G I G I
We arrived at the ONNT headquarters late in the afternoon, when the shadows were growing longer and the sunlight made everything gold. Mr. Hunt wanted to talk to a few of us about Benny's capture and possibly see if we could get any more valuable information out of him. After all, he did have connections within our crew. Perhaps they could get him to say what the ONNT officials couldn't.
Personally, I didn't want to see him again. The two times I'd seen his face had been enough. The face of a killer. I wondered if that was the same face my mother had seen before she'd been murdered. The thought made my hands itch to claw into something, caused my mind to go to dark places.
Finn, Riley and Delphinium broke off the group after being called to speak with Hunt in his office. The rest of us were led downstairs to where the assassin was being kept.
After following the ONNT worker down, deep down into the depths underneath the buildings, we came to a wall. She placed her hand against a pad next to the door and when it had read her fingerprints, the door slid open. As I passed through it, I took note of how thick the metal was.
She had us go down a platform in a large open space. Ahead of us was a glass box and, as we neared, I could see that Benny sat on a single chair inside of it, feet chained to the floor and arms wrapped in a straightjacket. Judging by the thickness of the glass surrounding him, it was bulletproof.
"You're free to talk to him," the woman told us, grasping a clipboard tightly to her chest. "If he acts up or threatens you, we'll have him taken away. But keep in mind that he can't do anything to you while in this enclosure."
She stepped away to a separate room to observe the conversation. Benny eyed us. "So here you are, back again." When no one said anything to him, a smile spread across his scarred face. "You can come closer. You heard the woman, I can't do anything to you from in here."
"Yeah, I'd rather not," Arlo said boldly, though his words suggested that he was more alarmed than he let on.
"Why? Scared?"
"Stop these mind games," Jaxon demanded, stepping so close that he was less than a foot away from the glass wall. "Tell us, what does your master want from us?"
"That, I will tell you," Benny allowed, eyes fixed on Jaxon with alarming intensity. "At first, he didn't care. He only wanted Tesla and Evans. He allowed the rest of you to be shipped to a random buyer to be used for your power. But then you attacked us on our own land and proved that you're more powerful than he'd originally thought. Now, he wants to have all of you."
"Does he want to kill us himself?"
"I can only assume so."
"When did Hundsen begin working with Orion?" Jake asked, arms crossed over his chest, leaning against a wall in the corner.
Benny did his best to shrug with the straightjacket restricting him. "My master had Hundsen and the Club doing smaller jobs for him for years now. But their most important job came when they caught you eight in their lair."
Kane edged closer to his restrained brother. "Why are you telling us all of this?"
"Because, brother, Orion wants me to. He sent me to tell you that he wants to meet with all of you. And he will, he will have you all."
"Say he does want to kill six of us himself," Kane said, shaking his head as he tried to it all the pieces together, "Why did he want Delphinium and Jake specifically?" I got a sneaking suspicion that Orion wasn't going to kill them, at least, not immediately. They both had ties to the organization already. My heart sunk when I thought of Delphinium, who I'd grown much closer to recently, going back to the place that had made her life a living hell. Jake could survive it, but Delphinium? I wasn't sure.
Benny's grin widened. "They'll just have to find out."
Jake circled the glass, a dagger in his hand. "I won't be finding out. I'll shoot your beloved Orion between the eyes before he takes me to that place."
The assassin merely laughed, not shaken by Jake's threats. "Oh, Evans, so full of rage, so power-hungry. I can see the bloodlust in your eyes."
"Once you get out of that cage, I'll show you just how bloodthirsty I can be," Jake delivered coldly, still brandishing the blade.
The three others, done conversing with Mr. Hunt, entered the large space and stood with us. I could see the confusion written on their faces, wondering why Jake was snarling, why Benny was practically grinning from ear-to-ear.
Benny's attention turned from Jake to the rest of us as a whole. "As a matter of fact, some of the rest of you are quite bloodthirsty as well."
"Yeah, we're more than eager to take out as many of your soldiers as we can," Riley drawled, rolling her eyes. "And it will be a pleasure to finally see that smile wiped off your wretched face."
"I'm sure." He didn't sound convinced in the slightest. "But wait, we have something even more interesting here." His gaze swept over the eight of us. I suppressed a shiver when his eyes roved over me. "You're all hiding so much. There are so many untold secrets in this room."
"What did you expect, for us to tell you everything?" Jaxon scoffed.
"No, I'm not talking about myself. You're hiding many secrets from each other."
At my sides, my fists clenched. The more he talked, the more I wanted to shoot him in the face with a volley of arrows. He was turning the attention off of himself and back onto us and I didn't like it.
"Stop talking about us and start talking about Imperium," I demanded, speaking up for the first time. "After all, that's what you're here to do."
I shoved my anger down inside myself as he focused solely on me. "Ah, Julia, I was wondering when you were going to speak up."
"Shut the hell up. You don't deserve to talk to me like that after what you did." I kept my voice from shaking, but only barely. Delphinium met my eye from across the room and gave me a reassuring nod.
He clicked his tongue. "Shame on you, Julia. Your mother would be ashamed."
I could feel his heartbeat. It would be so easy to cease its beating. "Don't you dare talk about my mother, you murderer," I spat through gritted teeth.
"Oh," he drew out, throwing his head back in realization. "You think I killed your dear old mother."
"You did. Don't even try to deny it."
Instead of addressing me again, he said something in Romanian to Delphinium. She shook her head, replying angrily, "Nu îndrăzni." I didn't know what it meant, but it was clear that whatever he'd just said to her had made her furious.
He winked at me before saying something else in the foreign language. I wished I could tell what they were arguing about. Did it have something to do with me?
Then, Benny said to me, "Dear Julia, you're forgetting that I'm not the only assassin here. I'm not the only one that knows how to kill."
I glanced at Delphinium, who looked like she was about to say something. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm saying that I didn't kill your mother. Delphinium did."
I shook my head, actually laughing out loud. "That's ridiculous. You're trying to pin this on her because she used to be forced to work for your master." I leaned forward. "It's not going to work."
"I'm telling the truth. I did not kill your mother. Ask Evans, he knows when people are lying."
Everyone in the room turned to look at Jake, who remained quiet and gave no indication as to what he was thinking.
"Julia, do you remember healing Delphinium that day in Hundsen's lair?"
"Yes." She'd been beaten and bloody. Hundsen had brought me out of my cell and told me to heal her.
"Why do you think he had you heal her after being tortured?" But Hundsen wasn't the compassionate type, he wasn't healing her because it was the right thing to do. He needed her to be perfectly in shape to do something for him...
I shook my head, a strange, desperate feeling beginning to fill my chest. "No, this is impossible. There's no way that you'd know that."
"For a time, I worked closely with Hundsen. I know what he had Delphinium do, which was to murder your mother." He gauged my reaction. "Still not convinced? Ask her why she went out that night."
I stared at him for a long time, my blood chilling in my veins. Then, slowly, I faced my friend. I could feel how fast her heart was beating in her chest, how she was trying to calm her breathing. Why was that?
"Delphinium." My voice was a near-whisper. "Did you kill my mother?"
I could barely hear her over the rushing in my ears. "No."
"Then why did you go out that night? What did Hundsen need you to be healed for?"
Her soft mouth opened and then closed again. She had nothing to say. My head was getting cloudy. At my sides, my hands shook. No, no, no, no.
"Do you hear that?" Benny asked, sounding almost comforting. "Nothing. She has nothing to defend herself with because she was there that night, at your home."
Everyone was staring at me, but I only saw Delphinium and the guilty expression on her face. Benny hadn't murdered my mother like I'd thought. Delphinium had.
Pure fire raged through my body. I was going to kill her.