Chapter 36 #3
“No buts.” Jack turned the side of his face away from view, and clicked the record button. “Now, if you’d please, start at the beginning.”
I wasn’t going to let this go. I was going to figure out what happened. But not while I was being recorded. Now, it was time to bite the bullet.
Through mouthfuls of marshmallow and pickled jalapeno sub, I shared my past three months with the agents. The truths I revealed, the lies, what my captors looked like, subjected me to, and the insights about Solomon’s Seal that came to light.
Like two dragons, Jack and Todd sat perched forward, white knuckling their knees.
With how protective they were behaving, I didn’t see why the shock part of the collar was worth mentioning, so I omitted it from my description. They could see where the collar had rubbed and marked my skin, but Madame’s favorite feature would only infuriate them further, so I kept it to myself.
But there was something just as painful, the agents needed to know—the identity of the woman I was kept captive with.
“The woman Fawzy and Thruppy are looking for, her name is Three.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “And the scar on the side of her face… is also a three.”
Silence. Then something hard, like a plate, hit the carpeted ground.
I pried one lid open to find my dragons on the edge of their seats.
A moment passed, before Jack said, “So, you’re Two?”
It didn’t matter he said the words with care, hearing the title again was like a slap to the face. I’d fought for months to reclaim my name, and to hear it from Jack made me want to throw something. Or cry. Maybe set something on fire.
“No.” Todd dragged his chair closer to mine. “She’s Delilah.”
I’d never felt more seen. His words were a soothing balm, taking my need to play defense and instead replaced it with understanding.
There was a brief flutter in my stomach, a pull at my cheek, before I admitted, “I fought every time they called me Two. I refused to accept it, which the Seal wasn’t particularly fond of.”
“Cults naming people after numbers,” Todd raised a brow, a gleam in his eye. No doubt trying to lighten the mood, “how unoriginal.”
The other side of my mouth kicked up. “At least with the Almeidas being numbered was a symbol of power.”
“How many of you were numbered?” Jack course-corrected, phone still recording.
“Just three.”
From there I explained how the Seal broke into factions supporting One, Two, or Three.
I relayed the prophecy song sung by Three verbatim, and shared all I learned about the betting and politics between the Wardens.
How there were those who were opposed to forcing the prophecy, and those who would do everything in their power to ensure it.
How there were also those that believe the mother must be a virgin up to and including conception, and how there were other schools of thought which centered on the virgin mother conceiving the first and only time she had sex—the Seal hadn’t said it in so many words, but I was pretty adept at reading between the lines.
Especially, with Warden White and Madame’s arguments around what the prophecy ‘allowed for’.
I also told the agents about my speculations about what happened with my predecessor. One.
Once all of the heavy subject-matter was out of the way, I explained my escape, the trek across the swamp, and Three’s attempt at double-crossing me.
With everything, bar the shocking aspects of the collar, out in the open, I answered all their questions. Even the more intimate details I wished to withhold.
By the time the fire lowered to embers and the sun was fully set, I was well and thoroughly exhausted.
The agents sagged in their chairs, fury still radiating as they tried to come to terms with our new reality.
There wasn’t anything either of them could have said to make what I went through better, and they knew it.
We stewed in a moment of silence, before Jack stopped recording, the swollen skin around his eye shining a deep purple. We were about to transition into feeling sorry for me territory, I could sense the shift in the room.
I needed to get ahead of it, and now that the phone had stopped recording, I knew how to do just that.
Smacking my hands on the table as I made to leave, I said, “Mads deserves to rot in a cell and die.” One-hundred percent truth. “But the sleazeball may have video proof I didn’t kill Lawrence.”
Two sets of eyebrows shot up.
Jack stood, then glanced at Todd. “If that video exists…”
“It will overturn your conviction.”
“And I’ll be free.” A smile crept onto my face, as I got up and made my way to the door. “So, as soon as we’re done dealing with the vamps, I’m going to find that tape and prove my innocence.”
Jack followed, swinging his gaze to Todd for back up. “Delilah, after what you went through… in your condition. You can’t really expect to—”
There was a corrective growl from Todd.
“We don’t expect you to jump right back onto the vamp case.”
But it was October, and the FBI-suggested vamp gathering was approaching, so I said, “Try and stop me.”