The safe room wasn’t very big—the size of a generous living room, maybe, with the walls covered in cabinets and drawers that held enough supplies to keep the entire Hart family alive for months. Several couches stretched across the room, and there was a small private bathroom in the corner. Claustrophobia aside, it wasn’t a terrible place to spend the night, as I’d done during the Blackcoat bombings my first evening in Somerset.
I searched the walls for any sign of a camera, but I didn’t see so much as a red light. It didn’t matter. I had to trust Knox. I had to believe he was right, and this was the chance we’d been waiting for.
Daxton stood pacing a circle in the center of the room, his hands clasped behind his back. When I slipped into the room, he stopped, his face twisting into a snarl. “Who said you could join me?”
“Your protective detail made me,” I said, lingering near the door as the guard pushed it shut. It was at least two feet thick and made of impenetrable metal—supposedly strong enough to withstand even a nuclear bomb. “Greyson—he refused to come.”
“He always was smarter than you.” Daxton resumed his pacing. “I should kill you myself. Do you have any idea what you did out there?”
“I didn’t do anything. The crowd was ready to rip you apart the second you tried to make me kill my own mother. That’s twisted even for you, Victor.”
He pushed his bloodstained hair back from his eyes, glowering at me. “It’s Daxton.”
“Who the hell are you kidding down here?” I waved my hand toward the empty room. “It’s just me and you, and we both know exactly who you are.”
“Yes, we do.” He took a step toward me, his shoulders squared. “I am the Prime Minister of the United States of America. I am the most powerful man in this country. And no matter what my name happened to be two years ago, today it is Prime Minister Daxton Hart.”
That was as much of a confession as I would probably get out of him, but I had no doubt it wouldn’t be good enough for Knox. The few supporters Daxton had left could spin it, and we would be left at square one.
“How did she pick you?” I said. “Augusta. Did you two know each other? Did she come to Elsewhere one day and see you there with eyes exactly the same color as her real son’s? I know how you found Kitty, but how did Augusta find you?”
He took a deep breath, his chest rising and falling as he stared at me wordlessly. For a moment I wondered if he’d cracked—if he was so deluded into thinking he really was Daxton now that he couldn’t handle any memories of hislife before, believing they would negate his new identity.
But instead a wicked smile twisted across his face, and he took another step toward me. I had nowhere to go in the safe room, which only seemed to grow smaller and smaller as the seconds passed. My fingers tightened around theknife’s handle. Let him try to hurt me. We would see how far that got him.
“Victor Mercer knew the family intimately,” he murmured. “Daxton was a friend of his, you see. He would stay with Victor and his brother while he visited Elsewhere, and they would help Daxton partake in his particular...proclivities. Augusta didn’t visit as frequently, but she did drop by from time to time, and one day, she approached Victor with a proposition. She liked him, you see. He was resourceful, driven, and he took pride in his work—all qualities she needed in a double for her son.”
“And you jumped on the chance to seize power for yourself,” I said.
“Naturally. Victor wasn’t stupid.” He took another step closer to me. He was within arm’s reach now, but he kept his hands at his side, instead towering over me. “Do you want to hear something funny?”
“Bet it won’t make me laugh.”
“Mmm, but it will make you think.” He closed the distance between us, his body inches from mine. I could smell the blood on his clothes, and it made my stomach turn. “Victor Mercer was Masked months before the original Daxton Hart died.”
I stared at him, my heart pounding. “What?”
He grinned and raised his bloodstained fingers, brushing them against my jaw. It took everything I had not to stab him through the gut right then and there. “Perhaps Augusta knew Celia was targeting Daxton, or perhaps her son was misbehaving, and she wanted him out of the way. Perhaps she wanted a puppet she could control. Or perhaps it was simply a coincidence.”
Nothing was a coincidence in the Hart family, and my mind reeled. Daxton, his wife, and his elder son, Jameson, had all been in the car that had exploded, killing them instantly. But it had been Daxton’s car—he was the only one who was supposed to die. I didn’t know for sure who had bombed it, but before that moment, all signs had pointed to Celia. Now I wasn’t so certain.
“Guess Augusta gave you your lucky break,” I said shakily. “Now look what you’ve turned it into. A dictatorship, with you at the top of the pyramid.”