by Lila Dubois
Reluctantly, they’d done so.
After yesterday afternoon’s kinky marathon sex session, they were all far more relaxed. James wasn’t sure he would have been able to step out of the room without worrying about Tristan’s mental state if it hadn’t been for yesterday. Last night they’d had dinner together—hospital soup—at the small dining table tucked into the corner of the living space. Meals were hard for Tristan, but last night he’d seemed relaxed and relatively comfortable using his left hand to eat.
After dinner, James had gone to the hotel and instead of napping for a few hours, he’d slept for nine hours straight. He’d come rushing back after waking, ready to apologize, and found Sophia curled up in bed with Tristan. She kept a safe distance from his body, which was covered with cuts and bruises that were easy to forget about because of the severity of what had happened to his arm, but she’d been holding Tristan’s left hand in her right, their fingers laced together as they slept.
They were going to be okay. Tristan hadn’t been wrong yesterday to be concerned that they hadn’t bonded enough, that they didn’t have enough of a foundation to survive the stress of the past two weeks. On paper, it didn’t look good, but for the first time since Tristan had been made admiral, James was feeling hopeful.
He looked at Sophia. She had her hair pulled over one shoulder in a braid and she was toying with the end, stroking it with her fingers. She was frowning at nothing in particular.
The doors opened and the doctors left, nodding to James and Sophia. When they were gone, James joined his husband, taking the armchair while Sophia perched on the foot of the bed.
“What did they say?” James asked.
“I can go home tomorrow. It’s healing well. I have to wear the sling and change the bandages twice a day. Can’t get it wet yet, not until it heals more, so no showering.”
“That’s good news, isn’t it?” James asked.
Tristan scratched his beard. “It is. But I, uh… My place is…”
“Tristan. It doesn’t matter what your old place is like. We’re moving into mine. Got a bang-up place in Walton-on-Thames. Bought it after my accident. It’s got three bedrooms and a big office. Plenty of room for all of us and a couple, three kids if we want.”
Tristan smiled at James’s mention of kids. “Kid talk already. You’re all in, eh?”
“All in.” James winked at Tristan, then noticed Sophia’s lack of reply. He looked at her. She was still playing with the end of her braid and frowning. “Sophia? Are you having another sex fantasy?”
“Hmm?” She looked at him, blinking a few times until she focused. “Oh, no. I was just thinking.”
“About what?” Tristan asked sharply.
They both looked at him, and Tristan only pursed his lips.
“It’s…nothing.” Sophia forced a smile. “I’m glad you get to leave the hospital.”
Tristan looked from her to James.
James held up his hands. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
“Nothing is wrong with me,” she snapped.
“You’ve been doing that for an hour.” James pointed at her fingers, and she let go of her hair.
Tristan sighed. “I think I get it. I’m the admiral now.”
“True,” James agreed.
“Because the previous admiral was shot and killed by a sniper. A sniper who was able to sneak a piece of equipment into one of our secure facilities.”
“Yes.” James was starting to have a sinking feeling.
“The sniper still hasn’t been captured, unless either of you got an update I didn’t?”
James and Sophia both shook their heads.
“There have been three separate attacks,” Tristan said slowly.
“Three?” James asked. “No, just two, London and Man.”
“The murders in Italy.”
James rubbed his face. “Fuck me, I had forgotten about those.”
Sophia was watching Tristan closely. “You’re thinking the same thing I am.”
James looked back and forth between them. “What? What am I missing?”
“There are too many unanswered questions,” Tristan said. “Too many holes.”
“Because you haven’t caught the sniper yet. Once you do, you’ll get your answers?” James tried to make it a statement, but it came out as a question.
Sophia shook her head. “There’s something we’re missing. A link between these things.”
“The link is the Domino,” James insisted. He wanted this to be over. Wanted them to be able to just focus on their trinity and playing house and making babies and on helping Tristan become the admiral.
“Maybe,” Tristan conceded.
“Possibly.” Sophia shrugged.
James dropped his head into his hands. “Crap.” He pushed to his feet. “All right, let me get some paper.”
“Paper?” Sophia asked.
“Yes. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to go about it logically. We have pieces, but we don’t know what the larger picture is.” James rummaged around in the living room until he found a pad of paper. He brought it back to the bedroom, setting it on the mattress by Tristan’s knee. “In an archaeology dig, you don’t dig the whole thing at once. You start with a few trenches. Spread them out over the site.”
James drew three rectangles on the paper. “Start digging in the trenches.” He pointed to the rectangles he’d drawn. “You find a bit of a wall, maybe some pottery in trench one. Another wall in trench two. Trench three, there’s no wall, but you find a body.”
He drew a little stick figure inside a rectangle, paused, then drew two more. “Or three bodies.”
Sophia leaned forward to peer at the paper, and he caught the scent of her hair—clean and floral.
“You take what you have and you try to figure out where to go next. Are the walls part of the same building? If they are, which side of the wall is inside versus outside?”
“How do you figure it out?” Tristan asked.
“In this example, the pottery. You look at the pottery. Is it thin, fine pottery that would have been used indoors, or a thick cooking pot?” In the square beside the one with three stick figures, he drew a crude gun. In the final rectangle, he drew a skull and crossbones.
“Nice sketches.” Tristan pointed at the first rectangle with three stick figures. “Italy, three people tortured, killed, their bodies put on display and clues are left for us.” He pointed at the rectangle with the skull and crossbones. “Isle of Man, the fleet admiral is shot with a dart containing an activating agent, but the poisoning had started long before. I know the Spartan Guard are still working to trace how the pills were tampered with, but the coroner estimated the fleet admiral had been taking the doctored pills for two and a half to three years. Finally, London, where we have a sniper using state-of-the-art military technology and weaponry.”
Sophia nodded enthusiastically. “Three different approaches. Three different methods.”
“We know who was piloting the drone that shot the fleet admiral,” James pointed out. “And he’s dead.”
“But we don’t know if he was the same person who doctored Kacper’s prescription medication.” Tristan frowned.
“All three seem to be the work of the Domino.” Sophia slid off the bed to pace. “There were signatures left as part of each crime.”
“Not on the Isle of Man,” Tristan pointed out.
James sat back, listening to them. It was easy to forget that Sophia was technically a cop. James wondered if she still had a job. Had she been calling in sick? Did the Masters’ Admiralty have enough influence to keep her from getting fired? He’d told the museum he was meeting with a private collector, trying to get them to donate their coins, and they’d said that was fine.
Did she need a job? Now that Tristan was the admiral, she would have to move to London. Had she realized that? Would she resent them because of it, or would the extremity of the circumstances make it easier for her to accept?
> Did he get to keep his job? He loved what he did.
“There are too many unanswered questions.” Tristan’s voice was sharp with frustration.
“Yes.” Sophia whirled to James. “Will you write them down?”
He flipped to a new page. “Ready when you are.”
Tristan shook his head. “There’s no point.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m sure Lorelei and your father have it all covered. What could we do that they couldn’t…haven’t?”
Sophia stood tall, and suddenly she wasn’t just their wife, she was the principessa. “You are Arthur, the admiral of England. Your questions will be answered. If your vice admiral knows the answers, then everything is fine. If she does not, you will order her to find the answers. Or you will call the new fleet admiral, the Spartan Guard.”
Tristan blinked and looked at James. He held up his hands. “Don’t look at me. I’m not the admiral. That’s all you, mate.”
“You are the only person who was present for all of it. You saw the cave, you were on Man, and you were in the room when the sniper started shooting. You saved seven admirals. You saved the Masters’ Admiralty. You may be the only one who can ask the right questions.”
James wanted to stand up and start clapping. God, he loved the woman.
Loved her?
Yes. He loved her.
Tristan nodded once. “Thank you, Sophia. You’re right.” He turned to James. “My first question is, where was the fleet admiral’s other wife?”
Tristan had set up his office in James’s house as repairs continued at headquarters. James hadn’t lied about his house. The place was amazing. Arranged over two floors, the freehold building offered huge, open-plan rooms, as well as an integrated garage and a private roof terrace. Even Sophia had been impressed, which Tristan hadn’t thought possible, given the beauty of her childhood home in Italy.
Tristan would never admit it, but it was good to be the king. Well, in this case, the admiral. Two days ago, he’d sat in a hospital bed and written out a depressingly long list of unanswered questions. Now he was out of the hospital, had answers to half of the questions, and was on a reduced regimen of painkillers. Reduced enough that he’d just had the best blow job of his life, courtesy of his new husband and wife. He’d been a bit shocked when James had knelt beside Sophia, but his husband had taken his turn, though he wasn’t even in the same league as Sophia skill-wise.
“You look like a king in his castle.” James leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed, big body relaxed.
“It’s good to be the king,” Tristan said aloud, thinking what the hell? It felt good to admit it, and James laughed.
“What’s funny?” Sophia stepped up beside James, who unfolded his arms. Sophia settled in beside him. They were easy with one another’s bodies, comfortable, as if they’d been married for years.
Tristan wasn’t there yet. How could he be? He wasn’t even comfortable with his own body yet. The number of things that became nearly impossible if you only had one functioning hand was longer than he ever would have guessed. He was currently wearing joggers because he couldn’t button and unbutton pants one-handed. He couldn’t wear elastic pants for the rest of his life, so he’d have to learn.
“What did your brother have to say?” Tristan asked Sophia.
She took a deep breath, eyes pinching at the corners. “You will have to call the other admirals.”
Tristan sat up straighter, the Velcro on his sling crackling as he moved. “What is it?”
“Antonio found one of the heat sensors, same as the one that was in the room with you, in my father’s house in Rome.”
“Fuck,” James said succinctly.
Tristan’s jaw clenched. “Sophia, if they’d moved the conclave to Rome, where would your father have had it?”
“The house in the city or the villa.”
“Have your brother check the villa. There might be one there too.”
“We were there, in the villa.” James looked between them. “So was Giovanni. If there was a heat sensor there, why didn’t he kill Giovanni?”
Sophia answered while Tristan picked up his new encrypted cell phone and dialed the first admiral’s number.
“Because if one admiral was killed in his home, the place where they’re strongest, all the other admirals would have been cautious. The plan was good—get them all in one place and kill them together.”
“We’re lucky they didn’t use a bomb,” James muttered.
Tristan’s stomach clenched, but he didn’t have time to reply before Hande answered.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as James checked his watch. “I’m going to head to the museum for a few hours, if you two are okay?”
“We’ll be fine. Keep your protection detail with you. See you tonight.” Sophia tipped her head up for a kiss. Tristan’s blood heated as he watched them kiss, but he was paying enough attention to the phone that when Hande finished greeting him, he was able to reply.
Tristan explained what Rome had found. “I think you need to check your own buildings. Where would you have hosted the conclave if we’d traveled to Ottoman?”
James leaned down and kissed Tristan’s cheek. Tristan smiled up at his husband, keeping most of his attention on what Hande was saying.
As quickly as possible, he ended the call so he could move on to the next admiral.
Sophia had set up a work area for herself in the same room as him. Actually, James’s office had enough room for all of them, plus it was light and airy and inviting.
She’d printed their list of questions and posted it on the wall. As they found answers, she crossed them off. They now knew specifically where the sniper’s gun had come from and had been able to obtain a training manual online, which meant the sniper had to be familiar with weapons and computers to operate it, but not an expert with either. They knew when the heat sensor had been installed in the building in London—six months ago, when the wiring in that room was replaced. It had been replaced because the overhead fixtures kept burning out. They’d spoken with an electrician, who’d told them that it would be, if not easy, certainly possible to make it look like the wiring was bad.
They knew the name of the assassin who’d committed suicide on Man—he’d had a history of substance abuse problems and had been in and out of mental institutions, but the few times he’d held a job had been in robotics development. His family had no ties to the Masters’ Admiralty, so it was possible that he’d been recruited because he would be able to operate and modify a drone to deliver the poison accelerant.
Based on what they knew, it wasn’t likely that he was the Domino. He was the apprentice.
If he was an optimistic man, Tristan could say that meant there was no threat. The Domino—assuming he was the shooter—was on the run and his apprentice was dead.
Tristan was not an optimistic man. The two questions that concerned him the most were, why had the Domino targeted the trinity killed in Italy, and where was the fleet admiral’s other wife?
He had possible answers for the first question.
One of the women killed was a finance officer in Rome.
Killing her had a variety of repercussions for Rome. If the fleet admiral had lived, Giovanni might have called an internal conclave to help deal with the issues caused by Lorena’s death. Destabilizing one of the more powerful territories could have been a back-up goal. And that was just one of the many possible explanations they’d come up with over the past few days. There were actually too many possible answers to that question.
For the second question, he needed to talk to Mateo, but that man wasn’t speaking with anyone. The member of the Spartan Guard Tristan had spoken to had been apologetic for not being able to give Tristan everything he wanted, but he’d said that Mateo was sequestered with the new fleet admiral as part of the transition. For the same reason, Tristan hadn’t been able to speak with Greta. However, when he’d asked to speak with Manon, the
guard had said she was away.
Tristan wasn’t sure why that question was the one that plagued him. There were plenty of other questions that needed to be answered.
His phone rang. Tristan set it flat on the desk and hit the button to answer. He wasn’t good enough with his left hand to hold it and answer—the answer button was in an odd position relative to his thumb. He always ended up pressing other buttons instead of the one he wanted. Or maybe he was just so distracted by the desperate desire to reach out and grab the damned thing with his right hand that the relatively simple task became unmanageable.
“This is Arthur,” he said by way of greeting.
“Admiral. It’s Mateo. I’m sorry I was only able to return your call now.”
“Thank you for calling back.”
“If I may, sir. Thank you for what you did. I want you to know I take full responsibility for the massive security breach.”
“You weren’t even in London,” Tristan reminded him gently.
“I know, sir, and I should have been.”
“Arthur. Please call me Arthur.”
“Yes, sir.”
It wasn’t worth the fight. “I have a question, and I think you’re the only one who can answer it.”
“I hope I can.”
“Where was Kacper’s other wife, Manon, on the day he died?”
No answer.
Tristan pressed on. “When we were there, when the fleet admiral was killed, we saw Greta, but no one else.”
Still no answer.
Sophia was frowning at the phone. She caught his eye and jerked her chin at the phone.
“Mateo.” Tristan laced his tone with command. “Where was she?”
Mateo sighed. “She left them.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Their marriage fell apart, sir.”
“Trinities aren’t marriages. We don’t get divorced. We don’t leave one another.” Tristan could feel Sophia giving him an arch look and carefully kept his attention on the phone.
“Yes, sir.”
