Slip of Fate (Werelock Evolution Book 1) (5 page)

“Okay, okay,” Alessandra put her hands up in supplication. “Why don’t I just get her to the bathroom while you two fight this out like little pups?”

“Please do,” Alcaeus acceded to Alessandra, then fired back at Remy over my head as he strode over to us, “Alex can’t command me. I’m the only one with any chance of protecting her from him, and you know it.”

Before I realized what was happening, Alcaeus had smacked Remy’s arm off of me, hefted me from the couch and handed me bridal-style into Alessandra’s awaiting arms.

“I can walk!” I squealed. Tall and muscular as she may have been, I’d assumed Remy was teasing about Alessandra carrying me!

“I got you, don’t worry.” She giggled at my surely horrified, perplexed expression. “Raul never told you how strong us females were, eh?”

CHAPTER FOUR

The walk to the loo proved quite surreal … and not simply because I was being carried by a virtual supermodel in an evening gown and heels. The dimly lit halls, which Alessandra explained constituted the basement area of Alex’s obviously palatial estate, were wide and tall enough for a truck to drive through.

We passed a large, semi-cylindrical room, or perhaps foyer area, with even higher ceilings that were adorned with intricate stone carvings. It was here that Felix and his cronies were still being held, and with no less than about three dozen imposing men and several women standing guard. It seemed not only grossly superfluous, but also horribly cruel, as all three were completely subdued, kneeling with heads bowed, their mouths gagged.

Despite what they had done to me, I couldn’t suppress the pity I felt. Felix in particular did not appear to be faring well. I was becoming more and more trepidatious about meeting the man of the house everyone so clearly feared and revered.

Based on everything I’d heard about him since arriving, my mind had sketched an image of an intimidating, surly old mob boss—essentially a Portuguese-speaking version of
The Godfather.
I couldn’t even contemplate what Alcaeus had said about the possibility of Raul being held captive somewhere by him. Imagining Raul in Felix’s condition and at the mercy of some pitiless tyrant was more than I could handle.

After I promised to be careful not to make any quick or careless movements that might jostle my head, which Remy and Alcaeus had convinced Alessandra was somehow critically wounded, Alessandra agreed to wait in the adjoining powder room while I relieved my bladder at long last.

While I was washing up at the sink, I caught my reflection in the mirror and would’ve fallen backwards had I not grabbed onto the counter’s edge.

My face looked perfect! Perfect, as in unmarked, bruised, or swollen. What’s more, although my coloring was a bit paler than normal, I was sure my skin looked healthier than it had even before I’d left for Brazil some seventeen hours ago. A quick scan of my knees revealed they’d healed as well.

It was impossible
.
Though I hadn’t seen the state of my face since my capture, I’d felt the damage it’d sustained from Felix and his thugs, and I’d definitely seen the bloody contusions on my knees. It was inconceivable I could’ve healed so quickly.

Alessandra rapped on the door and poked her head in. “You okay?” She entered upon seeing the dumbfounded expression I was giving myself in the mirror.

“My face,” I said stupidly, still staring at my own image. “It healed.”

Smiling, she came to stand next to me in the mirror. “It takes a little longer for humans, but you’re looking a lot better than you did even five minutes ago.”

A chill ran down my spine. I turned from my own reflection to look at her. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

She frowned and shook her head.

“Why does everyone keep referring to me as human?” I clarified. “As if … it’s something unusual … or different from what everyone else is?”

She tilted her head to the side, regarding me as if I’d just said something truly baffling.

“You mean … you don’t know what we are? Raul never told you?”

I cautiously shook my head in the negative, the look of astonishment on her face making me nervous as to whether I was revealing something I shouldn’t.

“Raul never told you about us?” she repeated.

I shook my head again. It was seriously starting to hurt. “No, he’s always been very …”—I searched for the right words on the wall behind Alessandra’s head—“private … about stuff … in general.”

Her brows knit together. “What are you saying, Milena?”

Damnit, I wasn’t sure what I was saying.
Blood was beginning to pound in my ears, making it harder to think. What was the right answer that would keep me alive the longest and prevent my brother from being in more trouble than he already was?

“He never told you any stories or legends about our people? About the Reinoso warlocks or the lobisomem? None of our family’s history?”

“Uh-uh,” I admitted hesitantly, trying to gauge her reaction.

She narrowed her eyes. “And Mateus? Your da—I mean … stepdad never discussed or even hinted at his purpose for being in America?”

“No.” I shrugged. “And Mateus was never my stepdad,” I corrected. “He was Raul’s absentee dad who one day showed up and insisted Raul should go with him back to Brazil.” I tried but failed to keep the bitterness out of my voice.

She appeared even more perplexed.

“It’s true,” I insisted. “I was nine. And I was devastated.”

She rubbed at her temple. It reminded me again of how much my own head ached. I needed to lie down. This conversation was making me dizzy.

“I only saw Raul a handful of times after he moved away with his dad.” I wasn’t sure why I was still explaining my life and my relationship with Raul to her. She was looking increasingly sorry for me. I took her pity as a sure sign she thought Alex would kill me on sight, just as both Remy and Alcaeus had speculated he’d want to do.

“He’d come for short visits when I was on summer break sometimes,” I babbled on. I knew I should probably stop talking altogether, but I had to ask, “What’s lobisomem?”

“Werewolf,” she answered without hesitation.

I nodded, as if in understanding. But I didn’t understand at all.
Werewolf?

My mind drifted to a random story Raul had told me during a brief visit when I was sixteen and lamenting I’d never be able to afford my college of choice. He had told me how the president of Argentina had passed a law giving the seventh son of a family automatic godfathership, which included a scholarship for all of his studies until his twenty-first birthday.

Raul had jokingly referred to it as the “werewolf preservation act of 1920,” explaining that there were widely believed legends that the seventh son in a family turned into a werewolf, and the seventh daughter, a witch. The legend was so well believed and feared that it prompted parents to actually abandon or kill a seventh-born child, and the law served to end the condemnation of Argentina’s supposed werewolf children.

Raul had teased that if the US government had a similar law for second-born witches, he was sure I was due to get a full ride to Berkley. But that was the extent to which he’d ever mentioned anything about werewolves or witchcraft to me that I could recall. And I didn’t remember him ever saying the name Reinoso.

Alessandra was studying me intently. She seemed to be dissecting each of my features one by one. I imagined her comparing them to Raul’s in her mind’s eye.

Once again, I knew I probably shouldn’t ask, but I had to know. “What did Alcaeus mean when he said Felix hoped to trade me for his son’s life? Is his son being held captive here as well?”

Alessandra looked torn as her eyes lowered, then flitted around the opulent bathroom that I was pretty sure was larger in size than my bedroom back home.

“No, Celio is free and unharmed for the moment,” she replied. “Felix just knows it’s a matter of time before Alex orders Celio killed now that he’s turned eighteen.”

I felt my brows lift to my hairline. “Why? What did he do? Why eighteen?”

She shook her head. “It’s complicated, Milena. Only Alex can tell you.” She sighed. “If he chooses to.”

I nodded slowly, reluctant to let it go. “Can’t you at least tell me … what Raul did? To make Alex so angry with him?” I knew I was pressing my luck now.

“It is not my place to speak for my brother,” she declined with finality, a sudden frostiness bleeding into her tone.

My jaw dropped. “You mean
Alex?
The Alex everyone keeps referring to is—he’s your
brother?”

Alessandra smiled in amusement at my shock. “Yes, Alex and Alcaeus are both my brothers, actually.”

It occurred to me in retrospect that she and Alcaeus did look related.

“Alcaeus and I share the same mother and father,” she elucidated, “but Alex, our younger brother, was born to a different mother.”

She looked to be only in her mid to late twenties! A brother younger than even she was hardly fit the image I’d conjured in my mind of the ruthless, codgy
Godfather
figure named Alex.

“And Remy is Alex’s older half-brother from his mother’s first union,” she expounded. “So we’re all half-siblings to Alex by blood, and Alcaeus and I consider Remy our brother as well, though technically we share no blood relation to him.”

Amid the increased pounding in my temple, I attempted to sort this information by visualizing it in terms of a family tree.

I was even more at a loss now to comprehend why on earth they all seemed so cowed by this little half-brother of theirs named Alex, when Alessandra cocked her head abruptly and then turned halfway toward the door.

“We should go,” she said.

I wasn’t quite ready to end our bizarre dialogue. But I was momentarily bereft of speech as I gathered my scattered wits and prayed my head would stop throbbing soon. Alessandra suddenly seemed far away, lost in her own thoughts. And those thoughts seemed to be rather upsetting to her, if I was reading her expression with any accuracy.

“He’s going to kill me, isn’t he?” I blurted.

Her eyes flew to mine in surprise. And she had the grace to sound apologetic as she admitted, “Milena, I don’t know. But he’s just killed two of your kidnappers, so we must go.”

“What?”

The ones we’d just passed in the foyer? How did she even know that?

“Quickly,” she urged. “It’s only proper you should be present when Felix is pleading his case and offering you as his trade.”

Proper?
Proper seemed a rather unusual way to put it. But I had no opportunity to argue that point, as she was lifting me off the ground a moment later and carrying me back down the hallway.

Good God, how could any of this even be happening?

“I think I’d rather walk to my death, thank you,” I muttered acerbically.

It occurred to me I shouldn’t be so rude or ungrateful when she had been nothing but kind to me and far easier to talk to and more forthcoming than anyone else I’d encountered since my arrival, but it wasn’t lost on me that she was also rushing me to my certain demise at the hands of her little half-brother.

“I’ll put you down as soon as we get close.”

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to find when we approached the foyer, but the scene we came upon was far worse than any I could’ve envisioned.

There were more people gathered in the semi-cylindrical receiving area than before. We entered the open room, and Alessandra deposited me on my feet in time to see Felix suspended by his throat against a wall, his feet dangling at least a foot off the ground, his broken arms hanging uselessly at his sides.

A tall, dark-haired, formidable man in a tuxedo was holding him up by the neck with just one hand. Felix’s eyes bugged out in horror and his face went from red to purple to blue while the cruel man, whose face was turned from me, proceeded to mercilessly crush his windpipe.

My first instinct was to scream at the faceless, heartless man to stop and let him go, but the words died in my throat and ice coursed through my veins as he leaned in closer to my dying abductor and rasped, “No deal, Felix. I’ve no need of Raul’s worthless sister. Not as bait, as a trade for your son, or otherwise.”

He spoke in a forbidding, deep whisper, presumably meant for Felix’s dying ears, yet the words were clearly heard by everyone in the otherwise silent hall as they resonated off the stone walls.

“Raul’s dead,” he hissed. “I saw to it myself days ago. And thanks to you, his sister will be dead soon, too.”

Time and space ceased to exist as I sought to reconcile the meaning of his words. Raul was dead?

“So you’ve wasted your time,” he sneered, “forfeited four lives, and shortened your son’s allotted time left by coming here and interrupting my dinner.”

He’d died just days ago?

Raul was dead?

I’d never borne witness to much violence in my lifetime, let alone seen a man murdered right before my eyes, and yet I barely registered the visual of Felix’s eyes rolling back and becoming lifeless as the final vestiges of his very being were squeezed from him.

I don’t know how long I stood stock still, my own eyes wide and glazed over with terror, before the dark-haired devil whom I knew had to be the infamous Alex turned away from his fresh kill to visibly sniff in my direction like some depraved, wild animal honing in on his next unfortunate prey.

As his cold, dark eyes alighted upon me, they widened perceptibly. Felix’s dead body was dropped like a sack of trash a millisecond later as the dinner party host I’d so erroneously assumed would be civilized turned his imposing frame in my direction.

He was darkly handsome like Alcaeus, with facial features that more closely resembled Remy’s, but with none of the playfulness or boyishness of either of the two men. And his eyes were unlike any of his siblings’. They were a deep, dark shade of brown. His jet-black hair was cropped short, and he was expertly groomed and outfitted as if he’d stepped off the pages of
GQ.

On the surface, he appeared the perfect male specimen. I was certain many of the girls I’d gone to school with would’ve fallen all over themselves just to gain a moment of his attention. But beneath his polished veneer, I knew he was just a monster. A brute who had murdered my brother. And never before in my life had I wished more horrific, fatal harm upon another human being as I now fervently hoped to befall him.