Something Wicked 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)

14: Love is like a motorcycle

God damnit, Vinnie.

"We'll put the fact that you've been trespassing on confidential police work aside for now. We need to talk about her."

My jaw snapped open and closed. "Her?" I squeaked.

Sylvia couldn't know about her, could she?

"She goes by a few names in the States, but in Saudi she's known as Mira al Assad."

Mira.

The sound of her name made my heart detach itself from its blood vessels and start crawling its way up into my throat.

Mira.

Me and the other Alcor security guys had always referred to her as Sayidaty. I'd only ever uttered her name in secret, moaned it into her pillow in ecstasy in the dead of night. To hear it from someone else's lips seemed like sacrilege. Or a Demon's incantation.

Mira.

"Rayan has given us new information. There's a high probability that Mira al Assad is the head of Alcor. She came to the States twenty years ago, as founder and CEO of Lazarus Industries. There was a...a...there was a failed merger with McCloud Technologies around then."

I'd never seen Sylvia stumble over words before. She was scared. Scared of Mira al Assad.

"I know you didn't have high enough status in Alcor to meet her, but did you overhear anything about her?"

My hands began to tremble. I coulda come clean. I coulda told Sylvia everything. Every disgusting little thing I'd done with her.

But I lied, again. Was I ever gonna stop lying for her, even after what she'd done to Mamá?

"Only the highest-ranking Alcor members get meetings with her; none of the guys on my team had ever seen more than glimpses. She's kinda...like a legend. They say she's a martial arts expert. They say she's got a biotech lab in Riyadh for secret experiments. They say she's a biomedical genius."

My stomach writhed. She'd kill me for talking about her. She'd warned me the cost of betrayal when she took Mamá from me. What else could she take from me?

"They say she's...a mass-murderer." Burning puke suddenly began to churn its way up my gullet. "They say she...summoned a demon to do her bidding."

Shakes took me over so fucking hard. I slammed my back against the kitchen cupboard to dampen the quivering of my limbs, like she could hear my treachery from six thousand miles away.

Sylvia raised a perfect eyebrow; she was committing my actions to memory to torment me with them later. Whatever fucked-up expression was plastered on my face had told Sylvia everything. I didn't even have to talk to betray her.

"We'll stop her, Jason, I promise. Any ideas?"

I took in a lungful of air. Breathed it out. Took in another. "If she's sent Zaki to oversee the Demon Star project, then it means everything to her."

"Demon Star?"

Fuck. The Don had been right; I was a brick. Every gang had a blunt brainless instrument like me.

"I got a tip-off. From a friend."

"A friend called Rocco Genovese, no doubt," Sylvia scoffed, seemingly chill with the fact that I'd given her a new lead by snooping on her case. "What did the Don say?"

"He saw the logo on equipment: Demon Star."

"He's sure it wasn't demonstrator? Like a prototype?"