by Lila Dubois
Selene opened a cabinet and pulled out a dusty bottle of red wine. “Would anyone like a drink?”
Chapter Six
Luca smiled as Selene handed him the glass of Merlot. The Bellator Dei didn’t allow consumption of alcohol. He’d sip, but not drink it all, as the few glasses of wine he’d snuck over the years had made him feel pleasantly languid and libidinous. It wasn’t the time, place, or company for those sorts of feelings.
“Oh.” Selene reached into the front pocket of her hoodie. “I forgot I had these.”
Luca could have kissed the beautiful scientist when she produced his glasses. While his vision wasn’t terrible, it also wasn’t great. He was nearsighted enough that he would have spent the next few days squinting at the blurry blobs around him. The frames were slightly bent from the backhand that had knocked them off, but mercifully, they weren’t broken.
He bent the frame back into shape, then slipped them on, nodding his head gratefully. “Thank you. I feared they were lost.”
Oscar, who had disappeared while Selene was pouring drinks, returned and set a white pill bottle in front of him. Pain medication.
Luca looked up in surprise. Oscar was frowning, his expression almost angry, but his actions were caring.
He still couldn’t believe that Oscar and Selene had rescued him. It was unexpected…and undeserved.
“Thank you.” Luca read the label, carefully took out two, and then closed the bottle.
Oscar snatched it up, shook out two more, and smacked them down on the table. “You just got your ass beat. You can have four.”
But he deserved the pain.
Luca found it increasingly difficult to face the man in the mirror every morning when he considered what he’d done. What he’d become.
Everyone was silent until he put the pills in his mouth, washing them down with a small sip of the wine. The smell of it reminded him of Italy.
He didn’t think of Italy as home. No place was really home.
The instant he finished swallowing, Selene and Oscar both started to talk at once.
“How were you planning to resolve the distance discrepancy needed for the particle—”
“Who the fuck are you, and what the hell is going on?”
Selene looked at Oscar, cleared her throat, then said, “Fine, start with the less interesting information.”
Oscar was staring at her. “You thought specifics about the bomb was where to start?”
“Well, we know he’s not the bad guy.”
“He designed, and said he was willing to make, a city-killer bomb. He’s at least two-thirds of the way to bad guy.”
“He designed it under duress,” Selene countered.
Oscar pointed at her. “You’re way too close to being a supervillain.”
“You’re a hacker. Between the three of us, we’re basically a modern-day Manhattan Project.” Selene gestured to all of them, and Luca felt ridiculously pleased about being included, even in such an offhanded way.
Oscar snorted. “More like the Masters of Evil.”
“Who?” Selene propped her chin on her fist, seemingly at ease arguing with Oscar, whose frown was intimidating.
“Team of Marvel bad guys.”
“Hydra,” Luca said. Both turned to look at him. “If this were a comic book, I would be a Hydra scientist.”
Oscar leaned forward. “Start talking.”
Luca opened his mouth, closed it. He’d been about to tell them his story. How he’d ended up sitting at this table with them, and he was compelled to start with his childhood. A story he’d never shared with anyone.
But that was not what they cared about.
His head felt foggy, not because of the wine, but due to a lack of sleep, and exhaustion from the pain and fear of the last few hours. He’d been up nearly thirty-six hours straight now, and while it was only midafternoon, he wasn’t going to be able to keep his eyes open much longer.
“You know much of the story already, if you know that I added a flaw to the bomb design.”
“You created the bomb design for them because they’re threatening someone you love.” Selene’s eyes were soft.
“Yes,” Luca confessed. It seemed pointless to deny it, when he’d already admitted as much, thanks to his failure to hide his reaction.
“Who made you design the bomb?” Oscar asked.
Luca looked at them, these strangers who felt familiar, who felt like compatriots. It was an odd feeling after so many years of having to keep his own counsel. One he was about to destroy with just three words. “The Bellator Dei.”
Neither of them reacted.
Luca had expected his words to have the conversational equivalent of detonating a bomb.
He thought the Bellator Dei was well known amongst members of the Masters’ Admiralty. They were ancient enemies, the Bellator Dei having almost been destroyed by the amoral and powerful Masters’ Admiralty until eight years ago, when a benefactor, a man who knew the Masters’ Admiralty’s secrets, had stepped in to raise the Bellator Dei to its former glory. The man had supported them in their ordained quest to rid the world of the corrupt and evil secret society that controlled the world governments and promoted unholy unions between one woman and two men.
He’d stopped believing the doctrine years ago, when he realized exactly what the Bellator Dei was, though he’d assumed at least some part of what he’d been taught about their “enemy” was true.
But none of the stories about the Masters’ Admiralty mentioned that the secret society also operated in America.
Luca took another sip of the wine, wincing as the tart liquid stung a cut on his lower lip.
Selene noticed his discomfort. She rose and walked around the kitchen, opening several drawers until she found a towel. Then she went to the freezer, grabbed some ice, and wrapped it up.
His eyes widened with genuine surprise when she handed it to him.
“Here. This might help until the pills kick in.” She leaned closer, inspecting the injuries on his face.
“You know how to take a beating,” Oscar observed. “You were moving away from the worst of the blows.”
Luca nodded. He’d learned at a very young age how to disassociate, how to accept the physical pain while blocking the emotional impact of the beating—the sense of helplessness, the fear. “I have suffered worse beatings than this.”
“From the Bellator Dei?” Oscar asked.
Luca searched Oscar’s expression for any hint of duplicity, still doubtful that these two, who were clearly members of the Masters’ Admiralty, had never even heard of them. How humbling that, while for the members of the Bellator Dei, defeating the Masters’ Admiralty was everything, to members of that secret society, they were nothing.
“Yes, and from earlier. From my childhood.” Luca purposefully didn’t look at them, not wanting to see the pity he knew would be there. “It made me easier for the Bellator Dei to indoctrinate.”
“Indoctrinate?”
“I believe this is the word.” Luca’s English was good, but not perfect.
“I think I know where you’re going with this, and yes, that’s the word,” Selene said.
“The Bellator Dei, the warriors of God, are a cult.”
Oscar put his head on the table and thunked it there several times while muttering “another fucking cult.”
Selene patted Oscar’s back while looking at Luca. “Ignore him. Keep talking.”
“I, uh…” Luca relaxed back into the chair. Their reactions were not what he’d expected, not the anger or derision he’d anticipated. The sense of camaraderie was probably an act, a subtle way of getting him to drop his guard and reveal his secrets. They needn’t try so hard. Luca had no one else to turn to for help.
“They found,” us, “me when I was young. Thirteen. In an orphanage in Tbilisi, Georgia. My name then was Nikoloz.”
“You were adopted by a cult?” Oscar raised his head. “Fuck.”
“I was, and I was grateful f
or what they did for…” He took a sip of wine. “I was desperate for the new start, anxious to leave the boy I’d been behind. I was happy to forget who I’d been, that poor Georgian orphan, to become an Italian. Become a man. The Bellator Dei filled my hungry stomach, gave me responsibilities and a good education. I worked very hard to become a man worthy of them. I embraced my new home, my new country. I was devoted to them and their mission.”
“Which is?” Selene asked.
“To eradicate the Masters’ Admiralty.”
Oscar and Selene stared at him for a moment, then looked at one another.
“They blame the corrupting influence of the Masters’ Admiralty for the current ungodly state of the European governments.”
“Corrupting because…of the trinity marriage?” Selene asked.
“Yes, the union between two men and one woman is—”
“Don’t forget two women with one dude,” Oscar said.
“What?” Luca blinked at him.
“Or three men, three women. It’s any combination of three.”
Luca opened his mouth, then closed it.
“Bet the religious nuts wouldn’t have objected if the trinity marriage was only one man with two women.” Selene’s mouth curled up in a sneer.
“Of course not,” Oscar said. “The whole point of most religious cults is so gross old men can rape teenage girls.”
Luca wanted to run to that chicken phone and call Joli. Wanted to see if this information—which he’d, suspected based on his own observations—would be enough to break their hold on her.
“I saw your brother with Ms. Edwards and Mr. Blake, and I thought they seemed…”
Happy. They’d seemed happy.
Luca looked out the window, at the near white-out conditions outside the now pleasantly warm cabin. Speaking of Mina Edwards reminded Luca of what he’d done. He could justify his actions, remind himself that he had no choice, but those reassurances paled in the face of the pain he’d caused.
“How is Ms. Edwards?” he asked softly. He would never forget the terror in her eyes when he’d strapped the bomb to her. His actions were unforgivable.
Oscar slammed his fist on the kitchen table. “You don’t get to ask about her after you terrorized her. I don’t care if you designed the bomb with a gun to your head. You strapped a bomb to my sister-in-law and sent her out in public. Then you fucking set off smoke bombs in Boston. You gave the city PTSD flashbacks, and—”
“Oscar,” Selene murmured, but Luca cut her off.
“No. He’s correct. What I did to Ms. Edwards was reprehensible.” The sense of camaraderie was gone, burned away by Oscar’s justified anger. It was good that Luca was reminded that he was far past the point of redemption.
“I have done many evil things,” Luca said softly. Perhaps the violence of his childhood and adolescence had broken something inside him. Some moral compass that would have stopped him from doing evil things for a good reason.
“I stopped believing in their mission years ago, but I could not leave the Bellator Dei. I became what they asked, did what they needed. I infiltrated your society by working for Cohortes Praetorianae, which allowed me to both monitor what you knew on behalf of the Bellator Dei, while also truly analyzing the bombs they brought to me. Sometimes I was analyzing the remnants of a bomb I might have designed.”
“You’re a double agent,” Selene said.
“No, because I have no allegiance, but to my…”
“Spit it out,” Oscar growled. “Who? Your parents, brother, sister, wife? Who do they have?”
What was the point of keeping the secret? Perhaps…perhaps they could do what he had not been able to. “My sister. Joli.”
“You did all this to protect your sister.” Selene raised an eyebrow at Oscar. “Something I’m sure you can understand.”
“I wouldn’t force someone to be a suicide bomber.”
“Wouldn’t you? To protect your sister?”
Oscar ran his hand over his jaw, drawing Luca’s attention to the other man’s dark beard. He could just make out the edge of the tattoos on Oscar’s upper arms. Luca wondered what a man like Oscar would ink onto his skin.
“I’d do anything for Sylvia. I mean…Jesus—fuck.”
Oscar didn’t finish his thought, though Luca understood why. It couldn’t be easy to admit the lengths—the horrible, unimaginable lengths—a person would go to for a loved one.
“My sister has no life outside of the Bellator Dei. She still lives with our parents and works for the Bellator Dei. Every day, she is there at their headquarters. She had no way to see what they are. I was never as…devout…as she is, and my calling…” He paused, snorting in grim amusement at the term he’d used. “My orders meant I was able to have a life outside of that place.”
There was silence for several minutes. Selene refilled Oscar’s empty glass, then her own. She extended the bottle toward his still mostly full glass.
“No, thank you,” Luca said quietly. “The Bellator Dei insist on purity of body. No alcohol.”
“Fuck that,” Oscar snorted. “Booze is how God intended all of us to get through this fucking shit show that is life.”
Luca considered that. “When I realized that the Bellator Dei were not warriors of God, but a cult, the first thing I did was get a bottle of cheap vodka and drink it.”
Oscar’s expression relaxed into a smile. “Cheap vodka is not where I would have started.”
“It was…not pleasant,” Luca admitted.
Selene laughed softly and took a sip. The pain medication had kicked in, and Luca’s whole body weighed heavily with exhaustion, both from the dulled edge of the pain and the relief of finally talking about what he’d been doing.
It wouldn’t change his fate, but maybe if the rest of the Masters’ Admiralty thought the same way Selene and Oscar did, he could bargain with them to ensure Joli was safe. The Bellator Dei had to be stopped, and he’d been desperately searching for a way to keep his sister from ending up like…
He would not allow Joli to become collateral damage in a battle she should never have been forced to wage. She’d been young and hungry and desperately seeking approval, love, and their adopted parents and the cult preyed on those things.
Selene and Oscar gave him hope. Hope for Joli.
Hope that she would not end up like Greta.
He had no hope for himself. His life was forfeit, thanks to his actions. A fact that he’d accepted years ago.
Luca pushed himself up from the table, his ribs aching, his shoulder muscles hard as rock. He couldn’t keep going. “If you’ll excuse me.”
“What about food?” Selene asked. “I can start dinner now. None of us has eaten anything.”
He shook his head. “I’m not hungry. Right now, I simply need to rest.”
Selene nodded, and Luca walked stiffly toward the couch.
“Take the bed,” Selene said.
“No, there is only one bed, you should have it.” Luca gestured between them.
“Right, he knows we’re sleeping together because he spied on us with that webcam,” Oscar said, but the anger in his words had no heat behind it.
I didn’t look. I respected your privacy.
Those were the things he should have said.
Instead, what he said was, “I was rather disappointed when you stopped.”
Oscar threw his head back and laughed, and Selene arched a brow at him while smiling.
“Go get in bed,” Selene said. “I think the couch pulls out. We’ll sleep there tonight.”
He should offer to sleep on the floor. He should insist on taking the couch.
But he hurt.
His whole body ached, he was tired, and more than that, it felt good to let Selene and Oscar keep taking care of him, even if all they were doing was letting him have the bed.
Chapter Seven
Selene made Oscar memorize the phone number for the Grand Masters’ advisors—“Call them before nine-one-one unless
you’re having a medical emergency”—before making him dial the newly memorized digits on the chicken phone.
“Yes?” Sebastian answered.
“It’s, uh, Oscar Hayden.” God, he hated talking on the phone. What was this, fucking nineteen-ninety, that he had to talk to someone on an actual landline phone?
“We’re working on extracting you, but it’s not going to happen for at least twenty-four hours. Maybe more, if there’s no break in the weather.”
Oscar glanced out the kitchen window. The snow was really piling up. If he had to guess, he’d say they’d already gotten a foot and it was showing no signs of stopping soon. As a Southerner, he wasn’t accustomed to weather like this. He didn’t like the feeling of being so completely trapped by nature.
“Yeah, I could have told you that.”
Sebastian snorted. “Is there a reason for your call?”
“We have new information.” Selene snatched the chicken leg away from him. Oscar wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her against him so they could both hear. And because he liked the feel of her body against his.
“Tell me.”
Selene briefly outlined what they’d learned from Luca about the Bellator Dei, who stood in righteous moral opposition to the Masters’ Admiralty. About his sister who, unlike him, was still a devout member and therefore essentially a hostage.
“Ohh, plot twist.” Franco’s accented voice sounded distant, but the words were audible, and when Sebastian sighed, Oscar couldn’t stop the snort-laugh.
“That answers some questions,” Sebastian said. “But raises others.” There was a long pause. “Be careful.”
“You think he’s lying?” Oscar asked, all amusement gone.
“Possibly. Right now, we have no proof other than his word that he’s the bomb designer. It could be a ruse.”
“But it was his tablet that Langston accidentally grabbed.”
“It was a tablet in his possession. If he were the man ordered to actually build and test the bomb, wouldn’t he need a copy of the diagram?”
Oscar and Selene frowned at one another. Sebastian had a point, but he hadn’t been in that house. Hadn’t seen the way Luca had taken the beating, heard Luca help them by cluing them in about what to say and not say.