by Brynn Kelly
“They turned me back into a human.”
Gabriel tilted his head, gazing steadily into Rafe’s eyes. “Impossible. They just created a different machine. One that says and does the right things outside, but inside will always be a Lost Boy.”
Rafe didn’t trust himself to speak. He couldn’t let Gabriel free his ghosts.
“Did they tell you that you were not responsible for your actions, because you were a child? This is where our paths split. I claim responsibility for everything I do, everything I have done. I am at peace with it. You, my friend, are haunted, I can see it in your soul.”
“Enough.”
Gabriel laughed. “I do not believe it—they turned my fearless Raphael into a coward. The boy you were, the things you did—you cannot escape that. It is branded into you, as clearly as...” His gaze flicked to the scar on Rafe’s arm. He spat on the sandy ground. “You have run away from everything you have done, you have reinvented yourself as a hero soldier and a father, but it does not change who you are.”
Rafe sensed the recesses of his mind melting into darkness. Non. He must stay present. “What do you want, Gabriel?”
“Answers, Raphael. To start—I am curious about you being a father. How do you know what to do, when you never had a father? Theo says you do not beat him. Maybe this is why he is a coward, like you have become. But perhaps you do not see your son much. You ran away from him to join the French, like you ran away from me. You like running away. But you have found you cannot run from yourself, haven’t you, my friend?”
Rafe swallowed. How could Gabriel read him so clearly, after all these years?
“Ah, I see there is truth to this. You feel deeply for this boy. This must make a man weak. It has already made you kidnap a woman. What else will it make you do?”
Rafe’s gaze flicked to the weapons Gabriel’s men had taken from him, now lying on the veranda of the large building. The men stood behind Rafe and Holly, M16s slung from their shoulders.
“Shoot me, Raphael? Yes, that is what you itch to do, isn’t it? But then your son will die also. So this will not work. Besides, killing me would be too easy. You would only be finishing off what you started all those years ago.”
Holly stepped up, level to Rafe. The muscles in her face were tight. What must she think of him? He should have told her the truth, opened up to her about what he’d done, warned her what she was getting into. And Theo—what had Gabriel told Theo?
“I don’t want to kill you, Gabriel. I just want to take my son and my—and Holly—and leave you to do whatever it is you’re doing. You’ve proved yourself the winner in this game. You’ve shown yourself to be the better man. Let’s take the easy way out here, for everyone.”
“Oh, I will give you a chance to save your son—and your girlfriend. But I will make it interesting.”
“Gabriel—”
“Do not be in a hurry to leave, my friend, not after all these years.” He wandered back to the veranda, dusted a wooden banister with a handkerchief and leaned back against it. “I have many questions. Such as, did you choose to play the hero or the villain when you were on Penipuan Island? I think the hero, considering that Holly is here, standing with you.” He studied Holly, head to foot, slowly. “He has been practicing that a lot, lately, I think. Capitaine Rafe Angelito. Ah, this is not the Raphael I know him to be, my dear.”
“You don’t know him, then.”
“Holly, no,” Rafe murmured. Gabriel knew so much more about him than Holly ever would. She wouldn’t stand by him like this if she knew the truth. He’d deceived her, endangered her. Unforgivable.
“I know precisely who he is,” said Gabriel. “He is me. We were born from the same fires. Had Raphael not abandoned us, he would have become the leader of the militia, not me. He would have been very good, I think, much more ruthless than me. This man you see here, this hero, he is not real. He has been constructed out of evil, a mansion built of rotten sticks. He might present well, but when he crumbles, the real man will emerge.”
Holly’s hand flicked up to the purple bruises on her neck. Rafe’s skin crawled. “Holly, don’t listen,” he said in an undertone too low for Gabriel’s ears.
“But I think you have seen this real man.” Gabriel pushed off the veranda and sauntered up to Holly, his guards shadowing him. He raised both hands to her neck. “This man placed his hands here and here, and squeezed.”
Holly planted a hand on his chest and shoved. His expression darkened. Reading his intent, Rafe lurched forward. The guards caught him, one on each shoulder, as Gabriel plunged a fist into Holly’s stomach. She crumpled, gasping. Rafe shrugged off one man and staggered toward Gabriel, the other guy hanging on his shoulder with his feet skidding along the ground. The son of a bitch was going down. As Gabriel retreated, shaking his hand, two more soldiers ran forward to close ranks around their leader, guns raised.
“Ah, yes, your anger is there, Raphael. Just like mine. You would sacrifice your son’s life, just to get to me. Yes, this is the Raphael I know. I am glad to have you back.”
“Holly?”
“I’m okay,” she squeaked.
Bile rose from Rafe’s stomach. Gabriel nodded at his man, and the guy released Rafe. Rafe bent over Holly and laid his palm on her back. “You’re sure?”
She nodded, her freckles standing out against her blanched skin. He ground his teeth. Gabriel would pay for that.
“My dear, you fight for him, and look at him with respect, but you must know you can mean nothing to him. No one can mean anything to a man like this, a man programmed to feel nothing. Oh yes, I think you will enjoy the future I have in mind for you. You are one of these women who likes a violent man incapable of caring about you, yes?”
Rafe bowed his head, his chest tightening. Focus. He couldn’t afford to direct his anger to the wrong place. Holly pushed to her knees, panting. She wouldn’t want to let Gabriel think he’d broken her. Rafe gripped her waist and helped her rise to her feet.
“How are you imagining you will kill me, right now, Raphael? Blow my head apart with a bullet? Decapitate me with a machete? Pound my face into pulp with your fists? Cut out my entrails and watch me die? Or, yes, strangle me. Effective, if a little too tidy.”
Rafe tightened his hand around Holly’s waist. She hugged her arm around her torso and gripped his fingers. Seeking comfort, or warning him to stay grounded?
“I don’t want to kill you, Gabriel,” said Rafe. “This can end peacefully.”
“Or do you order other people to do your killing now, Capitaine? My dear, you should know he is capable of doing all these things I speak of. I have seen him do these things to women and children, to people who do not matter and cannot fight back. He was very good at it. Our commander would shout at the rest of us that we should be more like Raphael. I was proud he was my friend. Many years later when I learned this word ‘prodigy,’ I thought immediately of Raphael. He was a killing prodigy. Are you still?”
“You are lying,” said Holly. Her voice was strong, and her grip on Rafe’s hand was true, but she’d become still as ice. Oh yes, doubt was creeping in.
“Am I? Raphael, would you like to join this enlightening conversation?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“You will note, my dear, he does not deny it. He cannot, because it is the truth, and he is an honorable man now, a man who does not lie, though his life is a lie.”
Holly squeezed Rafe’s hand, making him feel like more of a fraud.
“Somehow,” continued Gabriel, “Raphael has manipulated many people into believing he is good—the aid workers, the French military, his dead wife, his son—and even you. But you know the truth, do you not? You are too smart not to have figured it out.”
He stepped out from between his men, his gaze fixed on Holly. She stared back, chin raised.
“You have seen the true Raphael,” said Gabriel. “Yes. I see the doubt flickering in your eyes. You think I am the evil one here? No. Everything that is inside my head is inside his. He has just done a better job of suppressing it. The man he really is can be drawn out of him.”
Holly shook her head, as if trying to shake Gabriel’s words from her brain.
“My dear, you and I have something in common. We have both suffered the consequences of caring for this man. You see this?” He placed a finger on his scarred nose. “Raphael, tell her how I got this.”
“Gabriel, stop this.”
“Tell her,” Gabriel spat. “Or I will have your son branded, this minute.”
Holly’s fingers tightened on Rafe’s hand, strong as claws.
“Tell her who did this to me.” When Rafe didn’t respond, Gabriel shouted instructions to his men, switching languages: “Heat up the brand.”
Chapter 28
“I did it,” Rafe whispered, his chest tightening. “I was the one. Call off your dogs.”
Holly’s grip flinched but held.
“They will not act until they are ordered to. They know how to follow instructions, just as you once did.” Gabriel turned to Holly. “Our commander ordered him to kill me—me who was like a brother to him—to prove his loyalty to the militia. I did not believe he would. I believed our friendship would triumph. You know what happened? The machete got stuck in bone.” He stroked his nose. “If he had not struggled to pull it out and finish the job, he would have finished me. The commander only stepped in to stop him because he wanted me for his Lost Boys, too. He needed numbers that day, so I got...lucky. Oh, yes, we both bear the scars of this dangerous man, my dear. You are lucky yours are not permanent.”
Gabriel fingered Holly’s amulet again, his hands brushing her T-shirt. Rafe balled his fist. Lucky Holly was holding him so damn tight. He couldn’t lose it, not with Theo so close.
“When I first saw you with this, my dear, I thought you must have taken it from Raphael’s dead body. A souvenir, perhaps. I thought you merciless. You also used it to manipulate Theo and save yourself.” He stepped back and called over his shoulder to one of his guards, ordering him to fetch a wooden box from his desk. “Now, I think Raphael gave it to you, which makes you even more merciless. You would steal a man’s heart to save yourself.”
Holly kept her chin defiant, though Gabriel towered over her.
“Ah, I see this is true. This amulet, it is a tradition of my people—of Raphael’s people. You give it only to those closest to you. When you become betrothed, you chip off a part of it for your future wife. When you have a son, you chip off a part for him. The smaller the amulet gets, the more power it has. Only when there is dust left do you make a new one for the next generation. You must have made quite an impression on my friend.”
A guard walked out and handed him a small carved box. Gabriel ran a finger over its grooves. “Most of our people in the refugee camps had these amulets. I once had one of my own, but it was stolen from me while I slept, when I was a very young boy. When I became the commander, I had our former camps searched for it. I found it hanging around a man’s neck, a man a little older than me. He had taken it because he had lost his, lost his link to his past. I took his neck and the amulet in one.”
Rafe swallowed.
“For a long time I have kept it safe in this box. A year ago, I began to wonder. These are unique stones—their coloring, their feel. I hired a geologist. She traced my amulet back to a rock formation near an abandoned village in the northwest of our country.”
“Whatever game you’re playing—”
“Quiet, Raphael. You will be very interested to hear this, I promise. Two months ago I traveled there. I found an old woman who had been there when the village was attacked by our enemy. She recognized my amulet—these are like fingerprints to our people. She remembered my family. She told me my father had been shot, along with all the other men. My pregnant mother was beaten and died slowly of her untended wounds. My older sister was taken to their rape camps and never seen again. This woman helped many children escape—I might have been one of them. She could not remember my real name.”
“I’m sorry.” Holly’s voice trembled. It sounded like genuine sympathy.
Even Rafe felt a tug in his gut. For Gabriel to find his home after so long, to find out what had happened to his family after decades of wondering... A lump grew in his throat. That had to mean something, even to Gabriel. It would mean something to Rafe. He frowned. Was this also the village he came from?
Gabriel handed the box to Holly. “Open it, please.”
Holly looked questioningly at Rafe. He shrugged. She released his hand, which he kept firmly on her waist, and popped open the box. Inside lay a gray-green stone.
“What do you make of that, my dear?”
She cradled it in her palm. “It...looks the same as the others, just bigger.”
Gabriel instructed the guard to remove Theo’s amulet and bring it out.
“Leave him be,” said Rafe.
“Do not worry, Papa, I will give it back.”
A cry of pain shot out from the building. Rafe released Holly and lurched forward, his face heating. Four guns were leveled at his face.
“If you want to protect your son, you must calm down, my friend,” said Gabriel.
The guard returned, Theo’s amulet strung from his fingers, the leather snapped where it’d been yanked from the boy’s neck. Rafe balled his fists. Les salauds. Another thing they would pay for.
Gabriel held out a hand to Rafe. “Your amulet, too.”
Rafe looked over his shoulder at Holly. She widened her eyes as if to say, play along. He ripped the leather from his neck and slapped it on Gabriel’s palm.
Gabriel passed it to Holly. “What can you conclude from these, my dear?”
“They look like they were cut from the same rock.” She took off the amulet she wore and cupped all four stones in her hand, their leather cords hanging between her fingers. “They form a complete ball.”
“What?” said Rafe, stepping back to her.
Holly opened her fingers. The pieces huddled together in her palm. Each stone was worn smooth—Gabriel’s bigger and a little rougher than the others—but they fit together.
“The missing pieces of our family, together for the first time in decades,” said Gabriel.
“You are brothers,” whispered Holly, looking sideways at Rafe, as if she expected him to explode.
“We are not brothers.” Rafe could barely speak above a whisper. “He is manipulating us.”
“You have already figured this out, have you not, my dear?”
“There are similarities,” said Holly, tentatively. “Your walk, your bearing, your coloring. And your faces, from what I can make...”
“From what you can make out from my disfigured one?”
She exhaled. “Yes.”
“It was the old woman who made me wonder. She asked if my younger brother survived—a dark, pretty boy with eyes like chocolate.”
“You describe half the boys at the camps,” Rafe said. “And you can’t know that the stone you found was yours. There are many like that.”
“I thought of that possibility, little brother. That is why I sent your son’s DNA to a laboratory a week ago. I can show you the results, if you doubt me. A quarter of our DNA is the same. He is my nephew.”
Rafe gaped. He searched his mind for evidence it was true—some memory, some flash of knowledge. All he knew was that Gabriel had always been there, right from his scattered earliest memories.
“Tell me, Raphael. If you could get hold of the people who killed our parents, who took our sister, what would you do to them?”
Rafe shook his head, staring at the stones in Holly’s palm.
He could absorb none of it. He had long ago given up hope of finding his parents—but a sister? She could still be alive.
“You would track these dogs down, would you not? You would do the same to them as they did to our parents, to us, to our sister?”
“No.” But, hell, he truly didn’t know. He felt nothing. Even he should feel something. Some neurons should be connecting, figuring out what this all meant. He had a family, a place of origin—the pieces that were missing from the story of his life. Gabriel was his family. This should all mean something.
“You would do the same. I know this.” Gabriel spoke almost pityingly. “You would go to that black place that beckons you.”
Rafe’s gaze snapped up.
“Ah, you know this black place, do you not? We all do, my brother.”
“Don’t call me that.” Rafe’s voice sounded distant, even to him.
“It is the truth. Yes, you would do the same as I did.”
“What did you do?”
“What do you think I did? I found the villages of our enemy. I found them, their children, their grandchildren. I dealt with it.” He smiled at Holly. “I think that is what you Americans call getting closure.”
“You’re an animal,” Holly said, clutching the stones as if protecting them.
“No, my dear. I am human, and that is far worse.”
“Papa!” Theo’s voice hit a new note of anxiety. The dagger twisted in Rafe’s heart.
“Courage, Theo. I will come for you soon,” Rafe yelled, in French.
His urge to go to his son was like a tide pulling his chest. But Gabriel held all the power. His vision swam. Putain—the early warning sign. He closed his eyes, tight, and lifted his face to the sky. Stay in control.
“So you see, it has been an interesting year for me,” Gabriel continued. “A soul-searching year. I like this English phrase. I found my brother, after many, many years of hunting. I found my nephew. I found the place I was born. I have spent many days thinking about all this, about whether I am glad Raphael is my brother, or whether it hurts more, to know it was my brother who abandoned me. Character building—that is what you Americans would say, yes?”