Page 87 of The Crimson Lily
I make conjectures, right here, in my mind. My mother and father united to abolish the Syndicate, and they were killed for it.
“Is that why she died?” I ask, just to be sure.
“No comment,” William blocks. “But treason isn’t a crime that goes unpunished.”
Subtle confirmation. I’m starting to feel sick.
“What’s our family’s place in the Syndicate?” I wonder after a pause.
“We’re handlers, mostly,” he replies. “I’m surprised you remember so little.”
“Tell me about it.” My tone is sarcastic, but it’s actually a hushed request.
He laughs a little. “Ah, I want to. Believe me, I do, but we’d need a week and a day for that.”
“Start with why the de Loits sent me away.” I bring up the aching question that’s been bugging my mind.
“You’re smart,” he says with a smirk. “You can figure that one out on your own.”
I pause again to think, but the answer is blatant to me. “No criminal family wants the child of a cop.”
His smirk amplifies into a proud daddy’s smile. “I kept in touch with you though. Mom and Dad paid the Springfields to raise you, but we both know they were shitheads.” William talks like a teenager now. It feels familiar. It has a bitter taste of home.“You’d come on vacation with me. I took you to see the world, Lili. I even taught you how to shoot?—”
“I can shoot?” I interrupt, more curious than troubled.
He sighs instead of giving me confirmation. He halts his march, severely, looking at me with blame. “It broke my heart when you set out to betray the Syndicate.”
I fall silent, unsure of how I should respond to that direct accusation.
He starts walking again. “I know your friends have the Token Man’s list. Well played. But they won’t get far.”
“They’ll get somewhere,” I assure. They’ll get right here. Just a matter of time, William. Just a matter of time.
“Most of those names are already long gone,” he pledges. “The Syndicate is, after all, an international business.”
We arrive back at the chapel’s door, a full revolution of the cloister’s galleries behind us. William opens the door and waves his hand as a motion for me to enter. I hesitate, feeling safer in the garden than in a room with William de Loit.
“Come, Lili,” he directs. “I’ll take you to the dagger before Margaret arrives.”
My heart takes the highest of leaps. I’m going to see it. Finally, I’m going to face that artifact I discovered with Béatrice somewhere lost in Siberia. I now realize the expedition was most probably organized by the Syndicate themselves. Poor Béatrice—I involved her without her even knowing. I let the ache of remorse sink in my gut, breathing over it, silencing it with my accelerated heartbeat. William walks ahead of me, silent, and takes me down a set of stairs that leads deep beneath the cloister.
Down the white-painted, concrete stairs is an aluminum door that opens at William’s will. The metallic corridor in front of usreminds me of a horror movie’s hospital, with glass doors along the way that open to dark rooms. I have no idea what they’re supposed to be.
“Spooky,” I let escape.
William chuckles. “Welcome to the Syndicate.”
A man walks out of a room. I cast a furtive glance inside for a fraction of a second. Guns. A lot of them. The man nods at William and disappears behind us.
“And the nuns agree with this?” I scold, pointing at the room full of weapons.
“The cloister is a façade. The nuns are personnel.”
We arrive at a white door wider than William and I next to each other, with two large men, one white, one black, posted on each side. Neither of them smile at me. They let William proceed with opening the door, never laying eyes on us.
We enter a chamber that could come straight out of a script. It looks like a bank’s vault, with white walls and an infinite matrix of drawers. The only thing that’s missing is the pile of money in the middle of the?—
I pause, looking at the pedestal at the center of the room.
