Beating Ruby (31 page)

As usual.

THIRTY-FOUR

The Start

“Standing alone in the ashes of his compound, Ramirez picked up the torn lace panties from the blackened ground and pressed them to his nose, inhaling deeply. ‘It’s not over, Rica! You can run, but you can never hide from your destiny . . . Our destiny!
’
”

—Kerry-Lee Storm,
The Cost of Rica II: Ramirez Strikes Back

I snuggled in the cashmere coat while two paramedics carried Sahar on a stretcher toward the Board’s black helicopter, escorted by heavily armed men. They left as they had come, without a word, and once the long blades had all but disappeared into the mountains, swallowed by dawn’s mist, I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding.

The CIA cleaners from Geneva showed up twenty minutes later, in a white-and-gray aircraft, indeed. I’m not sure what became of hacker boy. I never heard of any sort of public trial after the Ruby affair. Alex seemed confident that the cleaning team would take him to “safety,” where they’d take the time to assess what kind of services they could squeeze out of him in exchange for some relative freedom and a chance at a longer life.

I have to admit that I did entertain some level of morbid curiosity, because I had never seen an actual cleaning team in action before. When I saw guys in dark coveralls bring out bottles of chemicals and body bags, however, I decided I could live without this particular bit of knowledge. I allowed March to take me away in one of the cars Sahar’s goons had brought us in. I think it was better this way.

March had unlocked the doors to a black SUV, and I was about to get into it when I saw him stiffen and glare past my shoulder. I turned to find Alex standing a few feet away from us. Seeing him like this, in his wrinkled shirt and tux pants, covered with cuts and bruises, exhausted but alive, and radiating that peaceful warmth I now knew to be only a small part of the puzzle of his true self, a pang of nostalgia tugged at my heart. Ours was a story that couldn’t have worked in the long run, shouldn’t have been written in the first place, but I had felt something for the gentle guy who had talked to me on Yaycupid and taken me to the Museum of Natural History. I wished Alex would find him again, someday, and let him take the wheel.

Behind me, March was already walking around the car and closer to me; I signaled to him that things were okay with a jerk of my hand.

When Alex spoke, there was a rueful tenderness in his eyes. “You’re leaving.”

“Yes. I think it’s time.”

He took a few steps forward under March’s tense gaze, until he was standing inches from me. His hand rose to touch my hair. I fought the reflex to flinch. This was good-bye; no need to make things any worse between us. I steeled myself when he lowered his head to whisper in my ear. If Alex wanted to apologize, I wouldn’t ruin those last moments.

“I told you I’ll be the one to decide when we’re done,” he began. Ice crackled down my spine as he went on. “So you tell Dries this for me: We’re
not
done. We’re only getting started.”

I stood stunned, willing my heart to slow down. Behind me, I heard rapid footsteps crushing the gravel as March moved toward us. The cleaning team had interrupted their work and several men were now staring at us, ready to intervene.

Alex’s lips tugged to the side in a strange grimace that I couldn’t reconcile with a smile; an adolescent laugh burst out of him. “We’re good,” he said out loud for his colleagues to hear as he walked away, his hands up in mock surrender.

Once the adrenaline rush had receded, I realized that there were very few parts of my body that didn’t hurt. I was covered in scrapes and bruises, my scalp still throbbed where Sahar’s henchman had pulled my hair, and I prayed that the slight headache wouldn’t turn into a migraine . . .

Even so, I was grateful for the way March held me for a while afterward. He didn’t say anything, didn’t ask; he just got me into the car, welcomed me in his arms, and enveloped me in a warm, protective bubble. He was just as battered as Alex, smelled of smoke, gunpowder, and sweat, but I didn’t care; the way he rocked us tenderly and kept kissing the top of my hair was worth a thousand showers.

After a few minutes, I felt the rise of his chest as he sighed. I knew he wouldn’t force me to talk if I didn’t want to, but his words back at the Sonnenhof echoed in my ears.
Rule number one: from now on, you’ll be honest with me.
I would. I snuggled even closer, as if I could merge my body into his and forget all this. “It was about Dries. I think Alex is after him . . . because of what happened to his parents.”

“I thought so.”

My head shot up, and I escaped his hold. “You knew?”

“Not exactly. After I discovered he worked for Erwin I made some calls, because I was—”

“Jealous.”

“I was
concerned
. I wanted to understand who I was dealing with. I found out about the attack in Egypt, the plane crash. I knew for a fact that the Lions had been hired for that particular job, so I started to suspect something like this.”

“Is it true? Did Dries murder Alex’s parents?”

March shook his head sadly as he started the engine. “I don’t know.
But even if he didn’t carry out the operation himself, he’s the vice
commander—he’s responsible all the same.”

I thought of my mother’s assassination. Dries’s confession, back in Tokyo, that one of his men had shot her against his orders had come as a bittersweet relief, making the disfigured family portrait I had been painted into a bit brighter. My biological father hadn’t killed my mother, after all.

I knew her death had affected Dries more than he let on, but only now that I listened to March did I understand the extent of my father’s grief. He had been forced to take responsibility for that man’s actions. Because that’s what bosses do. He may have executed the guy, but that didn’t absolve him. I was struck by the realization that Dries hadn’t returned my mother’s letter to me because he no longer had any use for it—as he claimed—but because ten years later, he still couldn’t shake off his guilt. I wondered whether he felt the same about Alex’s parents. How many ghosts did men like Dries and March sleep with?

I curled in my seat, watching pine trees fly past us down the mountain road. “Do you think Alex can find Dries?”

“Possibly. What Mr. Morgan did—” March’s fingers drummed on the wheel. “What he did to you speaks of his determination.”

A cold sweat made the silk dress stick to my back. My biological father was no choirboy, but I certainly didn’t want anyone killing him. “Will you warn Dries?” I asked.

“No.” He sighed. “I refuse to stand in the middle of these two. There’s no good side.”

March cast me an anxious look as he drove. I squeezed his forearm as a silent reassurance that I understood what he meant. I remembered my last conversation with Dries in Tokyo. Back then, he had suspected March of having slept with me, and expressed clear disapproval. Like I said earlier, even supervillains are actually regular parents under the three-piece suits and the big guns. I didn’t want to imagine what Dries might do if he heard that Alex had tried to seduce me to get to him. I thought of Poppy; Alex was all she had left. Bringing Dries’s attention to Alex would endanger her as well.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

“It’s only a temporary reprieve. If Mr. Morgan chooses to pursue his vendetta, the price will be high.”

I slumped in my seat. What could I do? Warn Alex that Dries was dangerous and revenge was a bad idea? He’d laugh in my face, like he had minutes ago. As for Dries . . . He just wasn’t the sort of man with whom you could have a conversation that would start with “I have to tell you something, but please don’t get mad.”

March glanced at me while he drove. “I’m sure we’ll find a solution, but before that, we need a little rest. How about I kidnap you again, Miss Chaptal?”

I stretched with a smile. “Dammit, am I going in the trunk again?”

That earned one of his rare grins. “I can think of a trunk-free special offer for returning clients.”

“So where are we going?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that. Rule number one of a successful kidnapping.”

We passed a road sign; we’d be at the Sonnenhof in a few minutes. “Can I at least call Joy and my dad to tell them I’ve decided to run off with my fortysomething dom again?”

His lips pressed together; his cheeks were trembling. I could tell he was trying hard not to laugh. “Thirty-three, please.”

I almost missed that detail, but as the SUV stopped in front of the hotel’s entrance, I realized that sometime between October 28 of last year and today, March had celebrated his birthday.

THIRTY-FIVE

H.

“
IMPORTANT
: If you checked items
#7
(he’s in his thirties and still on the market)
and
#13 (he suffers from either psychiatric and/or cognitive troubles), we must advise you to reconsider your choice.
Unless
you’ve also checked
#2, #5, and #17
, in which case your insane boyfriend is rich, good-looking, and capable of sustaining an erection without medical help. Keep him.”

—Aurelia Nichols & Jillie Bean,
101 Tips to Catch Mr. Right

It took almost twenty hours of flying and driving to reach our final destination, the dark dungeon inside which I would be held captive by March for an undetermined amount of time. Okay, the tiny dark dungeon. Also it wasn’t really dark, because it faced the South Atlantic Ocean and there was pretty much nothing around. March liked his privacy; his closest neighbors lived nearly a mile away.

You guessed it: I was in March’s legendary cubicle house in Cape Saint Francis, in South Africa. It was my new domain. All four hundred square feet of it. This isolated brick house was, indeed, more or less a cubicle standing fifty yards away from a long croissant-shaped beach of rock and sand. The place consisted of one small bedroom, a bathroom, a spotless kitchenette, and a living room where March stored his books. To my surprise, there was also a surfboard standing near the window. I hadn’t pictured him as a surf enthusiast, but he explained to me that the area was in fact a renowned surfing spot, and that it was one of the many reasons why he had chosen to buy there.

Maybe I should mention that there was also a huge basement. If you guessed that March’s basement doubled as a fallout shelter and was ten times bigger than his home because there were enough weapons and military equipment inside to take over a small country, you won.

A wooden porch circled the house, on which Gerald had once stood. Perfect place to put a rocking chair, by the way. After a day spent sleeping the jet lag off and recovering from my romp in Sahar’s basement, I could think of no better way to end the afternoon than gazing at the powerful waves rolling and crashing on the beach in foamy white splashes. Standing next to me and leaning against the brick wall, March seemed just as content, a beer in hand—he apparently indulged once in a while—while the navy linen shirt he had changed into billowed under a cool and strong breeze.

I snuggled into the white cotton sweater I had borrowed—yeah, “stolen”—from his closet to wear over my T-shirt and shorts. “Will you tell me now? About the code?”

His lips curved into a resigned smile. “I had hoped you’d be busy enough to forget about this.”

“You underestimate me. I
will
touch and examine everything in your house, but only after you’ve kept your promise.”

“Let’s get inside, then.”

I followed him into the living room, sizzling with curiosity, and watched in confusion as he took off his shirt.

“It’s on my Lion,” he began, his voice suddenly lower, colored perhaps by a touch of anxiety. “The outward circle, on the bottom.”

I approached him gingerly, torn between my need to learn more and, might as well admit it, different and somewhat baser emotions. It had been six months since I had seen him bare himself like this, but you know what they say—absence makes the heart grow fonder. And, indeed, I could feel my heart growing fonder by the second as my gaze traveled up the landscape of corded muscles and innumerable scars that was March’s body. And
God
, I would
never
tire of that chest hair. Each golden curl beckoned me, tempted me to fondle his pecs, trace every vein running under his skin, and perhaps take a closer look at that wonderful navel.

But we weren’t here for that.
Yet.
I walked around him, moving closer, and one of his hands grazed mine in silent encouragement to follow his instructions. Rediscovering March’s Lion scarification, I was overwhelmed by the same blend of awe and distress I had experienced in the past. My stomach heaved at the sight of the large disk of tortured flesh stretching across the muscles of his back, covering most of his left shoulder all the way to the valley of his spine. “Carved,” to quote Dries; a fierce lion head, surrounded by a complex African pattern, as a testimony to the fact that March had once pledged his life to his “brothers.”

Once I was done reacquainting myself with the design, my eyes focused on the outer line of ridged flesh delimiting the disk, as he had told me to. I noticed the pattern was different there; it no longer looked like a group of identical, geometrical, and repetitive incisions in the skin, but rather various specific signs. I read the rough canvas with my fingertips, struggling to focus on the symbols rather than the way his muscles bunched under my touch, or the pleasant, soapy scent of him.

“Are you familiar with cuneiform?” March asked.

I nodded. “A little. It’s a very ancient writing system, used in Mesopotamia?”

“In short, yes. What you see here is—” He paused, and I heard him swallow. “My number. H2014867.”

My fingers never leaving his skin, I let that new piece of information sink in. March’s number . . . which probably meant that I2000009 was another Lion’s number. That didn’t tell me why or by whom my mother had been killed, but now I had a lead. I traced each line, as if I could make them speak and tell me all their secrets.

“Yours starts with an H. Why?”

“The number is a very ancient tradition. It’s probably been around since the Lions were formed, twenty-five hundred years ago. The original founders were Romans and Persian warriors,” he explained.

“So they kept the single Roman letter and used cuneiform numerals to identify their members?”

“Exactly. When you join the Lions, you agree to lose everything from your former life, starting with your name. All you’re allowed to keep is the initial of your former name. First, last—you get to choose that.”

I leaned my forehead against his back and molded my body against his, drawing strength from his warmth. “March. Who’s I2000009?”

He went rigid. “He’s the current commander of the Lions. His name is Anies. He’s Dries’s elder brother.”

And therefore my uncle, I realized, holding on to March to fight the tremors in my knees.

When March spoke again, his tone was softer. “Do you understand now why I said you need to let go?”

I lowered my arms, for them to find their way around his waist. I focused on his feverish exhale as my fingers explored the line of hair running down his stomach. His hands covered mine.

“I’m not ready to give up yet. I need to understand,” I said. “But if he’s the one . . . I’m gonna need to take up self-defense classes.”

Under my palms, a chuckle rumbled through March’s abs. “You’ll be the death of me, biscuit. Am I allowed a few days of rest before singlehandedly taking on the Lions?”

“I give you a week,” I replied with mock authority.

The moment I said this, he spun around and pulled me into a tight hug. I was a little dizzy, and still bruised, but I ignored it and buried my face in that goddamn soft hair, listening to his heartbeat.

As I nuzzled the Promised Land, I registered his hands moving down my back. Then the most wonderful thing happened: my feet left the ground. I allowed March to lift me up, wrapping my legs around his waist to better support myself. My fingers threaded in his hair, and I felt his lips graze my neck as he spoke. “Why don’t we take this somewhere more comfortable?”

Oh . . . Yes!

My mouth searched his, lavishing it with little pecks as he carried me toward his bedroom. I remember that I looked up, and above us, there were angel babies with little wings and harps playing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”—true story.

For the sake of full disclosure, the bed’s linen was a dark shade of indigo, and it carried a faint smell of detergent—no doubt it had been laundered recently. March laid me on the mattress like I was made of glass. I had no idea if it was the best moment, but when he covered my body with his, there was something so open, so vulnerable in his eyes, that I asked.

“H . . . It’s not the initial of a month.”

I noticed the way the muscles in his arms contracted. I brought my hands around his neck, stroking it soothingly.

“H was the initial of my last name,” he said.

Once again, I could hear Dries telling me about March, mocking the boy who wanted to escape his miserable life, escape his own self. I pulled away to look him in the eyes. “It’s your choice, whether you want to be H, whether you want me to know him. I’ll never ask again, and maybe one day, if you’re ready, you’ll tell me.”

He rolled us around the bed to gather me in his arms, and against my ear, I heard his murmur. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I managed to breathe out.

So, so welcome!

That’s more or less the point where I stopped thinking. The way his body molded against mine gave me those little chills of excitement that would travel from the top of my scalp to the tip of my toes. Observing my reactions under heavy-lidded eyes, March pulled me against him, placed one of his hands around the back of my neck while the other cupped my chin, and proceeded to knock my proverbial socks off—I was actually barefoot, if it’s of any importance—with a deep kiss. He hadn’t eaten any mints for a little while, and I found it made me more aware of his own taste, laced with beer. I locked my ankles around his legs as our hips met and ground together in a fashion that Corinthians 6:9 sternly proscribes. At the moment, however, I couldn’t care less that I wouldn’t inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Breaking our kiss long enough for us to gasp for air, I looked at him. His pupils were dilated, black pools swallowing the blue in his eyes, and that single detail was making me regress to an animalistic state.

His Adam’s apple rolled in his throat. “Biscuit, we need to slow down a little.”

A bubbly laugh escaped me. “Hilarious . . . but you shouldn’t joke about that. You have no idea how frustrated you got me back in Paris!”

He responded with an uncertain smile, and I realized, with no small amount of panic, that he was maneuvering his hips
away
from mine. “I’m serious.”

Clinging to him, I bit his earlobe. “You’re really milking that joke, aren’t you?”

“Biscuit, I don’t have condoms.”

Oh.

“I’m sorry,” he went on, stroking my hair. “It’s been a little while, and it would seem that the ones I kept in the bathroom are expired.”

My lips pressed together in a quivering pout. “Maybe it’s like bagels—
they never go bad, they just dry up a little.”

He laughed against my cheek and untangled us, bringing our level of promiscuity back to that of a
clean
hug. “I promise I’ll go buy some in Saint Francis Bay tomorrow.”

My nose bunched. Scammed again. By a man I now understood to be a tease and denial fetishist. I wasn’t going to cry; I would face the new lemon life had just fired in my face with dignity. I squirmed away from him. “I understand.”

The worst part was that I
could see
the faint smile playing on March’s lips. “Come back here, biscuit. I’ll make it up to you,” he said, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me back against his chest.

I fought him with a little grunt. “I know it’s another trap!”

My accusations were met with a chortle as he drew the comforter over us.

Now . . . I won’t get into a graphic account of the things he did to my socks—or the rest of my anatomy for that matter—but as it turned out, there’s a surprising amount of exquisite exploration you could accomplish, short of the whole LEGO business.

So yes, in the end, he did make it up to me. Thoroughly so . . .