Chapter 40
Brooke
Owen’s grip on my hand was too tight as he pulled me up the narrow stairs. His palm was damp with excitement or nerves—probably both. Each step took me farther from Rav, but those two guards hadn’t given us any choice. This was the only way through.
“I can’t believe you’re really here,” Owen said for the third time. His voice had that breathy quality he got when he was excited about a formula or an unexpected data point. “I thought I was hallucinating. But you’re real. You’re here.”
The stairs opened onto another terrace, just below the roof. The Castel dell’Ovo had so many levels. The wind swept up from the harbor, whipping my hair across my face. I fought to push it back, years of covering the scars on my neck making the action habitual.
This terrace was smaller than the one with the cannons, and the highest anyone could go without scaling the walls to the roof.
The whole space was maybe fifty feet square, ringed by waist-high battlements.
Eight operatives stood at strategic points, all armed, all watching us.
But it was the center that made my breathing shallow.
A golden phoenix, larger than the one at Pompeii, stood on a raised platform. Its wings stretched wide, head tilted toward the sky, every feather detailed and gleaming under two portable work lights.
Surrounding it? Fireworks.
Not one or two. A dozen launching positions, each loaded with multiple mortars. Some angled high, some low, some aiming for the bay, and others toward the city. The kind of setup that could blanket a massive area with whatever the fireworks contained.
These were the ones we’d been looking for.
But if they were going to blanket the surrounding area with them, raining down powdered Greek Fire on the festival-goers below, where was the liquid form? That was the part that would heal, so if our theory about the dual-deployment had been correct, they’d need the liquid.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Owen pulled me closer to the phoenix, his fingers wrapped around mine like we were on a date.
“Yes,” I breathed, unsure what else to say.
“Oh! Before I forget!” He leaned close to me like he was about to kiss my ear, but instead, he pulled out the earpiece, tossed it on the stones in front of himself, and smashed it with his heel.
Shit. How did he know about my earpiece?
He then detached the phone from my forearm and tossed it over the terrace edge. “Now we can talk.”
“Owen, what are you—”
“Enzo warned us.” He waved one of the operatives over. “But I know you better than he does.”
The operative took my backpack and walked away with it—with my Pendragon phone, my test kits, my neutralizer pads. Oh fuck. How much had Enzo told him? How much did they know about me?
Owen retook my hand as though nothing had happened. “The calculations alone took me two years. Getting the polymer barriers right, triggering their rupture at the perfect temperature, and ensuring they could withstand extreme heat was the biggest challenge. But I did it, Brooke. I figured it out.”
As much as this was clearly Owen Kengsington standing next to me, I barely recognized him. He’d been a narcissist before, but now?
His words were frantic, but his voice held the eager tone it always had after he’d solved something complex and was waiting for praise.
“Owen.” I kept my voice level, attempting to sound as scientifically curious as possible. “What exactly did you figure out?”
“How to fix things.” He turned to face me fully, and his eyes had the same crazed look as Enzo had when he began talking about the phoenix. “It will even be able to fix you.”
Fix me? As though I were broken equipment.
The memories invaded my brain, of his face paling when I’d taken off my shirt. Of how he’d stepped back. How he’d suggested I should find a good plastic surgeon.
“You mean my scars?”
“Yes!” He reached toward my neck, and I stepped back instinctively. His smile vanished, and disgust flashed behind his eyes. “Enzo told me you were working with the paramilitary group.”
“The who?” Was there any point in pretending? I’d come up here with a hidden earpiece and a phone attached to my wrist.
“You know, we had most of the formula from Haddad’s old research partner. But once we got the extra files that were hidden in the data center?” His eyes lit up, and he squeezed my hand.
You should have pushed harder to have it deleted, Brooke. There was obviously enough data left in those files for him to use.
“After that, everything clicked. Except the genetic markers. I don’t think Haddad ever figured that part out.”
Stroke his ego. “But you did, didn’t you?”
“No.” He laughed, sweeping his hand around the area, across the fireworks mortars. “Stefano had been testing on mice but getting nowhere.”
Play dumb, Brooke. “Stefano?”
Owen’s eyes widened, a fervor deep inside them. “You have to meet him. He’s the most remarkable man I’ve ever worked for.”
How long did I have left? Was there any way to distract them until the other two teams arrived? “I’d love to.”
Owen pulled me by the hand closer to the phoenix. “Stefano?”
“Yes?” A man stepped into the ring of lights. He resembled the Stefano Martinelli I’d seen photos of during our briefing, but he looked at least ten years older. Frail. He moved slowly, but with the confidence of a man who had decades of experience with everyone in the room deferring to him.
“Stefano,” said Owen, gesturing toward me with his free hand. “This is her. The one I told you we should have recruited.”
“The scarred one?” Martinelli canted his head, studying me like I was an exhibit.
“It’s hideous,” said Owen, an eerie smile spreading across his face.
My stomach lurched at the words. Those were the ones that made me ensure no one would ever see my skin again. Until Rav. Until he’d touched me, kissed me, and told me I was still beautiful the way I was.
Owen gripped me tighter. “She can help us identify the right genetic markers, and once we understand why some tissue responds and some doesn’t, we can heal her as a test.”
Panic splintered through my body. A test?
“Hmm.” Martinelli stopped directly in front of me. “Show me the scars.”
It wasn’t a request. Arguing would only make things worse.
So I continued playing the game, attempting to delay the launch. I removed the shirt I’d worn over the incursion suit, then unzipped part of the way down my front, pulling open the fabric for him to see.
“Fascinating.” Martinelli moistened his lips and leaned closer, inspecting the scar tissue on my neck and collarbone. Without looking at his guards, he said, “Restrain her.”
They moved faster than I could react. One grabbed my left arm and twisted it behind my back. The other mirrored the motion on my right, wrenching me away from Owen. Their grips were firm, and I had to swallow a cry.
Martinelli didn’t bother to look me in the face, just tilted his head this way and that, pulling the suit’s neckline to see my shoulder. “You’re one of Noah’s friends, I understand?”
Shit. Not good.
Although it did confirm that Noah was on our side.
“Fortunately, Enzo was on to him, and when we discovered his duplicity, there was still enough time to move our ritual here.”
They’d moved the ritual. Of course. The equipment underneath the amphitheater was their original plan, and then they moved it. It wasn’t a misdirection at all—they’d simply adapted.
Owen piped up. “She came willingly. She’s not a threat.”
Martinelli pursed his lips, considering. “Or she’s playing you?”
“She’s always been in love with me.” Did he honestly believe that?
“It’s fate, then?” Martinelli nodded slowly as he walked to a small table with a laptop and what must have been the control box for the fireworks, since the wires all ran to it. “Although it is unfortunate our miracle has to unfold here. The Pompeii Amphitheater would have been such poetry.”
“What exactly is the miracle you’re planning?” Talk to me, dammit. Although the longer I was up here, the greater the chance Rav stormed up to rescue me. Hopefully, I’d been clear enough that I wanted him to stay below.
“There are stories throughout the millennia of a bird that rose again after its death.” He moved to the phoenix statue, running his hand along one golden wing. “Different cultures, different myths. But they were all inspired by one origin story.”
Rav had explained that Fenix was gathering artifacts from different civilizations.
But seeing the real thing in front of me, they all seemed to belong.
The wings, the talons, the body, the beak.
Even the halo atop its head. If they’d been scavenged from across the globe, why would they all be the same style?
“It was trapped by a great warrior, who demanded its power of eternal life.” Martinelli continued to caress the statue. “But the phoenix knew mankind did not deserve its power. It begged the gods to stop men from hunting it and coveting its healing. But the gods are fickle…”
He looked at me as though he were telling a story to a child.
“The gods turned it into a golden statue. The warrior was angry and smashed it into pieces with a blow so hard the pieces scattered around the globe.” He tapped each part of the statue as he spoke.
“The halo to China, the beak to Persia, one of the talons to Rome, another to Chile, feathers in Egypt, South Africa, Madagascar…”
What did any of this have to do with Haddad?
“In Greece,” Martinelli continued, “the phoenix’s gold turned to dust, the bird’s fire catching across the water. It burned everything in its path.”
Owen took a few steps toward his—what was Martinelli to him? Research partner? Sponsor? Cult leader? “But the fire contained the phoenix’s healing properties. Suspended within the fire was its immortality.”
Martinelli nodded, placing a gentle hand on Owen’s shoulder. “Because the gods vowed that when mankind was ready, the pieces would find each other again.”