tmp_2e400c932cd646dccd3ec2acdba43a25_mQf9rc.fixed.tidied

by BSmith

  “Joey, Marcello. Meet me in my office first thing tomorrow morning-“

  A scream pierced the silence of the house. Marcello’s eyes jerked to the ceiling.

  Kayla.

  “Tomorrow morning, Joey,” Marcello said before he dropped the phone back into the cradle and went jogging up the stairs. He pushed open the door to Kayla’s room. Mari’s daughter was sitting up in her bed, her hands clenched in her long, blonde hair. Kayla frequently suffered from nightmares. The things the Brotherhood had done to her had left their mark, the demons of the past given free rein in the shadows of her dreams. Mari had been the one to calm her when this happened, but Mari wasn’t here anymore. Heart twisting, Marcello snapped on the dim light on her nightstand, and sat down on the edge of her bed.

  Kayla wasn’t his daughter. She was an enemy sent to kill him. But the only thought that filled Marcello’s head as he looked at her tortured face was that she was Mari’s daughter. “Shh, Kayla, I’m here.” She was trembling. Marcello found her hands and pulled them away from her hair. Kayla jerked when he touched her, snapping frantic eyes up to his own. She stared at him in the silence, uncertainty written across her features. Slowly, Marcello drew her against him, wrapping his arms protectively around her.

  At first, she resisted. After a moment, she sank into him, burrowing into his chest, and let her tears come, open and ragged. They soaked into his shirt. “They got Mom. They got Mom,” she whispered, barely audible.

  Marcello heard her. He wondered if Kayla had any idea what she was whispering, or if she was still too caught up in the scary place between a bad dream and a reality that might have been no better. Swallowing back the lump in his throat, he kissed the top of his step-daughter’s head, and simply held her. “I’m here, Kayla. I’m here.” He wouldn’t tell her it was all right, because it wasn’t. But, one way or another, he’d make it even.

  Chapter 5

  “We Terenzios are always pushing. Sometimes, we go too far.”

  -Liliana Terenzio

  June 22, 1974 - 7:44 AM

  Alcyone Island

  Dion Corporation Headquarters

  Marcello, stop and think.” High above Alcyone on the 52nd floor of the Dion Corporation building, Joey “The Mouth” Terenzio stood in front of Marcello’s desk. “It’s not time to start the war. That isn’t your job.”

  Marcello stood with his back to his younger cousin, staring out at the island paradise below. “They killed, Mari, Joey.” His voice was sharp. Anger hid the nearly overwhelming pain.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know they did.” Joey’s voice gentled. “But if you start this tit for tat, you know what’s gonna happen. It aint time yet.”

  “They took something from me, Joey. Something very precious.” Marcello slowly turned around. “I will not let that slide.”

  “Marc, you do this now you fuck it up for the future, and you know it.” Joey frowned, albeit gently at him. “You’re pivotal. What we are doing right now is pivotal for your grandchildren. You gotta think about them, too.”

  Rational thinking led him to the truth of Joey’s words. His purpose was simple; prepare his family for the Ascension. Stay off the radar, move the pieces into place so when the time came, checkmate would be inevitable. Except, he didn’t feel rational, because a short thirty-six hours ago, his wife of thirty years had died in his arms.

  “Vengeance won’t bring her back. And it won’t take the pain away,” Joey said.

  “No, it won’t.” His eyes darkened. “But it will make me feel better.”

  Joey frowned. Marcello wasn’t going to let this go, and to be honest, he truly couldn’t blame him. Nobody got away with fucking with family, period. “I think I’ve got something, then. It won’t take you to Mari’s killer, but if you want to take a swing at them, this is it.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I think I found Dr. Joseph Mengele.”

  Dr. Mengele was the man who had programmed Kayla against them. “Where?”

  “Ridgecrest, California. And it just so happens I’ve got to be in LA anyway to stick my foot in Jimmy Regace’s ass.” Jimmy Regace was the crime boss in LA. “How about you tag along and get some aggression out?”

  Marcello nodded once. “We’ll go after the funeral.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  §

  June 26, 1974 - 10:10 PM

  Ridgecrest, CA

  Home of Joseph Mengele

  Marcello sat at Dr. Mengele’s desk. Around him, three SVT Security Agents swept the house, making sure it was empty. He didn’t want to be interrupted when the good doctor and his wife came home.

  Marcello flipped open the planner, scanning the appointments listed in it. Finding nothing he wanted in there, he pushed the chair back and looked down at the drawers. A small label, in the upper left-hand corner on the bottom drawer read: Mannequin. Mannequin was the program Kayla had been a part of. Apparently, Mengele was not concerned about his wife becoming curious and rifling through his desk. Marcello went to pull open the drawer just to find it locked. He stood up, motioning one of his agents over to him. “Open it. The other two drawers too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It took the agent two minutes to pick the lock. Marcello sat back down in the doctor’s chair and started pulling out folders. Mengele was extremely organized. His notes on the Project were incredibly detailed—and horrific. Project Mannequin was started by the NSA on underground bases in Britain. The objective of the Project was to create a better kind of espionage agent and assassin; one that would last longer mentally and not be plagued by issues of conscience. They experimented in creating these agents by using forms of mind control and genetic manipulation programming. Joseph Mengele was an expert in trauma-based mind control.

  The ideal patient was five years old or younger. To properly program the mind, first, it needed to shatter. This was done by systematically traumatizing the child, using such means as burying them alive with snakes, or taking them to the edge of death, just to revive them. Once the mind shattered into fragments, each child could then be programmed for a different use. Sometimes, an electromagnetic grid was incorporated into the brain to assist with programming. It was called the Mengele Grid.

  The more Marcello read, the more nauseated and furious he became, until his hand nearly shook. That a government that claimed to be a democracy would do that to children—to people—who, ninety-nine percent of the time, were not willing participants, was as disgusting as it was infuriating. Forcing himself to calm, Marcello set the doctor’s general notes aside and moved to the section marked Patients, organized by month and year. He selected the date Kayla would have been involved, and found her folder to be one of the thickest in the drawer.

  Like most of the other folders on the doctor’s “patients,” there were tape recordings, photographs, and pages upon pages of notes. It was an envelope marked From Deucalion that made Marcello catch his breath. Deucalion was Kayla’s biological father, the man who had raped and then drugged Marilyn so that she had forgotten it ever happened. That bomb had been dropped on their world nearly twenty years ago, and Marcello had tracked Deucalion down and killed him. Deucalion’s head was sitting in the cellar underneath the Governor’s Mansion on the Island, next to a few of Marcello’s father’s enemies that had pushed SVT too far.

  February 17st, 1957

  Doctor Mengele,

  I hope you are still finding America to your liking. We are very pleased to have you as the lead scientist of a program that is so important to the future of the world. We’re not so much different from Hitler, are we?

  I have learned that your blood testing shows despite my rendezvous with Marilyn Pearl–Terenzio, I was unsuccessful in impregnating her. This would lead us to conclude that unless Marilyn was a whore, and I don’t believe she was, Marcello must be Kayla’s father. Considering our plans for our subject, I find her true heritage almost poetic. Regardless, I want you to proceed as planned. I never really thought of her as my
daughter anyway, just a means to an end.

  Keep me updated on your progress.

  Regards,

  Deucalion

  “Ghost Team, come in.” Joey’s voice came in through their two way radios. “Subject has left the restaurant. They’re on their way to you.”

  The answering response from the Senior SVT Agent was a distant buzz compared to the sudden roar in Marcello’s head. Kayla was his daughter. For moments, Marcello couldn’t get his breath.

  Kayla’s appearance on his and Mari’s doorstep had put such a strain on their marriage. He had been distant and moody for the first few months, and when with his family, he had worn the veil that he had never shown his wife. Mari had always been able to look at him and really see him; not so, those first few months with Kayla. He’d worn it because he was a man, not a saint, and Kayla had been a constant reminder of an enemy, even one that had been killed, despite the fact that she was his wife’s daughter. She hadn’t been his daughter.

  Slowly, he’d begun to get around that. His wife had demanded it in her own firm but gentle way, and she had a habit of bringing out the best in him. So, he’d stopped ignoring and gotten to know Kayla. There was still a child underneath all that programming, and Marcello had come to care about Kayla more than he would admit.

  After all that, to now find out that Kayla really was his, theirs, Marcello felt the world give out beneath him for the second time in his life. He tunneled the fingers of one hand back through his hair and continued flipping through her file. Kayla didn’t just have her mother’s fiery spirit, but a Terenzios, too. According to Mengele’s notes, she had been resistant to her programming. Hence, it had taken fourteen instead of twelve years for her to appear. A single tear slipped down Marcello’s cheek as his rage overwhelmed him. They had taken his daughter and programmed her against him. They had committed unspeakable acts against her for fourteen years, things no child should ever have to endure. Marcello saw red. He felt like he was going to snap, slip into the darker side of his nature and never come out. Terenzios played the game so effectively because they walked that proverbial line between good and evil. They could dance over to either side at any point of their choosing. Sometimes, the darkness called louder than the light, and it was important for a Terenzio to have someone in their lives to pull them back. Aunt Lil had had Kyle for example. He used to have Mari.

  “Sir, he’s home,” one of the Senior SVT Agents said.

  Marcello snapped his gaze up. Right now, he didn’t care if he ever saw the light again. Leaving the file open on the desk, he came out of the office. His Agents were positioned in the kitchen, on either side of the garage door, where the doctor and his wife would come into the house.

  “Stop being silly, dear. Mrs. Kesiers just had a bad week, that’s all.” They were speaking in German. Mengele’s wife walked in first. The Agent on the other side of the door grabbed her by the arm and slapped his hand over her mouth, muffling her scream.

  “I don’t care. She’s snotty, and condescending and—” Mengele stepped though the doorway, then immediately halted. His eyes widened when they came to rest on Marcello, and he whispered in a strongly accented voice: “You… How did you….?”

  Marcello’s answer was to ram his knuckles into the older man’s jaw. He grabbed Mengele by the front of his shirt and dragged him over to the stove. “Your cologne is interesting.” Marcello’s tone was dangerously quiet. “Now, I understand why Kayla called you the man with the funny smell.”

  Mengele’s eyes widened in shock at that revelation, but quickly narrowed with indignation. Blood stained the corner of his mouth. “What do you want?” he demanded.

  Marcello turned the electric burner to high. He put his hand against the back of the doctor’s head and bent him over, holding Mengele’s face mere inches away from the heat. Mrs. Mengele began to cry. “Is Kayla my daughter? Is it true?”

  At first, Mengele said nothing, but once the heat began blistering his skin, he shouted: “Yes! Yes! She’s yours!”

  The rage that coursed through Marcello made his body tremble. He leaned close and whispered in Mengele’s ear: “You want to know what I want? I want you to scream.”

  §

  July 4, 1974 - 4:11 PM

  Washington, D.C.

  Home of the Vice President of the U.S.

  Fury rode every step Julian Terenzio took. His nephew, Dominiceo—Dom Jr., one of Liliana’s twin children—followed alongside of him. Two Secret Service agents escorted them into the office of the Vice President of the United States.

  “What have you done?” Julian demanded without preamble. The door clicked shut behind them. Dom Jr. stood behind his uncle. His eyes were as sharp and angry as Julian’s tone.

  Three men sat in the room. Two had full heads of white hair. The other had a dramatically receding hairline. They all shared aristocratic features. They were bluebloods. Men who could trace their ancestry back centuries to the Pharaohs of Egypt and the kings of Greece. Well, two of them could. The third wore his humanity as a disguise. If one was looking an Anunnaki could be identified by the cold, piercing depth of their black eyes; the kind found on the Vice President of the United States, who stood from his arm chair and focused those eyes on Julian.

  “Those are harsh words coming from a slave,” the Vice President said.

  Julian snapped his gaze to the Anunnaki. He didn’t back down. Instead, he stepped forward. The tip of his brother’s walking cane struck the wooden floor. “It wasn’t a statement. It was a question, and a fair one. What have you done to my nephew? I cannot fulfill my end of our arrangement if you’re sidestepping me.”

  The Vice President turned from Julian and looked at the two men sitting behind him. The man with the receding hairline was the president of the RAND Corporation, the Illuminati’s eastern hemisphere think tank. The other man was a member of the British royal family. He currently gave orders to the Black Nobility, the European Union’s small, personal army and collection of assassins. “Would you excuse us, please?” The men nodded, setting their glasses down, and left.

  Only the secret service agents, who were Grey aliens in disguise, remained. They stood motionless by the door. The Vice President looked back at Julian. “We haven’t done anything to Marcello. Yet.”

  Julian frowned. “It’s a simple fucking question. Answer it.”

  The Vice President smiled. What it lacked in warmth it made up for with its mocking edge. He reached up and straightened Julian’s tie. “I don’t think you’ve been so loyal all these years. And I don’t think your brother was, either.”

  “Excuse me?” Julian batted the alien’s hand from him. “Who killed Kennedy for you? Me. Who was running the LSD and providing the hookers the CIA needed to conduct operation Midnight Climax? Us." Midnight Climax had been a CIA program to test the effects of LSD. Prostitutes lured their johns to a specific hotel and slipped their clients an LSD Mickey. “If I went down the whole list of the things we’ve done for you, we’d age another fucking year, so don’t feed me bullshit.”

  The Vice President left his hand in mid-air as it was batted away. “Yes, you’ve done very well at doing what we ask, but your loyalty is tainted by your ulterior motives, so don’t play these games with me anymore.”

  “You got some proof of this?” Dom Jr. asked. “Or did you suddenly decide to fuck with your best bulldog?”

  The Vice President pulled a folded envelope out of the inside of his suit jacket. He flipped open the lip and removed a letter soft with wrinkles. He read out loud: “Julian. There’s something I’ve never shared with you, something that you are not to share with Lil or Carissa. The burden of this secret, for now, will be yours.”

  As skilled as the rest of his family in masking his emotions, Julian’s fingers tightened imperceptibly on the handle of the cane. “Where did you get that?”

  The Vice President lifted his eyes from the letter and nodded at the Greys. One of them walked out of the room. The Grey returned moments later wi
th the Dominic, Carissa’s youngest son. Dominic’s familiar gray gaze was hard, but a flicker of remorse lived within its depths.

  Julian blinked, and then his eyes narrowed. “What have you done?”

  “He’s picked a side Julian. Something you’re going to have to do,” the Vice President said with a callous smile.

  “You idiot,” Dom Jr. hissed.

  “Don’t lecture me,” Dominic spat defensively. “How could you keep a secret like this from the rest of us? How could you not allow us to all choose which way the family should go? We should honor the deals made. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”