actually comforting. The Bellator Dei would celebrate his death if he died at the hands of the Masters’ Admiralty because it would be a sign that he’d paid the ultimate price for the cause. They wouldn’t let Joli show any sadness.
Footsteps clicked on the stone, and then a robed, hooded figure appeared from the darkness.
When the person spoke, he was surprised to realize it was a woman, though he shouldn’t have been. He thought he’d heard Oscar and Selene referring to the person they called the Grand Masters as her/she.
“Luca Campisi,” she said. “We’ve been looking for you.”
He remained silent. There was, after all, nothing he could say that would change what was about to happen.
“You build bombs. You design bombs so horrific that the idea of them keeps me awake at night.”
“The bomb does not work,” he said softly.
“Yes. But that wasn’t by design, was it? Not the same way the flaw that allows it to be disarmed was.”
Luca nodded, just to show he was listening.
“When we looked at the bomb plans, we realized the person who designed it wanted it easily disarmed. We concluded it was designed under duress.” She took a half step, the hem of the long black robe brushing the edge of the medallion. “Mr. Hayden and Dr. Tanaka tell me that we were right. You hold no loyalty to the Bellator Dei, only to your sister.”
Luca didn’t respond immediately, touched by Oscar and Selene’s defense of him. Oscar had offered reassurances in the helicopter. “We got this,” he’d said. It was the word we that Luca still couldn’t quite wrap his head around.
“I have done terrible things to protect Joli. I do not deny that, or that I deserve to die for my crimes.”
Emotion choked him. He knew he was facing the end of his life, but his final thoughts weren’t worry for his sister. Instead, he felt regret. Regret that he had shared only a few days with Oscar and Selene.
“Do you prefer death to facing what you’ve done?”
That snapped his head up. “You’re calling me a coward.”
“There’s a phrase—suicide by cop. Is that what you were doing? Running all over the eastern seaboard, attacking my people in hopes that we would end your life for you?”
“No, of course not. All I wanted was my tablet back. I needed the bomb plans. It needed to be my bomb that they tried to build.”
He’d revealed more than he should have.
“Your bomb…” The hooded Grand Master was silent for a moment. “Because your bomb could be disarmed.”
Luca leaned forward, too weary to sit up, so he propped his elbows on his knees. “I was not the only child they trained to make explosives.”
“How many others?”
He’d told Selene and Oscar about these things, but telling them to this woman in the hood, to a person who was, according to everything he’d grown up being taught, his enemy, was so much harder.
“Three or four when I was there.” Thinking about the others caused his chest to tighten because he knew them well—had spent countless hours in classes and in the laboratory with them. He knew their hearts, knew they were truly committed to the Bellator Dei’s cause. Unlike him, they were determined to see their bomb designs succeed. The bigger the death toll, the better. “But there are many more. The technical institute is still operational, still recruiting, training. They have to be stopped.”
“The more you say, the more it seems that you’re our ally rather than our enemy.”
“I am no one’s ally.”
“You say that, but do you believe it? You would not consider yourself Selene and Oscar’s ally?”
A horrible thought occurred to him. “Please! Please do not punish them for…”
To his surprise, she laughed. “For sleeping with you?”
Luca froze.
“I know the signs. Their vehement defense was not purely intellectual.”
“I did not turn them against the Masters’ Admiralty,” Luca said quickly. His heart was slamming against his ribs. “I…I coerced them and—”
“You didn’t. The Hayden brothers cannot be coerced, only bribed or outmaneuvered.” The Grand Master walked to the center of the medallion. “There is something you do not know, which I feel it is time you learn.”
Luca tensed, waiting for a blow.
“We—Selene, Oscar, Langston, Mina Edwards—are not members of the Masters’ Admiralty.”
“What?” Luca’s hands curled into fists, and he began to look around the room, pissed off at himself for failing to take in his surroundings. If they weren’t the Masters’ Admiralty…
His stomach clenched as he considered too many unsavory options. Then he thought of Oscar