Page 90 of Unleash Hades
“Calissandra is wearing it,” she blurted out. “I made her put it on, because I thought that maybe… well…”
“Brilliant, Cabbage!” Pippa said, as she got on her computer and began typing. “I’ll get my men on it, and they’ll ping the location. They’ll head to the signal as soon as we get it. Otherwise, make the call to the Laurent lawyers.”
“That’s a good idea,” Alastair said when she halted in her speech. “We can always reverse the decision later, if she lives.”
“You think he’ll kill her?” Chloe’s despair matched my own.
“You did well, Cabbage,” Pippa said, taking the phone from Alastair’s desk and speaking closer to the speaker. “We’ll take care of it from here. Make the call. We’ve got it, now.”
“Okay,” Chloe said. “Please find her. Please. I can’t let that be the last thing I said to her.”
When Chloe got off the phone, I stayed still, unsure, unthinking, unable to understand how we got here. How did this happen?
“What do we do?” I asked, quietly.
But I might as well have shouted the words, since Alastair, Rose, and Pippa stilled, their heads snapping towards me, eyes wide in shock.
“Jesus,” Callum said under his breath. “I don’t think I've ever heard you ask a question unless it was sarcastic…”
“Are youa’rightman?” Geordie said.
Alastair came and clamped a hand on my shoulder. “You, me and Callum are getting on a helicopter and going to that town. If we have to kick down the door of every house in that eight mile radius, we will.”
That was something. If we could fight, we could win.
I was going to give Richard the fight I had wanted to give him ten fucking years ago.
Pippa stopped her typing, and looked up to us.
“One of my agents is nearby where Chloe’s watch is,” Pippa said. “He’s on his way.”
“He? One man?”
“Yes,” Pippa said with a raise of her brow. “One of my men is worth a dozen of anyone else’s.”
Chapter 31
Calissandra
The cold metal touchedmy forehead, as I looked beyond the matte black gun, past the hand that held it, to the black sleeve of his suit jacket… tohim.
The man who had tormented my life for two and a half decades.
“Oh, Darling,” he said with that false gentleness that had once fooled a younger, stupider version of myself. “Don’t look so distraught. You and I can get past anything, after all.”
Fat chance.
But still, I had to play my part.
“Of course, we can, Darling.” The habit to lie was ingrained so deep that I almost wanted to touch him, and comfort his paranoia. I had been trained and groomed for this sick, disastrous act. The one that placated the Devil until I lost everything. “After all, we have too much to lose.”
He did smile. It was a genuine one, too. The kind that made my skin crawl.
“That’s why I love you Calissandra,” he said, in that insipid voice. “You are as selfish as I am. We’re like Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine.”
This nonsense again. The Lion in fucking Winter. That insipid movie.
“Remus is my favorite, and Romulus is yours,” he continued to wax poetic, as the phone remained silent in my hand. “We battle, and scheme to see which son will end up on the throne, but in the end, we remain as one.”
