Page 22 of Gemini
He shrugged and typed. “Yes. But a little more than that.”
“Like what?”
“Cult-like. With ties to the mafia.”
Fuck, Trish, what did you get yourself into? “Cult-like?”
“Yes.
“It’s a cult?”
“More like a brotherhood with certain…ideals.”
I frowned, trying not to stare at the tattoo on his arm. “You were one of them, weren’t you? You and Leslie?”
He hesitated before typing a reply. “We created them.”
I stared at his words. “I’m sorry, what?”
“We were the original leaders.”
“Are you fucking serious? You and Lez founded a cult?” I hissed.
Dom clicked his tongue while typing a response. “A brotherhood.”
“Semantics.” I threw up my hands in disbelief. “You swore to me you don’t know what happened to my sister.”
He started to text “And I don’t”— but I cut him off.
“You expect me to believe you don’t know anything? That you don’t have any clue what they are up to? Or what’s going on?”
He put up his hand for me to wait so he could give me his excuse. I rubbed a hand over my eyes, trying to fight the urge not to scream at him. When I dropped my hand, he showed me his phone.
“We founded the Serpent Brothers a few years ago. Before that, we were already working for a local mafia and some of the other men started noticing how oddly strong we were, or how we could hear and see things they couldn’t.”
I fixed him with a sad look. “The experiments,” I whispered.
He nodded, then typed some more. “So, we—mostly Lez—got it into our heads that we needed to go into business for ourselves. A lot of people started respecting us, seeing the power we had. And they wanted to know our secret. Obviously, we weren’t going to tell them we were locked in the basement of a warehouse and drugged, so we made up a story. We told them we were enhanced. That through some mental gymnastics and using drugs like meth or ketamine, we had unlocked this power in us and that they could too, if they followed us.”
“That’s fucked.”
He nodded and replied. “I know. But we were kind of fucked in the head. Lez was barely stable and wasn’t on the meds he needed. I was…not in a great place. We thought it was a perfect way to start our own organization. We made people believe, made them follow us, made some of them think we weren’t even human. It worked…for a time.”
“What happened?”
“Jasper. We got really close at first. He rose in the ranks fast, got really good at getting recruits, smuggling whatever it was we wanted to smuggle, and moving cash around. He was our second in command. He was a manipulator. He acted like he believed us, but I think he was just good at faking for the sake of wanting the power we had. Eventually he started gaining favor with others because he was charismatic and me and Lez’s social skills were shit. He convinced some to follow his way, claiming he’d figured out our method to unlock all senses—which was obviously bullshit. He wanted to make the brotherhood more culty than it already was and do more dirty jobs for the mafia. Since we were no longer seeing eye to eye—and because Micheal had contacted for help—we split off, letting Jasper take over the group so we could focus on Severfalls.”
I sat back, stunned. “So that’s it? You didn’t go back after Severfalls and just let him have it?”
“We didn’t want what he changed the group into. Didn’t want to be lap dogs again for the mafia or keep on pretending while watching the others lose their sense of reality in pursuit of having an ounce of what we have.”
I shook my head. “You never mentioned any of this back…at the church. When Eve interviewed you.”
“Didn’t think she needed to know all that. She was focused on our past as kids. We didn’t really want to get too deep into more recent events.”
The waitress came back with our drinks and Dom ordered a pie for us to split since I wasn’t very hungry. I sat for a moment taking it all in, watching the lightning pass by and hearing thunder roll in the distance.
“You have to contact him, Dom.” I turned back to glare at him. “You have to talk to Jasper.”
