by Mari Carr
“Porch swing,” she corrected with a smile.
“Porch swing. The porch isn’t the part swinging. But I like it.” He patted the spot next to him, inviting her to join him. “Normally people are recruited with promises of the good stuff—money, success, security. Then they agree to the arranged marriage. You’re the first person I’ve recruited, and I have definitely fucked it up.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s easier to fight a war if you believe in what you’re defending.” His tone was serious, not so sarcastic as it had been.
“And what is it I should believe in?”
“The Masters’ Admiralty.”
“The money, success, security.”
Eric rolled his shoulders, and when he spoke, his voice was low, barely above a whisper. “The Masters’ Admiralty was created during a time of strife. The society, the trinity marriages, they were a way to protect the things that we needed to live. Not to survive, but live. The best of us—the artists, the scientists—were members usually protected by their trinity marriages. The painter married in secret to the Lord and Lady who were his patron. And through them, he had family and connections. I’m not great at this—I’m going to need a recruitment director—but when someone explains it right, the Masters’ Admiralty is a…a noble calling.” Eric winced, as if he hated saying the words.
“Is that why you joined?”
Eric snorted. “You want to recruit young men? You tell them they get to be part of a super-secret organization protecting the world. It’s like the Avengers meets being a medieval knight. We’ll come running. I did.”
She wondered if that’s how Charlie had felt. For Hugo, it would have been about protecting knowledge, plus he was a legacy.
“Were you in love with your wives when your marriage was arranged?”
Eric shook his head. “I didn’t know them before the day we were wed. But I did come to love them. Very much. Did I resent the arranged marriage? I did. Even though I knew that’s what was going to happen when I joined. My wives weren’t the kind of women I’d have picked up at a bar.”
“They weren’t your physical preference?”
“They weren’t outgoing. Weren’t stay-out-all-night-dancing, have-sex-on-every-surface-of-the-house, carefree partiers.”
“And you were?”
“When I was off duty, damn right.”
“What did they think about you?”
“Dahlia thought I was a bit stupid. Compared to her, I was. Trina was horrified—I was too big, too loud. If they’d had the choice, I think they would have swapped me out for someone like Hugo.”
“Choice,” she repeated. “You didn’t have one. Neither did they.”
“No.”
“Is that why you’re giving us a choice? Hugo, Charlie, and me?”
He turned to look at her, and his gaze was hard. “We’re at war. We won’t always be, but right now, war. I’m not changing the rules, and as a member, you will obey.” There was iron and steel in his words. The tone of a man who knew battle, who’d sent men into the field of combat and watched them die. A little shiver worked its way down her spine.
Eric must have caught the slight movement because his tone softened, just enough that she could hear it. “But there’s too much chaos surrounding us these days and there are few people we can trust. I have discovered that people fight harder when they have something to fight for. Right now, love is the only thing that’s keeping this society from crumbling around us. In peacetimes, love grows slowly because it can. You love them. And they love you. We need that right now.”
“That’s why you’re making an exception for us.”
Eric pointed at her. “I’m not making an exception. You’re marrying them because I’m ordering you to.”
Sylvia smiled. “Even though I’d do that anyway?”
“Don’t make me regret this. I am now the godlike ruler of your universe.”
“Mmmhmm.” Sylvia planted her feet and tried to push the porch swing. He was too heavy and it didn’t move.
Eric rolled his eyes. “If you come with us, if you get on that plane, then you’re agreeing to all of it. Joining the Masters’ Admiralty, and marrying Hugo and Lancelot.”
“Charlie,” she corrected. Then Sylvia leaned back, considering everything he’d said. Not because she was deciding. She’d made her choice the moment Eric issued the invitation. “It’s going to be hard for me to leave my family.”
“I’d say you could come back and visit, but Juliette Adams is pissed she lost you. Not my fault she didn’t think to woo you with some sexy man-bait.”
Sylvia chuckled. “They are sexy. It’s going to be hard.”
“Two cocks? Never tried it, but I know some ladies you can go to for advice.”
Sylvia hoped she wasn’t blushing. “I mean moving away from home to live with two men. It’s a lot of change.”
“You’re worried about what people will think? Fuck ’em.”
Sylvia raised an eyebrow. “You’re offering to explain all of this to my very protective, very Southern, mind-your-P’s-and-Q’s mama?”
Eric feigned a horrified look. “How about we just get on that plane and put a few thousand miles between us and her before she finds out?”
She laughed as they stood up together. “Coward,” she teased. Wait, was she allowed to do that? To tease him?
Eric shrugged, apparently fine with her comment. “I’ve been called much worse.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sylvia perched gingerly on the edge of Alicia’s hospital bed. It hadn’t occurred to her to question how they’d get someone they were holding against her will onto an international flight. The answer to that unasked question was that they were pretending Alicia was being transported for medical treatment.
Alicia—asleep, thanks to a heavy dose of sedative—had been loaded onto a private plane they were taking to the Isle of Man by the paramedics from the private ambulance company they’d hired to get her from the hospital to the private airfield. Sylvia had watched this woman who’d shaped her life, whom she owed so much to, but who was now a dangerous stranger, being wheeled in—hospital bed and all—to the plane that would take both of them away from their homes.
As she’d been thinking that, Hugo had taken her hand, and her jangling nerves calmed enough that once it was their turn to board, she was able to gawk at the ridiculous luxury. It was Sylvia’s first time on a private plane, but this one wasn’t like those jets she sometimes saw on TV. This was far bigger than those, a Boeing 747-8, with the cabin divided into three sections—a small first-class cabin with those cool individual pod-like seats that turned into beds, then the part with large airline seats where they’d been for takeoff. Instead of rows facing forward, there were sets of four seats arranged to face each other over a small table, similar to the first-class carriage on a train.
Toward the back of the plane was a small hall, off which were two plush bathrooms, a self-service bar, and the private bedroom that took up the back section of the cabin.
They were somewhere over the Atlantic. Sylvia tried not to think too hard about the fact that they’d waited until they were out of U.S. airspace to do what they were about to.
“I’m sorry you must do this.” Hugo had escorted her to the door of the bedroom, his face grave.
“I want to help.” Sylvia had looked at her new fiancé—one of two—smiled, and then opened the door.
Now she was perched on the edge of Alicia’s hospital bed. The older woman looked sickly, her complexion pale against the stark white sheets. Restraints had been added to her wrists and ankles, tethering her to the bed.
This was all part of the plan. The plan Lancelot—no, Charlie—and Eric had drilled into her for the last hour.
Sylvia touched the older woman’s hand. “Alicia?”
Her eyes opened, but she stared into middle space, awake but seemingly not aware.
Sylvia’s eyes drifted to the IV bag that hung off t
he pole on the bed. The sedative was wearing off, but something else had been injected, something that would make Sylvia’s mission easier.
Sodium pentothal. Truth serum. Despite its name, it didn’t make people tell the truth. Narco interrogation was, according to the crash course she’d been given by Charlie, more myth than truth.
Pentothal couldn’t make someone talk. Best-case scenario it would decrease Alicia’s cognitive brain function, in theory making it harder to lie, since lying was more complex than telling the truth. Sylvia wasn’t sure she agreed with that, but Charlie and Eric had just stared at her when she started musing on relative emotional weight of truth versus lies. Hugo had been ready for a good philosophical discussion, but Charlie shook his head, grinning, and told him to “shut the fook up.”
Now it was time for Sylvia’s mission—she had to admit she felt like a considerable badass because she had a mission. It was time to question Alicia.
Sylvia squeezed her hand. “Alicia? Can you hear me?”
Alicia blinked, and after a moment her eyes focused. She looked around, but there was no alarm in her expression. “Where are we?” she asked, seemingly only mildly curious.
“On a private plane.”
“Why?”
Sylvia glanced quickly at the sloped wall behind the head of Alicia’s bed, then back down at her former mentor. “You’re with the Masters’ Admiralty.”
Alicia’s lips curled, a sad impression of a snarl. “Fools.”
“Why?” Sylvia asked softly.
“Why do I fight them? They are evil. The playing field…” Her voice trailed off, eyes closing.
“They keep the playing field off-balance,” Sylvia prompted.
“Yes.”
Again, Sylvia glanced just beyond Alicia’s bed, then back to the woman.
“Why are you obeying the man?” Sylvia asked. The carefully worded question had the intended result.
Alicia’s eyes popped open, then narrowed. “I obey no man.”
“You’re fighting his war.”
“I’m fighting a war that needs to be fought.”
“But a secret society in Europe…it doesn’t really affect us. You’re smarter than that, or at least I thought you were.” Sylvia shrugged. “You must be doing it for him. For Varangian.” She deliberately pronounced it slightly differently than Charlie had.
“Varangian,” Alicia snarled. “He is…” Her face softened. “He is a man worth following.” Alicia swallowed, and it looked painful. Sylvia took a small cup, adjusted the flexible straw, and held it to Alicia’s lips.
When she’d drunk her fill, Sylvia set the cup aside. Alicia lay back, her face going slack for a moment as she took several deep breaths.
“You should run,” Alicia said quietly. “Get away from them. He has plans.”
“Plans?” Sylvia asked, then winced.
Charlie was standing beyond the head of the bed, where Alicia couldn’t see him. He’d slipped in while she was still fully sedated, administered the pentothal, and then waited silently.
They were hoping Alicia might talk to Sylvia, reveal things she otherwise wouldn’t. Sylvia wasn’t a trained interrogator. She was an excellent conversationalist, but that was an entirely different skill set.
And that was why Charlie held a whiteboard and an odorless marker. He glowered at her, the whiteboard reading “Plans?” with a double strikethrough.
Apparently, she shouldn’t have asked that. When Alicia closed her eyes and smiled—a cruel expression, Sylvia winced and mouthed “sorry” to her second fiancé.
He rubbed the side of his hand over the whiteboard, wrote something, then flipped it around.
“I’m going to join them,” Sylvia said, reading the words exactly as he’d written them. “I’m going to be one of them.”
“No!” Alicia’s shook her head, her expression bitterly disappointed. “Why would you do that, after everything I told you?”
She glanced at Charlie, but he merely raised a brow. She’d have to answer this one on her own.
“I’m joining for love,” Sylvia said quietly.
Alicia snorted. “You’re taking a shortcut. You want what they will give you. Wealth. Power.”
“And I will use those for good,” Sylvia promised. “You say the playing field isn’t level, but a level playing field is a myth. I may be a romantic, but I’m not stupid.”
“You’ve chosen the losing side.”
“He won’t win.”
“He will. At the center of the Russian doll is a cataclysm.”
Another glance at Charlie. “Are you one of the dolls?”
“You think you hurt my pride? You can’t. But no, I’m not one of the dolls. My husband, his lovers, my lovers—they were dolls. I am the one who opened those dolls.” Her hands moved, as if twisting apart the top and bottom of a Matryoshka. “I exposed the next piece.”
Sylvia couldn’t stop herself from imagining Alicia twisting apart a person, a real living person, and the visual was so disturbing she had to look away. Charlie waved his arm, forcing her attention back to his board and the next question she was supposed to ask. “Isn’t Varangian the one opening the dolls?”
“No, no,” Alicia murmured, eyes half closed. “He creates the dolls, paints them, nestles them within. And then he goes on to create another set.” Alicia’s laugh was fractured and half-mad. “You inspire me to metaphor. To poetry.”
Charlie had written a single word on the board. “Cataclysm?”
With an apologetic glance at him, Sylvia went rogue, and instead of asking the one word question, she said, “The innermost nesting doll is a child, representing the matriarchal line of a family, the next generation that lives within each woman, or sometimes it’s meant to represent the soul, the outer dolls the body, mind, spirit.”
“Do not discount the obvious symbolism of oppressive fertility—that a woman is empty if she doesn’t make children.”
Even drugged, Alicia was brilliant, and for some reason that made Sylvia shiver. Charlie was waving the whiteboard in the air, a “what the fook are you doing?” expression on his face.
“What’s Varangian’s center doll?” Sylvia asked softly. “What’s the core?”
Alicia’s eyes closed. “The cataclysm.”
“And what is that?”
“Not what…when.” Alicia’s eyes were closed.
“When?”
“Soon, dear, soon. Do not join them. Do not stay with them. He will end them all.”
“You mean a bomb?” Sylvia asked Charlie’s question.
“Yes and no. Nothing so simple.”
“Alicia, I’m going to be with them. Will I die?”
“You will, or will wish you had.”
Sylvia had to take a minute to look away. For a moment, she seriously considered heeding Alicia’s advice. When they landed, she wouldn’t even leave the airport. She would turn around and go home. She would be with her brothers, she’d beg Juliette to let her join the Trinity Masters. She’d be safe and…
And she wouldn’t have Charlie, wouldn’t have Hugo.
Charlie was writing. Sylvia forced down the sick feeling and asked the next question. For an hour, she asked and re-asked the question, but Alicia didn’t reveal any more. Either she didn’t know more, or the drugs weren’t powerful enough to make her reveal things her mind had strong walls around.
Finally, Charlie shook his head. He picked up a needleless syringe, waited for Alicia’s eyes to be closed, and then quickly injected whatever was in the syringe into the port in the IV bag. They sat quietly for several minutes before Charlie motioned it was safe for her to get up.
Sylvia rose wearily, leaning into her fiancé when he put an arm around her. He kissed her head and led her out of the small bedroom.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Charlie left the private room at the back of the plane with Sylvia, hating that he’d had to involve her in the interrogation. He’d seen how much each of Alicia’s answers had scared her
.
Hugo had been right. Right from the start. They’d asked for too much, taken too much from her. What could they possibly give her to stack up against all the pain and terror they’d delivered right to her front doorstep?
The interrogation had worked, in that it proved Alicia had information they needed. Between what Sylvia had gleaned when she’d been Alicia’s captive, and the name he’d gotten during his brief interrogation, they had more information about the mastermind than they did before.
But it also added a new wrinkle. The cataclysm? What the fuck was that?
Never mind what. When was it going to happen?
Alicia, alive and in their control, was the best hope they had for taking this guy down. Sadly, there wasn’t a way to crack someone’s head open like an egg and shake the information out. Sylvia had gotten more out of her than he would have using narco interrogation, but it wasn’t enough. He was going to have to interrogate Alicia when they got to the Isle of Man. It was never something he looked forward to—he wasn’t a psychopath—but he was dreading it more than normal. He didn’t want to be waterboarding and electrocuting Alicia for days on end, ignoring every humane instinct in his body so that he could torture her with sleep, food, and water deprivation. He preferred to be protecting and loving Hugo and Sylvia.
Sylvia was silent until they were alone in the hallway. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get more from her.”
He gave her a long, deep kiss. “You were incredible.”
Together, they walked back to the main cabin. One of the Spartan Guards, Nikolas, sat in the aisle seat against the bulkhead made by the bathroom wall, where he could see the entirety of the main cabin. The other guard, Marie, was no doubt in the forward cabin, where the first-class lay-flat seats were. He was impressed by how alert, how at the ready Nikolas was. They were all in midflight, so he would have expected the guard to be somewhat more relaxed. Instead, his eyes were scanning the area constantly, as if he expected the enemy to leap out of the restroom or from behind one of the lounge chairs.