seatbelt and opened the door. “Call me if you need me.”

  “I will.” I glanced back at her. “Drive safe.”

  I headed to my apartment and opened the door. Robert and my mother sat in the dining room, drinking tea. Even though it was terribly late. Even though Robert had no business being here.

  I ignored the way my heart squeezed when I saw him - unruly black hair, sparkles in his dark eyes, a smile that lit up the room - and focused on shutting the door and locking it behind me. When I turned, my mother was already making her way over to me. I could be mistaken, but she looked slower. Each step had her pausing so she could take a breath, the following step took another. Holding my breath, waiting for her to reach me, would leave me passed out on the floor.

  “How’s Charley?” she asked.

  “So, that’s where you were,” Robert said, leaning back in the chair like he owned it. His hands laced behind the back of his head and his eyes fixed on me. I didn’t think I had ever been this seen before, even by him. “And here I was, worried you had a date.”

  I ignored the barb. He probably didn’t mean it, even if I…

  I pushed the thought away, sliding out of my jacket even though the room was barely any warmer than the frigid December night.

  “You mind if you excuse us, Hilda?” Robert’s lips curled into one of those charming smiles but his eyes remained on me.

  “Of course.” My mother finally found her way in front of me and handed me a warm cup. “I know you don’t like tea, but drink. It’ll warm you up.”

  I took the cup and she turned and began to venture to her room.

  “Do you need help?” I asked.

  She waved me away without turning. “I’m perfectly capable of seeing myself to bed, you know,” she insisted.

  I refused to look at Robert until she disappeared down the hallway and the click of the door indicated she was tucked into her room. I knew she shut the door to give me privacy but I wished she would leave it open so I’d be able to hear her just in case she needed my help, even if she claimed she didn’t.

  “What did you want to talk about?” I asked, making my way to the dining table. Once I sat down, I blew the steam away from the liquid before dousing it with the milk my mother left on the table.

  “Where were you?”

  “With Charley. I said as much.”

  If he was going to play this game where he fired questions at me, I had no problem answering with as much pertinence. I took a long sip of the chamomile tea. It wasn’t terribly sweet, even with as much sugar as I knew my mother added especially for me, but the tension in my shoulders began to ease, and the edge I had the entire night faded slightly.

  “Doing what?”

  “What does it matter?” I snapped. I set my cup down and glared at him. “Why do you think you have any right to demand to know what I’m doing and who I’m doing it with? You're not my father -“

  “The last thing I want to be is your father,” Robert said firmly. The sparkles had been swallowed whole by the darkness of his eyes. He pinned me to my place with a weird glare, but it wasn’t really a glare. There was no harshness that indicated anger or frustration. If anything, it was concern wrapped in barbed wire. “With everything going on, I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “You could have called,” I pointed out, leaning forward and lifting up the tea.

  “I had to see you for myself.”

  “More like, you had to make sure for yourself that I wasn’t with Dalton,” I snapped. It was a petty shot for me to take. I knew this. And yet, I had no intention of apologizing.

  “I’m not going to apologize for that,” he said. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “You don’t know what you’re getting into -”

  “Maybe I know a lot of things,” I growled back. I didn’t
want to reveal my hand just yet. I didn’t want him to know I knew about his goddess because that would mean telling him about Eddie Ronin. “Maybe you don’t trust me with the right information - which is such bullshit, Robert, because I can handle it.”

  “You can handle it?” He snorted. “You can’t even run a mile in six minutes. What makes me think you can handle anything else I throw at you?”

  My eyebrows shot up my forehead and I practically dropped the cup of tea. That was a low shot. And he knew it too, but apparently he was going all in on this.

  “What is this?” I asked, trying to control my voice. I didn’t want my mom to hear us arguing and rush out in order to keep the peace. She had a knack for being that way, even when me and my father got into our arguments. “Why are you here? Tell me the truth.”

  “I already told you,” he said. “I wanted to see if you were okay.” He leaned back slightly, his face, if not softening, then taking a breath. His eyes were wary, as though he was unsure what to make of. If he could trust I wasn’t ready to lash out at him again. “It must have been scary…finding the body. No one should have to endure that. Especially not you.”

  I blew out a breath, but it was difficult to do with my chest tightening up as much as it was. I looked away, rubbing my hands together. “I mean, it is what it is,” I said. I glanced over at him. “Is there anything they found - a cause of death, anything?”

  Robert shook his head. “They refuse to say it’s murder,” he said. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “I found him in a dumpster,” I said, picking up my tea. “What else could it be?”

  “They’re going to examine him tomorrow, and do a thorough investigation some time next week,” he said. “Until it’s labeled as a murder, though, his wife can’t get access to his pension, work-related finances, or even life insurance based on the policy.”

  I remembered what Dalton said about his mother and took a long gulp of tea. It wasn’t my place to tell Robert anything, but what if…what if she was involved? What if she wanted to get rid of her husband? Maybe this didn’t have anything to do with the gods at all. Maybe Dean Rogers was killed for something as boring and unpredictable as money.

  There’s still a traitor, a voice pointed out in my head. Even if the events are unrelated, there’s still a traitor. Dean Rogers himself said as much.

  “Robert,” I said slowly, setting down my cup. “Do you think Rogers’s death has anything to do with the traitor?”

  Robert stared at me for a long moment. He picked up his own cup and brought it to his lips. He wrinkled his nose in surprise and set it down, as though he had forgotten he must have drank it already before I returned home.

  “I don’t know, Freckles,” he said. “I honestly don’t. I don’t want to make any assumptions until I can read the report for myself and see if I can read between the lines.”

  I furrowed my brow. “What do you mean?”

  “The gods…if they want to use Rogers as an example, I’m sure they would have made it glaringly obvious that it was them,” he said. “String him up the flagpole. Crucify him against his office wall. Something barbaric and brutal and clear. But you found him in a dumpster with no obvious cause of death or injury on his person.” He paused. “What does Dalton say about it?”

  “I don’t know.” I couldn’t keep the defensive tone out of my voice even if I wanted to. “It’s not like I’m going to come right out and ask him. His father just died. There are no answers as to how or why or who did it.”

  Robert nodded once. It looked like he wanted to say something else but he refrained, something I was grateful for.

  “We okay, kid?” he asked after a moment.

  I looked at him, really looked at him. His finger traced the rim of the cup, and there was strain on his face, like he was trying to keep from being so obvious he actually cared about my response.

  “Yeah, of course we are, Robert,” I said. “Just…don’t make decisions about me without even talking to me first. I thought…I thought we were partners.”

  “We are,” he insisted. “But you’re right. You’ll be at the lab tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” I said. The truth was, I missed the lab. It gave me a place to quiet my muddled thoughts.

  “Good.” He stood up. He paused right next to me and looked down. “You’d tell me if you were in trouble, wouldn’t you? If you needed something?”

  I swallowed. Was this about where I was tonight?

  “Yeah,” I said, my voice cracking. “Of course.”

  He pressed his lips into a thin line. He didn’t believe me. But he didn’t say anything else. Instead, he headed straight for the door and saw himself out.

  Chapter Two

  As much as I wanted to sleep in, something pulled me awake.

  I hated that Robert’s dating life mattered to me. I tried reasoning that because he knowingly dated a goddess, I was allowed to be concerned.

  But there was more to it than that.

  I pulled myself out of bed and padded to my desk, sliding on my fluffy lavender robe and trying to keep as warm as I could with two layers of shirts and heavy pajama pants.

  Speaking of the goddess…

  I logged into my laptop and clicked over to a web browser, stifling a yawn. I shouldn’t type in Robert’s name. I shouldn’t type in Riella's.

  But I did.

  I had to know.

  I trusted Robert. I did. But what if Riella had used Robert? What if Robert was completely innocent in all of this? If Eddie Ronin could connect the dots - after hearing about this traitor - others might too. And I didn’t want Robert to be screwed over because people were trying to find out ways to start drama when they had no business doing so.

  I was helping Robert. At least, that was what I told myself as I entered the names and hit the enter key.

  The images immediately flooded the browser. Jesus Christ, she was beautiful. No wonder he was enamored with her. Although, maybe enamored was too strong of a word. I wasn’t sure about most of Robert’s dates. From what I had heard, he wasn’t the type to settle down. However, considering these images seemed from different days based on the variety of outfits, it appeared as though he had been with her for a few months which was like a few years in Robert’s definition of passage of time.

  I leaned closer to my browser, trying to read the looks on their faces.

  Not so much Robert’s. His face beamed whenever she was within his sight. It was like she was a magnet and drew his attention to her no matter who he was speaking with originally, where he was, and who else was there. My breath left completely. God, I wished there was even one chance he could look at me the way he looked at her.

  There was a timelessness, a grace, about her beauty. Somehow, I felt it even without seeing her in person. She had the power through pictures.

  The question I wanted to know as I clicked through each picture, inflicting more and more torture onto my poor, bruised heart, was how could no one else recognize what she was. People like her weren’t created by chance, even if the most beautiful couple joined together and procreated. It wasn’t possible.

  I chewed my bottom lip, searching for a date stamp.

  I frowned when I found one. This was a year before the attack. At least.

  What had Eddie Ronin said? Something that implied Robert was somehow responsible for the Tragedy of South Haven?

  I wished I hadn’t been struck by the fact that Robert had dated a goddess because I hadn’t asked what he had meant by that and I should have.

  Fuck me.

  I tried typing in her name by itself, but no one seemed to know anything about her other than the fact that her name was Riella and she was a Pisces. Most claimed she was some kind of supermodel and no one questioned it. Why would they? She looked like she was born on a runway…except there were no pictures of her on a runway or doing any print work. In fact, the more I looked through them, I realized most of them were with Robert. Rarely was she photographed alone.

 
Weird.

  For a supermodel, I expected more pictures of her alone than with him.

  There wasn’t a birthdate. There wasn’t a new man, an old one. There weren’t any of her with friends or at a party. All of her pictures were of Robert and Robert alone.

  Before I could think on what that meant, my cell phone shrilled. I nearly jumped out of my chair and had to slam my hand on the surface of my desk to keep from toppling over.

  I glanced over at my phone and knitted my brows together. I righted myself and picked it up. I thought Robert had been the one calling, trying to figure out when I’d be at the lab. Only he would call so deliriously early in the morning.

  But it wasn’t him.

  It was Charley.

  “You okay?” she asked after I gave her a hello.

  “How did you know I’d even be up?” I asked, rubbing the bridge of my nose.

  “You’re avoiding the question,” she said. “And I also know you. I’m pretty sure whatever you went to South Haven for kept you up all night. And before you say anything, I’m not asking you for the reason. I’m just making sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m okay,” I said through a yawn. “Tired. I want to sleep but I can’t. Hey, did you know that Robert dated some supermodel named Riella?”

  “Yeah, everyone knows that,” Charley said, completely unphased. “That was a while ago, though.” She paused. “Why do you care? Wait, is this about Robert? Lara, do you…do you like him?”

  I stood up, needing to do something physical with my body. I decided I’d attempt to make myself tea even though everything inside of me was screaming for caffeine.

  “What? No, of course not.” The second I emerged from the hallway, I dropped my voice. I didn’t want to wake up my mother because Charley made outlandish assumptions about my feelings for Robert. “Don’t be ridiculous. Robert and I are…” I cleared my throat, popping a squat so I could carefully pull the tea pot out without bumping it into anything and causing a ruckus. “I’m his shadow. Just like you’re supposed to be Dr. Dickbag’s shadow. How is that going, by the way?”