Chapter 42
Electra
Calanthe is chatting away with Gael. The conversation seems light and friendly, punctuated with bursts of sporadic laughter.
My friend’s approval means everything to me. The fact that she seems like she’s genuinely enjoying herself settles something deep in me. In spite of being vain, my biological father isn’t the monster everyone has made him out to be.
Probably because everyone based their impression of him on Ines’s opinion, and Ines is a judgmental, deceitful bitch.
“The footage is organized by month and year.” Alexander presses play on a grainy video, stretching it until it fills the screen. “We’ve got hours of recordings from about a year after the Hadezes moved to Boston. That’s when all the conspiracy stuff about our people started.”
I study the video footage of a brownstone. All the windows are boarded up, but light seeps around the boards, and shadows move on the rooftop.
I pinch the screen to get a clearer shot of the roof vigils, but the image is too pixelated to even understand if the body is female or male.
“Quality wasn’t all that great back in the day, but the Holy Hunters didn’t cover up like they do today.
So when they weren’t hiding, we managed to grab some headshots to work with.
” He reduces the video to a thumbnail and scrolls to a video taken in the early 2000s.
“That’s how we ID’d Patriot, aka Levy Rafferty. ”
It’s a side-profile shot of a guy who looks to be in his late thirties and in pro-wrestler shape. Reddish hair peeks from a baseball cap, and a bump adorns the man’s longish nose.
Alexander scrolls to the next shot, this time front-facing, that displays a heavy splash of freckles across the jagged bridge of the man’s nose.
“The balaclavas and gloves they started wearin’ make it harder for us to tell who’s who,” Alexander continues, “but sometimes their hair sticks out, or we get a clear shot of their eyes. Or better yet, we’ll spot a hackable smartwatch or some flashy, expensive timepiece we can trace back to where it was bought.
That’s how we found Chairman—aka Dominic Caruso.
Thanks to his Rolex. A one-of-a-kind model sold to a Ukrainian arms dealer back in 2012, which he traded for vials of Atlantean blood. ”
“For haters, they certainly love what runs through our veins,” I muse as I drag my finger over the screen to flick to the next picture.
Another shot of Levy Rafferty, chatting on the rooftop of the brownstone with another massive male wearing a skullcap and an automatic weapon. Although the cap covers the man’s hair, it doesn’t cover his features, which look almost Nordic.
“That’s Handyman,” my half-brother explains.
“Let me guess…because he’s good with power tools?”
“If by power tools, you mean weapons, then yes. He replaced Patriot after we took the latter out and has remained at the top of the organization, serving the Caruso heir like he served Daddy Caruso. Handyman’s the guy they call when they need to torture and bleed.”
“We’ve been tryin’ to take him out for years,” Gael pipes up, breaking off his conversation to join ours.
Likely because his seatmate has gone to the restroom to offload the gallon of tomato juice she’s ingested. If she weren’t immortal, I’d be worried she was suffering from a life-ending deficiency of some kind.
“But he’s a slippery son of a gun,” Monta muses.
“I’m still convinced that if we can snatch his daughter,” Alexander says, “we can get him and Caruso, since the daughter’s married to Dominic’s son.”
Goddess, these two know so much about the hateful organization. I’m sort of jealous. Okay, not sort of… I’m very jealous. “Do we have a picture of the daughter?”
“A partial.” Alexander reduces the image of Patriot and Handyman, then skips through to a folder dated seven years back. “Her name’s Quinn Caruso. Codename Fox, probably ’cause she’s crafty.”
Quinn… Why does her first name feel familiar?
As I root around my mind for the answer, Alexander brings up the shot of two people passing through a subway turnstile—both in full black gear.
I cock an eyebrow. “You call that a partial? All you can tell is that she’s tiny. Or at least way more petite than the guy she’s with.” I squint as though that could help me see through the man’s balaclava. “Is that Caruso with her?”
“No. We assume it’s the girl’s bodyguard.” Gael folds one denim-clad leg over the other, revealing a pair of python cowboy boots that scream loaded rancher. “Dominic’s son never goes out without an army of guards. These two were on their own.”
“As for why we call it a partial…” My brother blows up the shot, revealing the eye holes of the mask. “We know she’s a blonde and that her eyes are this cat-like yellow-brown—same as Handyman.”
I recenter the image to see the face of her companion, but he’s turned away from the surveillance camera. “Interesting that Caruso lets his wife walk around with only one bodyguard…”
“She’s Handyman’s daughter and was born in the organization.” Gael rolls his neck as though it were stiff. It might be, seeing as he was apparently up all night.
“So what you’re saying is that the girl is as lethal as her dad?” I ask.
“Lions don’t give birth to pussy cats, darlin’.” Gael’s idiom gives me pause. And not because he’s reworded it, but because it reminds me of what Dorian told me the day I found out that Gael was my father.
He’d called Gael a monster. Did that make me one too? I’ve killed—and without mercy. I might not have commissioned a portrait of myself with my victims, but did that set me apart from the man sitting in the leather seat across the aisle from me?
“How did you find out Quinn was Caruso’s wife?” I ask.
“From audio recordings,” Alexander says.
“It’s somethin’ we’ve been workin’ with for the last five years or so.
It’s helped us locate a good number of their places of operation.
Like the deli. Though, in recent years, they started gettin’ smarter, usin’ voice changers and callin’ each other only by their codenames. ”
“Do we have any other partials of her? Or her father? Or Caruso Jr?”
“We assume Caruso’s son resembles his father, though no one has ever seen the kid.” Gael nods to the tablet. “Show her, Alexander.”
“Kid?” I ask. “Isn’t he in his thirties?”
“Late twenties.” Alexander presses on his tablet’s photo app, heads into his favorites folder, and blows up an image that is so realistic it takes me a heartbeat to realize it’s a painting.
The painting.
The one of Gael holding Levy’s severed head in one hand, while leaning against a shelf upon which sit two other detached heads—one atop a book whose spine reads Marvels of Atlantis, and the other positioned under a glass cloche. All have their eyes wide open and terror-filled.
It’s so life-like that the tiny veins around their irises appear embossed. While they make Caruso’s dark eyes look like black holes, they make his wife’s gray ones look like shiny nickels.
I grimace as I stare into Levy’s green eyes, at the locks of his orange hair clutched in Gael’s fist, at the freckles reproduced with too much precision, and finally at the man’s ears that stick out like satellite dishes.
“Fun fact. Chairman’s wife was married to Patriot until I returned him to his maker.” My biological father’s lips quirk with amusement.
Delight is definitely not the emotion his “fun fact” sparks in me. If anything, the incestuous nature of the Holy Hunters’ relationships grosses me out. Much like the painting.
“And I’m going to puke again…” Calanthe, who was just coming back down the aisle, flings her palm against her mouth and lurches back toward the restroom, her stilettos denting the plane’s beige runner.
Again?
Worry pulls me out of my chair. I push open the gaping door of the restroom and nest my palm between her shoulder blades and rub. “What do you mean again? Do you have a stomach bug?”
Calanthe dry-heaves over the metal toilet bowl, her slender fingers clutching the black marble sink top. “No.”
“Food poisoning?”
“No.”
She spits out a glob of saliva.
“Then—”
“I’m pregnant.”
“You’re…you’re…you’re…?” Shock makes me sound like a broken record.
“Pregnant.”
“With a baby?”
“No. With a stick insect.”
My blinking is out of control.
“Of course, with babies.” Calanthe splashes her mouth with water. “Plural. Three.”
I choke on my intake of air, then proceed to wheeze like I’m missing a lung. “Three?”
Calanthe pats her mouth dry on a towel. “Why are you in shock? Your uterus isn’t about to become an overbooked Airbnb.”
“Callie, your dream!”
“Came true. Yeah. Should’ve doubled down on birth control,” she mutters.
“I’m going to be an aunt!” My heart feels close to bursting with happiness. “Great Gaea, this is the best news in the entire world!”
Calanthe finally grins, a soft pink blooming on her cheeks.
I throw my arms around her neck. “How far along are you?”
“Just over two weeks. I went for my first ultrasound this morning. That’s why I phoned you a dozen times, left you a hundred messages to call me back, before finally hoofing it over. I was dying to tell you.”
“I’m sorry my phone was off.”
She hooks her chin on my shoulder and pats my back.
“How excited is Tarian?” I whisper.
“He’s delirious with happiness. And so freaking smug. I swear, when the doctor told us there were three heartbeats, Tarian acted like having multiples was some kind of masculine achievement. Men.”
I snort, finally pulling away, but only to look at her tummy.
“Can you believe I’m already showing?”
“Well, you are growing three— Is that why you’re eating every tomato you come across?”
She nods. “Tomatoes are my kryptonite these days. Mom was telling me that she craved them as well during her first trimester.”
I shake my head, smiling from literal ear to ear. “I’m guessing she knows?”
“Yeah.”
“What about Fiona?”
“Haven’t told her yet. Mal knows, though. He was at the house when I peed on ten sticks.”
For some pathetic reason, I almost ask if Ines was there too, but Ines, last I heard, is still in Atlantis.
Calanthe tugs on her T-shirt, which looks painted on and about to rip. Her ginormous boobs stretch the bleeding heart logo of a band, making it look more like a cracked egg than…
The inside of my mouth suddenly goes dry as the heart bracketed by initials on Cillian’s shoe lights up my lids, followed by the inscription on the cookbook.
RR ?? QH
Dear Reevey… Love always, Quinn.
Quinn.
Reevey.
My buzzing ears fill with what Cillian once told me: My mother remarried.
“Elle, are you all right?” Calanthe asks.
I pull away from her. I don’t know how I get back to Gael and Alexander, but I’m suddenly standing in the aisle between their seats. “The wife… The one who was married to Chairman and Patriot. Did they have a kid together?”
“No,” Gael says, drawing my heart back into its appropriate cavity. “Caruso Jr. is from a prior union.”
“I don’t mean Caruso’s son.” My heart wanders around my chest again. “I mean Levy’s and whatever her name is.”
I feel Calanthe standing at my back, contemplative and steady.
“Charlotte,” Alexander says.
I want to growl that the woman’s name isn’t important. What’s important is whether she produced an offspring with her first husband.
“Yes. They had a son. One who either died or left the organization a few months after we got Charlotte and Dominic.”
“What was his name?” I whisper, hoping, praying that my gut is wrong. That the man I’m falling for isn’t—
“Reeve,” Alexander answers.
“What’s Quinn’s maiden name?” My words are barely louder than my breaths.
I guess the letter it will start with before Gael confirms it. “Hayes.”
RR ?? QH
Reeve Rafferty.
Quinn Hayes.
What does the broken, bleeding heart even symbolize? His unrequited love for Quinn Hayes? Or was—is it requited in spite of who she chose to marry?
A restless swarm moves across my skin. “Do we have any visuals of this Reeve?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Gael says. “Alexander?”
My brother shakes his head, which agitates his short ponytail.
I suddenly see Cillian stepping out of the gym shower, his torso festooned with scars. Scars and a necklace… “Alexander, can you pull up all known pictures of the mom from when she was married to Levy?”
Gael’s brow furrows. “Why?”
“Because I need to see her engagement ring.”
Alexander manages to find a picture of Charlotte from before her husband entered the service of the Holy Hunters. She’s sitting at a table outside a lobster shack, wearing a straw hat that she holds in place with her left hand.
I steal the tablet from Alexander’s hands and pinch the screen until the small ring becomes so large I can count the number of stones and decipher their color.
I want to toss the tablet out the plane window.
Malachi was right. Cillian wasn’t with me for me. He was with me for…for I don’t know what reason, but I plan to find out.
“Gael, tell your pilot to turn back immediately,” I growl, my heart feeling as torn as the one on Calanthe’s T-shirt and Cillian’s—Reeve’s shoe.
My lash line burns, but I refuse to let the tears fall.
I hate Malachi for being right, but not as much as I hate—with every cell in my being—Reeve…fucking…Rafferty.