Chapter 27
Rav
I tugged my T-shirt back on, watching as Brooke did the same with her turtleneck and pants. Once she was clothed, she finger-combed her hair, finishing it by pulling it forward. Hiding the scar on her neck? It was clearly an unconscious move, one she must have been doing for years.
The scars weren’t that bad.
Then again, as a soldier and a veteran, I knew far too many people with life-altering injuries. Lost eyes. Lost limbs.
Calisse, so many lost lives.
But if she didn’t want people to see them, I’d respect it. Telling her what I saw didn’t matter, but maybe showing her would.
I offered my hand. “Ready?”
Her fingers intertwined with mine. For a moment, we just stood in the dim light, caught between what had almost happened and whatever news awaited us downstairs.
She lifted our joined hands to her lips, pressing a soft kiss against my knuckles before lowering them again.
“Rav…” Her voice carried a note of hesitation. “The team is going to know. About us.”
“They won’t judge us, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
“I’d prefer if we kept things quiet. Professional. At least until the mission’s complete.”
My stomach tightened. I wasn’t ready for her to pull away so soon. “Brooke—”
“I’m temporarily assigned to your team, and I don’t want anyone questioning my focus.” Her thumb traced a small circle against my palm. “Or yours.”
The words were a knife to my chest. I hadn’t thought about anything past the walls of this room since the moment she’d shown me her scars.
That was the exact same failure I’d had in Barin Kala.
I’d missed the gunman because all I saw was her.
And now I’d forgotten about the Greek Fire, also because all I saw was her.
I was still a failure. I released my hold of her hand, but she held tight. “Understood.”
“I meant everything I said.” She squeezed my hand before finally letting go. “And I hope you did, too.”
“I do.” I kissed her cheek and opened the door for her.
As we stepped out, I already missed her touch. But the strategist in me respected her reasoning. We needed the team’s confidence.
If we survived the next forty-eight hours, we could figure out the rest later.
The villa’s study hummed with activity when we arrived. One tablet was propped at the end of the table, displaying the camera feeds from Pompeii alongside scrolling data analysis of temperature and noise levels.
Drew sat at his laptop, tracking multiple screens. Jayce, Zac, and Malcolm studied something on a couple of other tablets. Emmett and Scarlett stood together in front of the main display, chatting with Brie, whose face filled the video call window.
Scarlett nodded to Brooke and me, then said, “Brie, we’re all here. What have you got?”
“Something big!” Brie split her screen, so her face filled only half of it.
“We hacked into the event planner’s system without much trouble, and we found some correspondence that helped point us to specific sections of the Fenix data we recovered from Mnemis.
It was like a Rosetta Stone, translating what we’d been looking at. ”
Images flashed across the screen as she spoke—spreadsheets, financial records, fragmented documents.
“Will pieced together partial images from the robot dog’s memory, which we cross-referenced with the Mnemis files.
” More windows appeared, showing blurry photographs.
“Will tweaked one of his AI models to fill in the missing details of the second face in the Enzo photo. That was enough to make some matches on social media.”
And it would have started an avalanche of discovery.
She paused before bringing up a professional photograph of a distinguished man in his late sixties: silver hair, aristocratic features, expensive suit.
“Stefano Martinelli,” she announced. “French-Italian multi-millionaire, philanthropist, and biotech investor.”
Martinelli? Why was that familiar?
“Philanthropist?” Brooke’s brows furrowed, and she pulled out her phone.
That wasn’t it. I knew the name from somewhere else. Think, man.
“Exactly. But there’s more to his story than charity galas and hospital wings.” She pulled up news articles and photographs—Martinelli at ribbon-cuttings, receiving awards, standing with political figures.
“He and his wife are active in the Naples social scene,” Brooke read from her phone, skimming down a list of highlights she’d found. “He funds medical research across Europe, donated to various projects at the Castel dell’Ovo, the university, and a…” She paused, covering her mouth with one hand.
“A what?”
She tilted her phone screen to me, showing a photo of Stefano Martinelli in front of the Pompeii Amphitheater.
“Tabarnak, I knew I recognized his name.”
Scarlett cocked her eyebrow at me.
“When Mario took us to the sewers the first time, he mentioned a park donor he’d taken on a tour last year.” I looked at Brooke, who’d returned to scrolling through Martinelli’s information she’d found. “A tour of the drainage system.”
“Sounds like he’s our man,” Scarlett said.
Brie continued with her briefing. “Three years ago, his daughter died from a rare, aggressive disease that attacked her nervous system and internal organs. According to some news articles I accessed, conventional treatments failed her.”
Brooke hummed aloud, still scrolling on her phone. “He’s poured multiple millions into regenerative medicine research. Fringe stuff. And it’s only sped up in the past three years.”
“Wait,” I said, “he’s spent more after his daughter passed?”
“I’m skimming a paper that was published through one of the labs he funded.” She nodded as she read. “It’s about cellular regeneration, and there’s a lot of crossover with the Greek Fire components.”
I wanted to wrap an arm around her, show her how much I appreciated her. I settled for: “If he’s spending more since her death, is it altruistic, or—”
Brooke’s head snapped up. “It’s genetic. He’s got it, too.”
“So he’s even more desperate for a cure to all diseases,” I said. That was the lie Fenix used to recruit people. The what-if question that made good people commit evil acts. “He can’t take the money with him, so he’s spending it all to find immortality.”
Brooke didn’t react, other than to hold my gaze longer than she would have an hour ago.
“The timing matches,” Brie said. “He started backing fringe researchers about two years ago, but six months ago, he withdrew from public life almost entirely. His research foundation cited personal matters, but financial records show massive transfers to shell companies I found mentioned in the Fenix files.”
Brooke finally tucked her phone away. “The regenerative aspect of Greek Fire is real, but it’s unstable. Deadly in its current form. If Martinelli believes he can refine it into a cure…”
“He’s willing to risk thousands of lives on the chance it might save him,” Scarlett finished.
“It still doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Why use it on the people at the amphitheater if he’s trying to cure himself?”
Brooke’s hands rose in front of her, and her eyes darted back and forth, as though she were doing mental calculations.
I’d seen it before, when she was making modifications to the monitoring equipment or figuring out which building to visit in a village.
“What if it’s not that Greek Fire’s unstable, but there’s something specific that causes it to work?
Something genetic no one’s been able to find. ”
I took a half-step toward her as the idea formed in my brain alongside hers. “They’re test subjects.”
“Exactly! Apply the powder form to injure them, then the liquid, with the hopes that someone exhibits healing.”
The room grew quiet as Fenix’s real plan sank in. They’d been lying to everyone they brought into their horrific cause. But who were they? Had Martinelli even told Noah and Enzo his real plan? From the things Noah had said to Jayce, he sounded like he’d believed it all.
Unless he’d recently learned the truth, and that was why he’d told us their plans?
Brooke continued, “If anyone in the amphitheater heals, Martinelli has his lab rat. He can find out why it worked for them, then reverse-engineer it to work on himself.”
“Well, shit.” Emmett sank into one of the chairs.
I studied Martinelli’s face on the screen. Behind the refined exterior, there was a dying man who would sacrifice anyone and everything to save himself.
Dangerous men, I understood.
Men with nothing to lose were far worse.
“That explains why Massimo’s arrest didn’t hamper Fenix,” Emmett added.
“We also found Trident Regenerative Solutions—Martinelli’s research front—has been operating at a loss for over a year and a half,” Brie continued. “The last approved clinical trial failed three months ago.”
“Creating desperation,” I said.
“We’ve identified what we believe is Martinelli’s lab from supply chain records.
” Brie pulled up a map of the Naples area, zooming in on a location about twenty kilometers east of Pompeii.
“The facility is registered as a pharmaceutical research center, but we traced unusual chemical purchases through the shell companies in the Mnemis data, all leading back here.”
“What about Noah?” I asked. “Any contact since the missed meeting?”
Brie shook her head. “Nothing we know of. The last number he used to contact Scarlett hasn’t sent any messages, and I haven’t been able to ping it.”
“Could Martinelli have discovered Noah was feeding us information?” Drew asked.
“It’s possible,” Scarlett said grimly. “If Enzo suspected Noah…”
It would explain the blood in the alley, leading to the tire tracks. Despite our complicated history, I wouldn’t wish Enzo’s wrath on anyone, but I was almost certain that was what happened. “That means we have two targets: the concert and the lab.”
“Reynolds focuses on the concert while Pendragon handles the lab?” Brooke suggested. “My team has the hazmat training and is familiar with containment protocols. Our protective suits won’t look out of place if we go in there.”
“Makes sense.” I nodded. “We’ll need to confer with them, but Pendragon will need authorization for an operation against the lab. And they need to coordinate with us. Go in when we confirm we’ve identified the materials under the amphitheater, so we don’t risk them hiding the chemicals.”
She frowned. “They’re already working through channels to secure authorization for some sort of action, but given our timeframe and the concern we may have a second mole, we shouldn’t count on official green light.”
“Will they act without approval?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“What about Will’s suits?” I asked. “When will they be ready for us?”
“I got a text from Dr. Norris while we were—” Her eyes met mine, but only briefly. “—discussing things upstairs. The suits are curing from the last treatment and should be ready for pickup early tomorrow morning.”
“The only thing that leaves—”
“Is the risk they have another facility,” Brooke said, picking up my sentence, as though our shared moment upstairs unlocked our working rhythm. “We need to secure his research to prevent anyone else from replicating it.”
“My team’s on it,” chipped in Brie from the monitor. “Now that we have a name to connect everything and have unraveled several of the shell companies, I think we’ll be able to speed up our research.”
“I’ll call Bobcat,” Brooke said. “Brie, can you patch in with us, so we can transfer what’s needed?”
“Tell him not to share the specifics.” I refrained from stepping any closer to her or squeezing her shoulder. “Keep Martinelli’s name and the lab’s location close to the vest. We can’t risk Fenix knowing we’ve figured this out.”
“Will do.”
Timing would be critical. If either of us acted too fast, we risked showing our hand and ruining the entire plan. The Greek Fire could get out early, or somewhere we weren’t ready for it. Perhaps outside of Naples, or outside of Italy.
We couldn’t tip them off.
Over the next couple of hours, the villa gradually quieted as team members retired for the night. When Brooke finally announced she needed sleep before the morning suit pickup, I fought the instinct to follow her upstairs.
It was exactly like the old days. Stealing moments when we could, hiding our feelings from the team. But this was one thing I didn’t want to be like the old days. I wanted to yell from the rooftops, ‘Brooke McAllister is the most wonderful woman in the world!’
I wanted to gather her up in my arms and never let her go again.
You have two days left, Rav. You’ve waited this long.
Drew and I were the last ones left. He frowned at the screen displaying the video feeds from under the amphitheater. He tapped the screen as though it could respond to him.
“What’s the matter?”
“They’re flickering, and there’s no sound,” he muttered.
“The tunnel’s empty. Of course, there’s no sound.”
But there had been sound from each of the cameras—tiny noises from vibrations, from rodents, from gentle gusts of air blowing through the drainage system.
“Which ones?”
“Three of them.” He tapped the screen again. “Might be the batteries.”
We’d have to check on them in the morning. Probably replace them. “How many spares did we bring?”
“Three, I think.”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll fix it tomorrow, once the park opens again. You staying up?”
He nodded. “I know the team at home’s monitoring these around the clock, but I don’t feel right just leaving it.”
“Hoping to catch Enzo on screen?”
“Hoping to see him caught in a cave-in.”
If only it were so easy.
Drew laughed. “Although, from what I hear, Declan already tried that. But you saved the asshole’s life?”
It had been the right decision at the time. I grunted, unable to say I’d made a mistake. I hadn’t known what a sadistic prick he was at the time, otherwise, maybe I would have left him there. “I’m heading up.”
We said our goodnights, and I made my way to the staircase. The third floor was quiet. I paused at the top of the stairs, staring at Brooke’s door. I could knock. Tell Scarlett to take my spot in the other room with Malcolm. They wouldn’t mind.
But Brooke wanted to keep our secret.
So instead of picking up where I’d left off with the beautiful scientist, I headed for the room I shared with the man who was going to marry one of my best friends.