49. Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Forty-Nine
S kye
Laura’s phone buzzes as she enters the cabin of the private jet. Her sharp intake of breath makes us all freeze.
“What is it?” Varro asks, already reaching for her.
She holds up the phone, hands shaking. “It’s a text from Dr. Diaz. There’s been an… incident at the facility.”
“The other gladiators?” Thrax’s voice is tight with concern.
Laura initiates a call, her face growing more pale with each second that no one picks up. The rest of us hover nearby, hearts pounding, as we wait. When Dr. Diaz calls her back, we watch Laura’s expression shift from confusion to horror.
“When?” she demands. “How?” A long pause. “Keep searching. We’re on our way.”
She ends the call and looks at us, her eyes glistening. “Keller—our head of security—he’s taken one of them. Victor.”
The name hits Thrax like a physical blow. His whole body tenses beside me .
“What do you mean, taken?” Varro asks as he puts a supportive arm around her waist.
Laura collapses into a seat, already typing furiously on her phone. “It was during the Colosseum incident. He used the chaos as cover. When we were occupied with the trip here and handling the press, he wheeled Victor out of the facility. Made it look like an emergency transfer due to cooling system failures.”
As Laura texts with the hospital staff, I lean close to Thrax and ask, “Were you good friends?”
“I met the Greekling on the Fortuna. I didn’t know him long. He was a quiet male, serious. Big and muscular, but not like most gladiators. He was thoughtful, wise, talked about ideas he learned in books. He was easy to be around.”
Just that little bit of information allows me to imagine the male: huge, with slabs of muscle, yet bookish. I can’t imagine how Thrax and Varro are dealing with such devastating news of the loss of their friend.
As we take off, more messages pour in, adding new layers to the deception. A compromised tech specialist. Fabricated system warnings. An unauthorized medical team. By the time we reach cruising altitude, the picture becomes frighteningly clear: while we were fighting Roth in Rome, his organization was about to execute an elaborate heist.
“The transport vehicle?” Varro asks, his voice carefully controlled.
“Gone dark,” Laura reports grimly. “They’ve vanished.”
I reach for Thrax’s hand, feeling the tremors of rage running through him. The victory we felt in Rome seems a distant memory.
Varro paces the narrow aisle of the plane, his movements tightly controlled. “This was coordinated. Roth in Rome, Keller in Switzerland… ”
“A diversion,” Laura agrees, her voice hollow. “We were so focused on protecting Thrax and Skye…”
“That our brothers were left vulnerable.” Thrax’s words are barely audible, but I feel them rumble through his chest where I’m tucked under the shelter of his muscled arm.
More messages arrive throughout the flight. Dr. Diaz sends surveillance footage, security logs, staff statements. Each new piece of information reveals how meticulously planned the theft was.
“He had so much help,” I say, scrolling through the logs on Laura’s tablet. “And we were all oblivious.”
“We tried,” Laura adds. “We hired what we thought was the best security money could buy. We just,” she shakes her head as she heaves a sigh, “trusted the wrong guy.”
“We did our best, dulcis ,” Varro says to Laura. “How could we have known?”
The rest of the flight passes in tense strategy sessions. By the time we land, we not only have the beginnings of a plan—but the growing realization that we’re facing something bigger and more organized than we imagined.