Free Untouchable (The Blankenships Book 8) by Evelyn Glass Page B

green. The rear seats had been customized and turned to face each other like they would in a limo. Zhu sat on one side, and Alex took the other, Zoey sitting next to him. The guards took the two front seats, and the men who had been behind them moved into a separate vehicle behind them.
     
    It felt good to be in motion again. Good, but frightening. How was it both at once?
     
    “I cannot apologize enough,” Zhu said, breaking the silence, “for the dishonorable way you were treated by Mr. Akimoto. I hope that you can forgive me for my association with this disaster.”
     
    Something cold washed through Alex. He felt Zoey’s hand tighten in his in a way he interpreted as a warning, but it was too much for him to think through in the moment. “Perhaps you could explain to me exactly what is happening. Why people have died for this and what in the world makes you think that I’ll forgive you.”
     
    Zhu’s expression became a little bit sad, Alex thought. “I told you that I was with you, Mr. Blankenship,” he said, and Alex remembered that meeting they’d had in his office. It seemed like it had been years ago. Things had been so incredibly different then. “Unfortunately, given my own position within Wuxing, and with Hasu at my corporate doorstep—”
     
    “You couldn’t just tell me that you and Tanaka Akimoto had a pact that would end up killing my entire family, of course. Because that would be dishonorable.” Zoey’s hand squeezed so tightly around his that he thought his bones would creak, but he couldn’t make himself stop. “It was easier to kill my mother, my sister, my entire fucking family,than it was to admit to me that you’d been dealing both sides of the Philippines conflict and take what was coming to you.” There was plenty more that he could have said, but there was a black hole in his chest, and it was dragging everything into its gravitational pull, shaking him to pieces and threatening to crush him into a tiny pinpoint. “If you had just told me,” he said, and his voice creaked like the bones in his hand, “if you had told me at that first meeting that something was wrong, that Tanaka was going to hurt the people I loved—”
     
    “I didn’t know,” Zhu said, his voice half conciliatory, half regretful. “I knew very well that Akimoto had no plans to give up the empire that he had built, but I honestly did not take you for the sort of man who would pay enough attention to be a threat to his enterprise.”
     
    “Or to yours.”
     
    “I never intended to be involved in what Akimoto was doing with Hasu.” Zhu shook his head. “You have no reason to believe me. You don’t understand what my family did to maintain Wuxing. From the fall of the empire to the rise of the new economy and the new class, I have those who rely on me, Mr. Blankenship. I have those for whom I am responsible.”
     
    Of all things in the world, Alex found himself thinking of Joseph Crane, sitting across from him at a table in London, quizzing him about what would happen to the factories that AEGIS had taken over in the north of England if they converted their business towards medical processing instead of weapons manufacturing. “That’s how you got Crane on your side,” he said.
     
    Zhu didn’t confirm it. “The introduction of Ms. Gardener, of course, was an unexpected wrinkle in our plan. Her reputation as an up and coming investigative journalist has touched all the corners of the Internet.”
     
    Zoey chuckled next to him, but the sound held no mirth. “That fucking subway flasher,” she muttered. “If I ever see that dude again, I will do horrible things to his anatomy. I’m not even kidding.” He chuckled, and she leaned into him just a little bit harder. “So where are you taking us, Mr. Zhu?”
     
    Zhu’s smile to her was more genuine than any he’d ever shared with Alex. “Do you know where you are right now, Ms. Gardener?”
     
    “Zoey, please,” she said. “And I