Page 10 of Exposing Adonis

“They weren’t causing damage.”

“That black eye and swollen cheekbone begs to differ,” I looked up at my big brother’s amused eyes.

“It makes sense for them to test me. They don’t know us.” He said this quietly. But the room was so silent that our audience could still hear every word. I glanced at Hugo again, who still hadn’t moved, and was looking at us the way you might look at a freak show.

Leo leaned in, bringing his voice down, as though Callum and Hugo weren’t watching our every move, and straining to hear every syllable.

“They’ve never worked with us, so I get it. It’s okay,Bunso.“ He said the last bit with such derision, I wanted to regress to my childhood and stomp my feet. “I’m okay. We should continue on.”

I was shaking, being pulled in two different directions. Fuck Dr. Laurent, if it meant my brother getting hurt. That was an easy choice to make. I’d fling her into the bowels of hell by the ankles if it meant if the choice was between her or my brother. No one fucked with my family.

“If all goes well,” Hugo said, slapping his thigh. “We will ask you to be a permanent member of our team. You were…” He brought his fingers to his lips, kissed them, and splayed them out again in a chef’s kiss, “The perfect spy. I almost believed you were the wrong man.”

Leo bowed to him like an actor coming on for an encore, before reaching out a hand to help Hugo to his feet.

My brother turned to me, as if that gesture should have told me everything I needed to know. He was daring me to follow his lead. Then he tilted his head towards Callum who was still near the edge of the light which cast harsh shadows on his stoic features.

“Kailangan ko sila,” Leo whispered to me.I need them.

I straightened. Finally realizing that he was putting on a show.

He needed them to get him into Kemet. He needed their resources, because we had none of our own. Whatever he might feel, it meant nothing to him as long as he could achieve his goal of savingher. Dr. Chloe Laurent. A goal that he and Callum shared, apparently.

A part of me hoped that the KPLA would just kill her already, so that neither of them would need to endanger themselves to save her.

I reached out and touched Leo’s face, poking with my fingers to find the telltale ridges that would indicate a broken bone. It wasn’t. It was just tenderized meat.

He didn’t wince when I touched it. Instead, he shrugged, amiably.

“You hit harder when I hid your Legos,” Leo said with a smirk. “Come on, I’m okay.”

I had hit him with my mother’s fancy bible. The big one. He had a goose egg the size of a baseball for a week after that.

Chapter 5

Callum

Thatwasafuckingdisaster. I wasn’t sure if she would ever forgive me. She wouldn’t even let me clean and wrap the gnarled wounds of her knuckles. They were mince meat, the skin hanging off. But she wouldn’t even let her brother clean them.

She had punched the chest of my armor in a rage. Were it anyone else, that would have been a sign of anger. But not from her. If she wanted to hurt me, she would have hit me in the head, slashed me at the throat or kicked me in the knees. She hit me to punish herself, and to spare me. Those reddened knuckles advertised the battle that was happening inside her. A battle she was trying very hard to hide from everyone else.

As we emerged back into the hangar, we saw Alastair and Geordie tied to their rolling chairs. Wrists and ankles were bound by computer cables. They had been at the map table where we went over our plans, their laptops out in front of them.

I tried not to chuckle as I un-did their bindings.

“She put something in my tea.” Alastair was drooling down the side of his face.

He, oddly, wasn’t mad about it, looking at Lea with a strange sense of admiration. I wasn’t jealous, of course. Why wouldn’t he admire her?

But … maybe I should have left him tied up a little longer.

Geordie was passed out, his head lolling to the side. I slapped his cheeks until he came to, jolting in surprise when he finally recognized me.

“What happened to him?” I turned to Lea with narrowed eyes. She didn’t answer, but simply crossed her arms, her red knuckles a beacon of all the things we weren’t saying between us. “Are you a’right, Geordie?” I said, loudly. “You’re looking a bitpeely wally.”

“Aye, I’m a’right.” He grunted, coming unsteadily to his feet.

“I hate it when you go all Scottish,” Hugo said with a wrinkle of his nose. “Bah! What an ugly accent.”

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