"What do you want with us, Demetri? Why did you kidnap us?" Jeannie asked.
"That is simple. I want you and Shon to help me create a master race of intelligent beings."
Jeannie's jaw popped when her mouth flew open in shock. Her godfather had gone off the deep-end. He was crazier than a shit-house rat.
"So, you want Shon and I to breed, correct?" Jeannie could hardly form the words to describe the diabolical plan Demetri had cooked up.
Demetri curled his lips in distaste. "That is a coarse way of saying it, but yes, that is what I want."
Jeannie laughed, a brittle sound filled with scorn. Demetri's anger had him springing to his feet and his eyes blazing with ice-blue fire.
"Not going to happen, son." Jeannie shook her head at him, a ghost of a smile on her lips.
Demetri's ire resembled a furnace, scalding what sanity remained in his brain.
"You dare disrespect me." Demetri rushed towards her cage to bang on it with his hands. Drops of spittle flew from his mouth as he yelled, "I have nothing! I've given my life to the Istochnik and for what? I have no wife. No children. All I have is leather-bound volumes of poetry to keep me company at night."
Demetri pounded on his chest like an upset gorilla and Jeannie registered the madness behind his eyes. "You and Shon will breed, and your children will take care of me in my old age."
Jeannie laughed while Demetri seethed. His hands opened and closed in vexation. They itched to choke the life out of her for dismissing his dream.
"We are not some pawns in your game," Jeannie said, pointing to herself and Shon while the latter looked on with disbelief. "You, do not own us."
"Oh, milakha, I do." Demetri backed away from the glass and smiled. It was a chilling smile—icy and sharp. Jeannie eyed him warily as he took a seat and crossed his legs.
He is much too calm; she thought.
"Do you want to know why?"
Jeannie was reasonably sure that whatever came out of Demetri's mouth she would not like. Unfortunately, she had to indulge him. She needed to gain time for Thorne to rescue her and Shon.
She trembled at the implications of what a rescue could bring. Demetri didn't like Thorne. What would he do if they met face-to-face? Their meeting wouldn't end well .
Guaranteed.
Jeannie came back from her musings to nod her head as she pretended to agree with Demetri's ramblings.
"Shon." Demetri motioned to the young man from his chair. "You will want to hear this."
Shon didn't move. He had shut down. His blue eyes were distant. His face, devoid of color. His lips, a whitish hue of blue.
The poor man was in shock.
Jeannie pointed to his bed. "Sit down, Shon."
Shon obeyed. He sat on the edge of his bed with stiff legs. He folded his arms across his chest. Jeannie reached down and put her palm on the glass. After a moment of hesitation, Shon placed his palm on hers.
Soon, the cool glass warmed under their hands.
Demetri smiled indulgently at their gesture. "Can't you see? You two are made for each other."
Jeannie could almost taste the gloat in Demetri's tone and it sickened her soul. The man she'd looked up to had betrayed her in the worst way. The only saving grace in this whole mess was that her father never knew what kind of twisted thoughts Demetri had kept hidden all those years.
"It thrilled me to no end when I learned you and Shon were a couple, Jeannie. He was your match." Demetri shook his head. His lips curled up in vexation. "But, you chose another." Demetri turned his head and spat on the ground, wiping the errant spittle from his chin with the back of his hand. "That... man born of a traitorous slut."
What?!
"What do you know of Thorne's mother?"
"Oh." Demetri placed his hand over his heart in faux distress. "You didn't know she and her husband worked for the Istochnik, did you?
Jeannie shook her head. She was too flabbergasted to speak.
Does Thorne know?
"Tatiana Vasiliev or Tatiana Gable was your lover's mother."
Demetri bared his teeth in a frosty smile. Jeannie's blood ran cold at the sight. Her heart filled with dread like crude oil dumped into the tank of a car. Eventually, the car, like her heart, would stop in its tracks because of all the dirty revelations coming into the light.
Demetri, once a beloved family friend, had turned into a raving lunatic bent on her destruction.
Carmen had fooled them all.
She and Shon were in danger.
What more could she take?
Her love for Thorne was the one thing that kept her hoping ... fighting for a way out of the mess she and Shon were in.
It would be easy to give up and put her hands over her ears to block out Demetri's voice, but she wouldn't. She needed to keep him engaged. His focus on them. But if she had to hear his vile story, she wanted answers.
No more games.
"What do you mean? Speak plainly Demetri. No more of your riddles."
"Sit then." Demetri motioned to her bed. "I'll be happy to tell both of you my tale as it is yours as well as mine."
"I was already working for the Istochnik when I met your mother. I loved her as soon as I saw her." Jeannie marked the change in Demetri's eyes as he spoke of Valeria Jones. They had returned to normal. All of his earlier madness gone.
"Your mother was the most fascinating woman I had ever met. After we were found out by the Istochnik, they forbid me to see Valeria in that way, but they still let her work for me."
Jeannie made a low sound, the air sucked from her lungs. "Wait. Are you saying you and my mother were lovers while she was married to my father?"
Demetri held her gaze, unflinching. "Yes. That is exactly what I'm saying."
Jeannie's heart stuttered, and her mind reeled at Demetri's news. She almost buckled under the weight, but she had to stay strong for Shon. Later, when she and Shon were safe, she would work through Demetri's revelations. And with Thorne by her side, she'd get through it all.
"W-why did you let her go?"
"Because the Istochnik made me."
"Why did they make you?"
"Because they suspected I would use her in one of my experiments."
No more. Please no more, she thought.
But she asked just the same, "What experiments?"
Demetri settled in his chair, so at ease with delivering devastating news. "I was the head professor at Moscow State University working on gene modification in animals when the Istochnik took over the project. The agency requested that I test my theories on humans instead of sheep and cows." Demetri uncrossed his legs and clasp his hands. He looked up at the ceiling as if he were daring the heavens to open and condemn him for his sins. When he returned his gaze to Jeannie, she shivered at the blankness in his eyes.
"Little did they know," Demetri continued, "I had already tried to create a new human using dozens of prostitutes. It all came to naught. The results were... disastrous."
"What do you mean disastrous? What happened?" Shon asked with a monotonous tone. He was still deathly pale and his lips hadn't yet regained their healthy color.
Jeannie's worry for him doubled. They had to escape. But how?
Demetri answered Shon's question with a slight shrug and damnable words. "Oh, stone fetuses and a guaranteed death for the mother."
Jeannie's mind reeled in horror. The way he'd carelessly dismissed all the casualties made her realize Demetri hadn't any feelings for those poor women or their babies. They weren't human, only failed experiments.
Demetri went on as if he ordered from a menu. "When the Istochnik took over, I recruited many healthy, intelligent women... only to fail." He flicked his hand and narrowed his eyes. He seemed more annoyed that the woman had the audacity to die than all the destruction he had caused.
Jeannie was sick to her stomach by her godfather's madness. She no longer wanted to distract him with talking as she couldn't take any more.
She put her hand over her ears but Demetri's "stop that" had her lowering them again.
Shon stood and leaned against his glass wall. Some color had come back in his cheeks, but his eyes were flat. "What happened next," he asked listlessly.
Shon may lose it if I can't get us out of here soon.
"Well... after so many deaths, the Istochnik gave up on the project. But I didn't. I started a laboratory in the hidden hills of Romania where no one asked questions as long as the money was right.
Anatoly and Svetlana, my most loyal servants, guarded the lab. They controlled the experiments while I abducted women from all over the world. I lured them in by promising them a life of luxury at my medieval castle."
Jeannie's queasiness doubled. Demetri told her many people had died to get her to where she was. Now she knew the why, the who, and the how.
Jeannie huffed, faking nonchalance while her heart beat a disjointed rhythm in her chest. "Why're you telling us about all this death? About your failures."
Demetri's eyes flickered from Shon to rest on her. "Because you two are among the four that lived."
Jeannie didn't have time to process his latest words as Demetri continued, warming to the telling of his tale. His face was more animated that she'd ever seen it and he leaned forward in his chair, eager to spill the rest.
"During my time at the Istochnik, I met and recruited your mother and her college roommate, Tatiana. I was making enormous strides regarding my gene modification research. I had them tested during their yearly physical. Hawthorne's father and Alex Jones, too. The men provided a sample of sperm. All of them had the perfect genes, spliced with others for intelligence, strength, and resistance to sickness to create the perfect designer baby."
Jeannie's eyes grew wide. "You used our parents... as lab rats?"
Demetri nodded and crossed his arms. "Yes. That was the plan. I was just waiting for the right moment. That moment came when I invited Tatiana to Romania on the pretense of a new assignment. She stumbled upon some gene modification papers I left lying around in my office." Demetri uncrossed his arms and shrugged his shoulders. "It was careless—"
Jeannie interrupted his fake chagrin. "You do nothing if not by design, Demetri."
Demetri jumped up and clapped his hands, applauding Jeannie's deductive mind. "Yes, that is true. Smart girl, clever girl." His maniacal grin caused goose bumps to break out on Jeannie's arms. "I wanted Tatiana to find the papers so I could tell her about my plan. She would help to recruit your mother—"
Jeannie stopped him again, tired of his lunacy. "That part of your plan didn't work, did it?"
Demetri coughed, his face reddening. His anger at Tatiana's rejection of his plan made his lips curl inwardly on his teeth. "No. Tatiana did not appreciate my brilliance. I held her in my dungeon for months, using her as a participant when the last of the women I captured died. For Tatiana, I used the sperm from one of my guards, Aleksei Vasiliev. He wasn't as... intelligent as me, but genetics wise, he was an almost perfect specimen of a man..."
Demetri trailed off as he remembered the big guard he'd put so much faith in. The betrayal he'd felt at being tricked by the intellectually inferior man, gnawed at his psyche all these years like a dog on a meaty bone.
When he'd learned Thorne, his lesser experiment was not only an enemy agent but tasked to watch Jeannie, he nearly had him killed. The only reason he didn't was down to Jeannie.
He'd kept Thorne alive to use as leverage against Jeannie should she fail to comply with his demands. Now he had her, Thorne was up for elimination.
Demetri smiled at the thought. He looked forward to taking care of Thorne personally. He would leave him alive enough to produce a few children and then he would join his dead parents.
He could do without Thorne now he had found his sister. still had his eyes on his sister.
"Tatiana and Aleksei loved each other," she whispered. Despite the danger Jeannie was in, her heart burst with happiness. She'd been so afraid Demetri would say he was Thorne's father. She was glad it was someone else.
"Yes, they loved one another, "Demetri said with a sneer. "But it didn't last long. I convinced your mother her friend Tatiana was a traitor to her country and the Istochnik. Valeria went after the lovebirds, following them back to Russia, then to Ukraine, then Germany and finally..."
"What? What?" Jeannie yelled, her heart hammering a mile a minute. Anxiety had curled up to lie in her stomach at the start of Demetri's tale. Now, it scratched its claws on her insides like a cat on the carpet. "My mother was a secretary. I saw her file. What're you saying she did?"
Demetri ignored her questions and continued to gaze at her. Jeannie lowered her tone, and clasped her hands in supplication, praying he wouldn't say what her mind already knew, "What happened?" she whispered to the deranged man. "What did my mother do?"