Blood and Blade (Goddess with a Blade #6) - Lauren Dane Page 0,48

to do what’s best. And sometimes that comes with mistakes because no one can do it otherwise.”

Star yipped and licked Rowan’s hand.

“See? Even your dog agrees with me,” Genevieve said with a sad smile. “Sometimes we fail. And given the type of life we lead, failure can be fatal. But not to act for fear of failure is worse. No one wants or expects that of you. They need you to be who and what you are. Because in the long run, you will prevail. Without you in this particular game, there would only be failure. Your path is not an easy one. But you’re the only one who can take it and make something out of it. I’m sorry you lost your friends. And I’m sorry you’re feeling so low because of this duplicity. All I can do is tell you the truth.”

Rowan nodded, standing taller. “Thank you.” Friends were hard enough to find in her world—she only had a handful—but a true friend told you the truth and that was integral. A gift and a shield.

“I cleaned up the negative magics that I could find,” Genevieve said as they went back inside. “Untangled all the wards and traps. Found an excessively large amount of currency. Euros and US dollars mainly. But there’s a closet I found that you’re going to want to look at.”

Inside a closet that’d been behind a wall in a bathroom upstairs was a treasure trove of evidence.

Rowan stared at the filing cabinets and various boxes and bags and whistled. “Damn. I bet there’s all sorts of stuff in there I’m not supposed to know about. I’m tingly just looking at it.”

“I went through already, checking for and disarming alarms and trap spells but I want to be with you as you open the drawers and bags. Just in case.”

Chapter Thirteen

On her way home, Rowan stopped at the London Motherhouse where Susan was. After a cheek kiss and a cup of tea, Rowan pulled the dossier from her bag and handed it over to her friend.

She gave a brief outline of where she’d found it, skirting around too many details that Rowan felt were Nation business and not something Hunter Corp. officially needed to know. She and Clive were still trying to work out the details of their romantic lives being intertwined but respecting the boundaries around their work, especially when it came to sensitive details the other wouldn’t know but for their relationship.

It was a work in progress, but she was trying.

“Obviously Thomas obtained some of this information from someone here at Hunter Corp.” Rowan pointed to several documents with the HC watermark on them. “And when I started putting them all together it’s pretty clear they all came from Roth Wesslyian’s office. That fucking asshole.”

“I hope it really hurt him to die in that explosion,” Susan said of the homemade bomb that’d been set off within Hunter Corp. as an attempt to kill her and as many others as possible. It had killed several, including some innocent Hunters, but it had also killed Roth and his co-conspirator Hilary.

“You and me both. It’s like he scored a point after he got blown into bits. I hate that. It’s almost like he won except he’s dead.” At least there was that.

Susan’s tired laugh cheered Rowan up a little.

“At this point we know the leak within our ranks that resulted in the murder of our own came from Roth and he is a threat that’s been put down. We can’t change what he did or the result of his actions. But it’s one less thing to worry about out there trying to hurt us. Please do try to remember that. I know you must be feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment.”

Rowan sipped her tea, counting the minutes until the sun was down and Clive would awaken. “I’m very sick of failing.” She told Susan about missing the signs that Thomas and Arthur were Blood Front.

Susan shook her head at the end of the story. “So you’re going to add the weight of not knowing your husband’s uncles were secretly involved in an organization we thought had been reduced to nothing more than a few cowering whisperers? For all your self-doubt, you hold yourself to an impossibly high standard. You can’t possibly be as perfect as you expect yourself to be. You’re a very suspicious person by nature so you saw these wastrels and wrote them off for what they weren’t. Not sharp and dangerous