“No,” he replied with absolute certainty. “I like being on this side of the show for once.”
Bailey’s gaze softened. She kissed him on the cheek and then she darted indoors.
He stood there watching the door for a minute, smiling dumbly, so in love with her, and then he turned to his family and jogged down the steps. “Thanks for coming.”
“It’s a great idea,” Griffin answered, his voice low and modified.
Evan took in the house, eyes dancing over the structure. “Nice place. Kind of old school cool.”
Sloan’s eyes crinkled around the edges, and Tony could tell she wanted to say something snarky, but gloriously kept it to herself. She focused on Tony. “You joining us after? We’re going deep into the south-side and then back to base to plan the infiltration of you-know-where to get you-know-who back.”
Daisy. His heart swelled. He’d been itching to get her back after having to leave her in the sewer. “Hell yeah, I’ll be in for that.” He put his hands in his pockets and took a deep breath. It felt good to be asked. “But probably much later. Apparently Bailey has a surprise for me. So”—he waved his communicator watch—“I’ll find out where you are and come join later.”
“Ooh. Tony and Bailey, kissing in a tree,” she sang and then gestured toward the house.
“Don’t think it’s that kind of surprise.” He gave a deprecating laugh. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to the kids.”
Two hours later, Tony waved off the Deadly Seven crew from the front porch. It was getting late and a strict curfew kept the Hudson House in order. Bailey and a handful of the group were with him, chattering loudly. Once his siblings were gone, Bailey tried to usher them all back inside, but they were still pumped from the recent activities.
“Come on,” she said. “We’re about to break curfew. Agnes will kill me if I don’t get you in.”
A chorus of groans passed around. Elena and another girl were the loudest, but when Tyson and Simon lended their voices, it got rowdy. They were full of too much energy.
Bailey pulled out a DVD case from behind her back and waggled it before them. “I have a surprise movie for everyone to watch, but we have to go inside.”
“What is it?” Elena asked.
Tony narrowed his eyes at Bailey. She lifted her gaze to his.
“Is that what I think it is?” he asked, pointing.
“If you think it’s an early screener copy of your film, then yes it is.”
“No way!” Elena gasped and snatched it from Bailey and ran into the house. “The one that got smashed up by the monster?”
“Can’t believe you just said monster,” Tyson teased.
“Shut up. It was real,” she replied.
“And Sasquatches and Yetis are too,” Simon smirked, but then he lifted his chin at Tony. “Still. It would be pretty cool to watch this before it’s out in the cinema.”
“Well, it’s out tomorrow, so we need to go in now and watch it.” Bailey used her forceful stare at them, and they all ducked their heads.
“This is so weird,” Tyson mumbled to Simon with a glance thrown at Tony.
Simon took the DVD from Elena. “Weird but cool.”
“Just go easy on me, guys,” Tony laughed.
They responded with the usual taunts about his acting style and he shooed them inside until it was only Bailey and him left on the porch.
He gathered her into his arms and smiled down at her fondly. “Thank you.”
“Thank you too. They loved the demonstration. I think it will help keep trouble away from the house.”
She threaded her fingers through his hair and leaned in to kiss him. The warm touch of her lips melted Tony’s insides. He sank into her kiss, adding his tongue, growing the pace until she squeaked at his demands.
“Wow,” she breathed, pulling away, eyes dazed. “More of that later, but we need to get inside. Not sure how long we have before Agnes kicks us out.”
A frown crinkled his forehead when he thought about a certain someone who hadn’t been interested in the demo.
“You okay?” Bailey asked.
“Yeah, just noticed someone wasn’t participating.”
“Don’t worry about Akeef.” She patted his arm. “He’s into the studio and you chat with him when you stop by. Doesn’t matter if he’s not into the self-defense. At least there’s something he’s focusing on. All you can do is keep showing up. Eventually, he’ll realize it’s not just for show and grow to trust you.”
Keep showing up.
Tony didn’t move. Instead, he looked out into the night where his siblings had gone, and stood with a small smile frozen on his face. They’d all come so far. It wasn’t that long ago Sloan had been lazying about, unable to get out of bed. Evan had been fighting in underground cage fights. Griffin had been thieving to keep his internal sin in balance.
Mary had been right. As long as they kept trying, things would get better. He wasn’t psychic like Evan, and couldn’t say what the future held, but he knew they wouldn’t forget Daisy. She was family. Eventually, she’d come to trust them.
Epilogue
In the dark office of a building in the Quadrant, Julius Allcott sat, watching recorded televised footage of a movie premiere at his desk computer. Despair stood at his right shoulder, as usual, but this time Levi Van Jansen was there, watching from his left.
“I don’t understand,” Julius said. Again. He didn’t have time for this. “What exactly am I looking for?”
“Wait,” Van Jansen said. “It is almost time.”
Julius locked his jaw and turned back to the computer screen on his desk. “We’ve been through this already. They have nothing to link the plant back to us. Why haven’t we put this to rest to focus on the replicates?”
“Wait. Wait. There.”
Julius squinted, still not understanding. It was a collection of people arriving on the red carpet. Then he noticed familiar faces. The Lazarus family. A blond woman with curly hair walked next to Wrath. He had her held tightly to his side as his eyes scanned the cordoned off area full of cameras and people, always vigilant. But it was when they turned at an angle that Julius sat up. He tapped the screen, zooming in.
“That one. The blond woman,” he said.
“Ja. Precisely.” Van Jansen smiled. “She is pregnant.”
“With a powered Lazarus’s child.” Julius’s heart leapt into his throat and he swiveled in his chair to meet eyes with the geneticist. “You’re a genius.”
“All his DNA will be unlocked,” Van Jansen replied. “Meaning all her stem cells will have similar activated genes. Short of taking one of the Lazarus siblings themselves, and making them pregnant, this was our next bet. Frankly, it’s like winning the lotto.”
Despair stiffened. Julius tilted his head to catch sight of her in his periphery. Wearing casual clothes, he noted she hadn’t been in her white leather enforcer outfit in weeks. It hadn’t escaped his notice that she’d been distant lately. Distant and ineffectual. There had been too many blackouts to count. She’d failed at collecting a sample of Gluttony’s unlocked DNA. She’d failed at eliminating the plant-creature. It pained him to say that her time with him was coming to an end. She’d been an effective tool. His original plan had been to use her reproductive organs, create his own stem cells, but this was better. They didn’t have to wait. Wrath’s woman had been heavily pregnant.
A plan formed in his head. He tapped his lip, turning to study Despair with open curiosity.
“What?” she snapped.
He pretended to change his mind and turned back to the screen. “It’s nothing. Perhaps I have ruined my chance.”
While he stared at the footage, he contained his smile, but when she spoke, he couldn’t hold it.
“It’s not nothing,” she said. “Tell me.”
He forced a contrite look on his face. His hand went to the locket around his neck, and he faced her. “My darling, you were right. Earlier, you accused me of not treating you like family. You are my f
amily, all that is left, and I should hold a piece of you inside this locket. Just in case anything were to happen to you.”
Her breath hitched. “Really?”
“Of course. It’s terrible that I’ve been so thoughtless.” Opening the drawer on his desk, he took out a small pair of scissors. “Here. Let’s sort this out now. Will you give me a lock of your hair?”
For DNA replication, he required the follicle at the root, but she didn’t know that.
She hesitated and looked at the screen. Anger swirled in him like a tempest. How dare she second-guess his motives. But then she took a strand of her hair and tugged it from the root, follicle and all.
Julius’s heart skipped a beat. Fear trickled into his body.
“That’s a good girl.” He smiled and took it from her. He frowned as he opened his locket with trembling fingers. “I can’t imagine a life without you in it. After all we’ve been through together. But…” he paused, before he put her hair in the locket.
“But what?” she asked.
Julius met eyes with Van Jansen and then sighed before turning back to Despair. “It’s just, without those stem cells, these strands of hair are worthless. If we can’t bring you back permanently, then what is the point? If you die, then it will be final, and you won’t be able to share in this new wonderful world we are creating.”
Her brows puckered in the middle and her eyes turned fierce. “Then I’ll get it for you.”
He slumped and put his fist on the desk, her hair still contained inside. “It’s a fortress there. It’s impossible to get close to the pregnant woman.”
“Then I’ll make them believe I’m coming back to them. I’ll start working on a plan right now.”
Julius stood up. He kissed her on the cheek and made sure the tears shone in his eyes. “I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”
She smiled tentatively at him, bowed and then left.
When she was gone, Julius looked down at the open locket in one hand, and Despair’s silver strand of hair in the other. Then he snapped the locket shut and threw the hair on the floor.
“You are not keeping it?” Van Jansen asked.
“No,” he replied. “There is no coming back from what she is, and there is no room for someone like her in the new world.”
WHAT’S NEXT?
a note from Lana xx
Tony and Bailey have their happy ever after, but dark times are brewing. The Syndicate is closing in, their nefarious plans are becoming personal, and Daisy is almost out of time. Liza finally finds out who her mate is, and the bond half-triggered during the innocence of her youth. The man she’s destined to be with is her good friend and FBI Violent Crimes FBI Special Agent Joey Luciano, except… he’s dating someone else. Yep. You guessed it, Lust will feature a friends to lovers scenario. I can’t wait to share it with you.
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Characters & Glossary
The Deadly Seven
(Appearance in order of age from youngest to eldest)
ENVY: Evan Lazarus
SLOTH: Sloan Lazarus
GLUTTONY: Tony Lazarus
GREED: Griffin Lazarus
LUST: Liza Lazarus
WRATH: Wyatt Lazarus
PRIDE: Parker Lazarus
DESPAIR: Daisy Lazarus
Mary Lazarus:Adoptive Mother of the Deadly Seven and ex assassin for the Hildegard Sisterhood
Flint Lazarus: Adoptive Father of the Deadly Seven
Other Characters:
Dr. Grace Go: Surgeon at Cardinal City General Hospital. Mate to Evan Lazarus.
Lilo Likeke: Investigative reporter at the Cardinal Copy. Mate to Griffin Lazarus.
Misha Minski: Yoga instructor, exotic dancer and Mate to Wyatt Lazarus.
Maximillian Johnson: Sloan’s mate and owner of the Nightingale Securities firm.
Bailey Haze: Tony’s mate and ex CIA operative.
The Syndicate
The Syndicate is a secret organization who believe the only way to save the world from its own harmful self is to eradicate all sinners, even if that means destroying half the world.
THE BOSS: Julius Allcott
SARA MADDEN: Ex-girlfriend of Wyatt Lazarus
FALCON/DESPAIR/DAISY: Enforcer for the Syndicate and lost eldest sister to the Deadly Seven.
BARRY PINKERTON: Old friend of Flint’s and ex employee of the Syndicate. He’s now in hiding with his daughter.
LEVI VAN JANSEN: Evil Syndicate geneticist.
The Hildegard Sisterhood
The Hildegard Sisterhood are nuns with a history reaching back to medieval times when the original Sister Hildegard struggled against a male dominated clergy. Now the world know her as the founder of scientific history in Germany, but back then, her opinions were disregarded until she claimed to have visions from God himself. Belittling herself as a woman in order to be heard was only the beginning of the humiliation the woman faced.
So she started her own abbey filled with women. That same abbey exists today and is a place where women are celebrated and their education encouraged—minus the male influence. Records at the Sisterhood archives reveal they had a hand in the rise of many women over history from Joan of Arc to Indira Ghandi. From Catherine the Great to Margaret Thatcher.
Under the surface of the auspicious abbey lays the secret mission that no woman will ever suffer the same struggle as Hildegard and they condition a select few “Sinners” to enforce this mission. These Sinners are trained as assassins for the cause: Sinners like Mary Lazarus. A necessary evil.
In the prequel novella, Sinner, Mary Lazarus escaped the Sisterhood who wanted to use the children for their own gain, much like the Syndicate who created them. To this day, she is still on the run.
Also by Lana Pecherczyk
The Deadly Seven
(Paranormal Romance)
Sinner
Envy
Greed
Wrath
Sloth
Gluttony
Lust
Pride
Despair
Game of Gods
(Romantic Urban Fantasy )
Soul Thing
The Devil Inside
Playing God
Game Over
Game of Gods Box Set
(all four books in one)
Robin Lockslay
(Heist Romantic Comedy)
Robin Lockslay
About the Author
OMG! How do you say my name?
Lana (straight forward enough - Lah-nah) Pecherczyk (this is where it gets tricky - Pe-her-chick).
I’ve been called Lana Price-Check, Lana Pera-Chickywack, Lana Pressed-Chicken, Lana Pech…that girl! You name it, they said it. So if it’s so hard to spell, why on earth would I use this name instead of an easy pen name?
To put it simply, it belonged to my mother. And she was my dream champion.
For most of my life, I’ve been good at one thing – art. The world around me saw my work, and said I should do more of it, so I did.
But when at the age of eight, I said I wanted to write stories, and even though we were poor, my mother came home with a blank notebook and a pencil saying I should follow my dreams, no matter where they take me for they will make me happy. I wasn’t very good at it, but it didn’t matter because I had her support and I liked it.
She died when I was thirteen, and left her four daughters orphaned. Suddenly, I had lost my dream champion, I was split from my youngest two sisters and had no one to talk to about the challenge of life.
So, I wrote in secret. I poured my heart out daily to a diary and sometimes imagined that she would listen. At the end of the day, even if she couldn’t hear, writing kept
that dream alive.
Eventually, after having my own children (two firecrackers in the guise of little boys) and ignoring my inner voice for too long, I decided to lead by example. How could I teach my children to follow their dreams if I wasn’t? I became my own dream champion and the rest is history, here I am.
When I’m not writing the next great action-packed romantic novel, or wrangling the rug rats, or rescuing GI Joe from the jaws of my Kelpie, I fight evil by moonlight, win love by daylight and never run from a real fight.
I live in Australia, but I’m up for a chat anytime online. Come and find me.
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Gluttony Page 28