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