8. Jaxson
8
Jaxson
“ Y ou’re forcing me to waste valuable time that we could both be using to be more productive,” I point out.
“We’re not wasting time,” Lauressa says in an amused tone, like she’s talking to a child.
If I didn’t already feel like a little child as we lay completely under the comforters of her bed, facing each other, I’d be more annoyed by it.
“I’m not comprehending exactly how laying around in bed all day when we’re well-rested is not wasting time.”
“Because you don’t need an excuse to lay around and do nothing. Sometimes, laying around and doing nothing is just as important,” she declares.
“And what proof do you have of that?”
“Well, has sitting around in your office broodingly staring at papers and intel helped you figure out what you’re going to do about your father without having to resort to becoming a crash-out and going for the nuclear option on the entire Sovereignty?” she asks pointedly .
“That’s not proof of your… philosophy,” I settle on, unable to keep the condescension out of my tone.
“It’s not. But it’s also true.”
She’s right about that, but I’d sooner stab myself than admit that to her.
“Besides,” she continues, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.”
I huff. “That phrase is a logical fallacy that doesn’t take into account that sometimes the exact same action in a different context can result in a different outcome, and you know it.”
“Tell me what would be different about the context if you got up right now to go broodingly stare at intel, hoping for insight?”
“Here with you, far away from Chicago and my father, for one,” I say and then reach over to pull her close. I bury my face in her hair and find myself admitting, “Being around him and in the midst of all the Sovereignty politics is suffocating and foggy. With you, the air is still thick, but you’re like a filtered mask that lets me breathe better and a light that lets me see through it all.”
Lauressa is silent for a long time. So long that I think she’s fallen back asleep until she starts shaking with laughter.
“Oh my God, if not for this Sovereignty shit, you would have grown up to be a fucking performer. I swear. Broadway would have loved you. You’re so fucking dramatic,” she says.
“Language,” I remind.
“Drama. Fucking. King.”
In the last couple of days, she’s apparently forgotten what happens when she’s not mindful of her mouth. But having her like this—playful, argumentative, annoying, defiant, and all the other things that make Lauressa herself—all that’s better than her being miserable, scared, and uncertain in my ability to protect her, uncertain in my loyalty and devotion to her. So, I decide to let the language thing slide for the time being… mostly.
“Ow,” Lauressa exclaims indignantly as I swat her on her sore ass.
She's not happy about the fact that she’s not going to be able to sit comfortably for a couple of days. Ranting the next day with a glare that looked more like a pout that there were easier ways to prove my point. And maybe there were easier ways, but none of them would have been as effective or memorable. None of them would have granted her the sweet release of all her pent-up and conflicting emotions from dealing with this mess with her family, Loving Eden, and now, my father. None of them would have proved that no matter how much it looked like I was hurting her, I always have her best interest and the interest of keeping her with me at heart. That I will never forsake her.
Besides, between the daily disinfectant and ointment treatments, the cuts on her ass won’t even scar.
“Assh—” she hisses, cutting herself off after I swat her ass again.
I don’t have to be able to see her face to know that she’s glaring at my chest right now.
“Drama king,” she mutters again.
I chuckle. “For that to be an insult, I’d have to disagree with you. But being dramatic is a prerequisite for surviving the Sovereignty.”
She grumbles something under her breath, and I decide not to swat her ass again for whatever it was .
“We got off topic,” she says finally. “If I’m like a mask and light that filters the fog, let me help you breathe then. Let me help you see.”
“Drama queen,” I mutter, kissing her forehead. “One more day. Tomorrow, I’ve got work to do. No exceptions.”
And even that’s pushing it. It’s already been two days since the funeral, and there’s only so long I can hold Magdalene off and ignore the looming threat of my father eventually calling me and Lauressa back to Chicago.
“ We’ve got work to do,” she corrects. “I’m a cult expert. If anyone knows how to take down a cult leader, it’s me. Theoretically.”
I allow myself to close my eyes while holding her, even though I’m not tired. I can’t say I’m completely opposed to just existing with Snow White in this fairytale world we’ve created for ourselves.
The illusion is interrupted by the doorbell ringing.
“Did you order food?” I ask.
“I was about to ask you.”
Neither of us moves.
“Maybe if we ignore it, they’ll go away,” she says, only for the doorbell to not only ring again, but for the door to jiggle in a way that suggests someone is sabotaging the lock.
All thoughts of remaining in our little fairytale vanish as I instantly get up and head downstairs to confront the potential intruder, wishing I had time to grab one of the kitchen knives Lauressa threw at me days ago. Not that I couldn’t deal with an intruder with my bare hands .
I snatch the door open before the intruder can succeed, hoping to spook them… only to see that said intruder is Magdalene and Shelly.
“The two of you have been fucking in your little love nest long enough,” Magdalene declares as she storms past me into the house.
I don’t bother to inform her that there was no fucking to be done after Lauressa’s little punishment in the kitchen.
“I told you—”
Magdalene cuts me off. “I know what you told me. But I’m starting to think you’re stalling because, really, you don’t have a plan at all.”
Before I can stall her yet again, Lauressa makes her way downstairs.
“Magdalene. Shelly,” she says. “Why are you here?”
Magdalene looks at Jaxson. “You didn’t tell her?”
“Tell me what?” Lauressa asks, looking at me.
Shelly doesn’t wait for me to answer as she says, “We want to help with the plan, whatever it is, to take down the Oracle.”
“ Without destroying the Sovereignty,” Magdalene emphasizes.
“You brought Shelly in on this?” I ask.
“Lauressa is my friend,” the woman says. “And so are you, even if you just see us as useful pawns.”
“Whether or not we’re still friends remains to be seen,” Lauressa says coldly to Shelly.
Magdalene scoffs. “You’re dating a literal power-hungry sociopath, but you draw the line at Shelly not telling you she was working for said sociopath? ”
“I draw the line at honesty,” Lauressa snaps at Magdalene. Then she says, “He’s not stalling.”
Magdalene looks at me in askance. But years of practice allow me to look as neutral, if a little tired, as ever, despite the fact that I too have no idea what Lauressa’s talking about.
“He’s not?” Magdalene asks.
“No, but I was having a hard time after the funeral, and he hasn’t had time to touch base with you. I asked for one more day before we dealt with… everything else,” Lauressa says, averting her gaze at the end.
She’s lying through her teeth, and I didn’t even have to coach her. Didn’t have to give her any cues. She simply assessed the situation and covered for me. If she were a less intelligent person, she would have exposed my hand by asking, "What plan?" She would have openly reminded me that I admitted to her just two days ago that I don’t have a plan. It’s moments like these that make me glad I listened to my instincts when I saw her image on a computer screen.
Magdalene looks between me and Lauressa, before finally her expression turns just a bit guilty as she looks at me and says, “I guess you’re not a complete sociopath after all.”
“We can meet to discuss things tomorrow,” Lauressa says, and before I can say it, she adds, “But at the estate. My parents’ house isn’t a secure location, given that the Oracle knows I own this place now, and Jaxson hasn’t had the time to scan the premises to make sure it wasn’t compromised in the time he wasn’t here.”
I already checked. It wasn’t. I’ve had men securing this house and Lauressa’s old apartment since I let her think she escaped me in Chicago. If I hadn’t, I would have taken her right back to the estate after the funeral. But Magdalene doesn’t know that. And if she suspects, she has no proof. It’s a good excuse, and even if Magdalene didn’t want to wait, it would have forced her to anyway.
“Tomorrow,” Magdalene agrees.
“Good. We can discuss it over dinner,” Lauressa says, buying us even more time because no doubt Magdalene would have shown up first thing in the morning otherwise.
“See you then,” Magdalene says. As she walks past me to leave, she mutters, “She has good instincts. No wonder you chose her.”
Her instincts weren’t the reason I chose her, but I can’t deny Lauressa’s instincts when it comes to reading a room and people are a boon to me.
When Magdalene and Shelly are gone, she looks at me and says, “We need to head to the estate right now, don’t we?”
“I thought you wanted to lay around,” I remind, even though she’s right.
“That’s before I knew Magdalene would be banging down my door demanding a plan from you that you don’t have. And I have a feeling that we don’t want her to find that out, even if her insight would be helpful.”
I don’t bother with a response, considering Lauressa already knows her statement is true. Magdalene cares about the Sovereignty and the Sovereignty only. I don’t dare even consider giving her leverage by allowing her a say in this before I’ve presented her with a viable option because keeping Lauressa in my grasp would be the least of her considerations. That’s not something I can allow.
Hours later, we’re in the dining room at my estate with printed intel spread all over the table. At Lauressa’s request, I had my men acquire a large whiteboard on wheels with dry-erase markers. Lauressa says it helps her make the connections she needs to as I give her what is essentially a crash course on the Sovereignty, its specific inner workings, politics, rules, doctrine, and powerful players over the years, so she can understand or notice the significance of the intel she reads.
She understands it well enough; her background in psychology and studying cults shines through as she quickly sorts through intel and asks me question after question for context. Sometimes, she asks me the same question in different phrasing to make sure I’m not leaving anything out.
Chances are that there’s nothing that Lauressa is going to find in this whole mess that I haven’t already uncovered, but on the off chance that she will, it’s vital that she understands the complete timeline of the Sovereignty’s history. That is, the unofficial timeline that not even those in the Sovereignty are truly aware of. It’s all convoluted with various players, some that were eliminated, others neutralized, and some assimilated into the fold of the Sovereignty as it currently exists.
That doesn’t mean it’s not exhausting, and by the time night falls, I feel like I’ve been put through the types of interrogations I’ve been trained to resist. It’s only that training that stopped me from snapping in annoyance hours ago. That makes me understand how vital it is for Lauressa to keep asking these questions as she looks for anything that might have been missed.
The doorbell rings, and though I have loyal staff to do menial tasks like answering the door when food is delivered, I take the opportunity for a brief reprieve from all this. Lauressa has only spent all of today poring over all this. I’ve spent all week and can feel myself growing more and more anxious again after, for the umpteenth time, nothing stands out to me.
I grab the pizza Lauressa ordered from the delivery driver, carelessly handing him a few twenty-dollar bills for a tip before making my way back to the dining room and nearly collide with Lauressa as she runs out of the kitchen looking for me.
“I found it!” Lauressa says in excitement.
“Found what?” I ask.
“Found what can take your father down while leaving the Sovereignty intact,” she says, opening the pizza in my hands, taking a slice, and heading back into the dining room with the expectation that I’ll follow.
I don’t want to doubt Lauressa’s confidence. But I’ve been poring over these same documents and every experience I’ve ever had being raised in the Sovereignty for days. I find it difficult to believe that she found something that could possibly topple my father.
“And what’s that?” I ask, trying, but not quite managing, not to sound skeptical.
“When the Oracle before your father, Zachariah Holione, died, there was a succession crisis. ”
“That’s common knowledge. Nothing particularly insightful about that,” I say.
“To you, but this is the kind of stuff that splinters cults right down the middle. At the very least, because of this, the Sovereignty should have splintered into two factions, both claiming to be the one true Sovereignty with the one true Oracle. It happens in all cults eventually. It should have happened with the Sovereignty. But it didn’t.”
“So?” I ask.
“So. Why? Why was there debate about who was to be the heir?” Lauressa presses.
“Something about Zachariah naming an heir twice. In the Sovereignty, the title of Oracle is passed from son to son. If the Oracle has no son, he can 'adopt' someone, usually someone already in the Sovereignty, as a son and name him Oracle. But Raphael, Zachariah’s presumed heir and only son, disavowed the Sovereignty for a time, and during that time, Zachariah named my father his heir. It wasn’t a problem until Raphael came back three years later, like the prodigal son.
“It’s said that Zachariah planned to seek the council of the Supreme Force to rectify the issue, but before he could, he very conveniently died. Since his last revelation on the matter was that my father was the heir, those championing my father argued that Zachariah dying before he could seek council was a sign that the Supreme Force wanted him to take his rightful place as Oracle,” I explain the same way it’s been shoved down my throat since I was born by my mother and reinforced to all members in secret member-only Sovereign meetings.
“And what about the people championing Raphael?” I ask.
“They argued that my father killed Zachariah since he was in good health and the doctors never could determine what killed him, and that Raphael’s claim as the blood son superseded my father’s claim because he was named only in absence of Raphael.”
“And how did they resolve it?”
“Raphael died in the same mysterious way his father did, with no sons to name. After that, there was no choice but to let my father take up the mantle,” I explain tiredly.
“And no one thought that was suspicious?” Lauressa asks.
“Anyone who did either was made to fall in line, left, or met their own mysterious end.”
“Serious?”
“You’re the self-proclaimed cult expert. You know how this works. It was written off as the will of the Supreme Force.”
“Yes,” Lauressa says dryly. “The work of your passive god who never intervenes and just lets things play out. That god.”
“None of this explains how we can use this to remove my father out of the picture,” I point out.
“Because it casts reasonable doubt on your father as an individual. On his legitimacy as the Oracle. And making people doubt is how you break the control the cult leader has over the group. In other cults, that kind of doubt would make the entire cult fall apart. But the Sovereignty is unique in that it’s not the person that they worship; it’s the title. If we can convince the Sovereignty that your father is a false prophet, that he killed the man who was supposed to be Oracle, the Sovereignty stays intact; every word and declaration your father has made is now delegitimized, including his declaration of me being his conduit, and the title of Oracle is yours for the taking,” Lauressa says, looking overly pleased with herself.
In theory—and theory only—it’s a good plan. We wouldn’t even need to convince all the Sovereignty. Just the priest and priestess in my father’s inner circle. At the very least, it’s more of a plan than I have. But there’s only one problem.
“Or we create another succession crisis.”
“No. It’s the same succession crisis.”
“With one heir dead, the other delegitimized—and thus me delegitimized as an heir—and no heir in sight,” I remind. “Tell me how this doesn’t lead to the Sovereignty falling apart.”
“Because all we have to do is spin that your damn god allowed it to play out that way. He needed it to play out that way to give rise to the true heir. Not Zachariah’s blood son and not the son he tried to claim. No. He misinterpreted the Supreme Force’s directives. It wasn’t your father he was directing Zachariah to. It was you,” Lauressa explains with a grin.
She adds, “You’ll be like Solomon. Born of deceitful circumstances but all from the Supreme Force’s will.”
“Solomon’s father was a legitimate prophet,” I point out.
“We’ll workshop it.”
She has a mischievous gleam in her eyes, like she’s enjoying this way too much, in the same way I enjoy taking advantage of and manipulating people’s faith in this nonsense to see my way. But it could work. It’s a good plan. The details will have to be worked out, reassessed, revised, thrown out, and created again. But it could work. It’s probably the only thing that could work right now.
For the first time since my father looked at Lauressa and decided he wanted to take her from me, I’m back in control.