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That further proved Scarlett was the person he’d always felt her to be, and that what she’d told him about her and Hiro was true. That revelation cleared away his last misconception about her.
But it still gave him no insight into her past.
Which meant there was one last option open to him.
Enlisting the combined investigative powers of his brothers.
He’d never before considered doing that. It had been the last thing he’d wanted—for them to find out about her, and about how close he’d come to unwittingly exposing them all.
But discovering the truth about her had become imperative. It now meant more to him than learning the truth about himself ever did.
Six
“So there’s a woman out there who knows everything about you. And you deem to tell us now? Five years after the fact?”
Raiden looked steadily across his executive desk at the three juggernauts who sat facing him in a semicircle, looking like a tribunal of demigods.
They were the three of his six brothers who’d been able to come for the face-to-face meeting. He’d just told them the short version of his history with Hannah/Scarlett.
The first one to talk after he’d finished was Numair, the leader of the Black Castle brotherhood. His leader.
Numair Al Aswad, or Phantom, the name he’d known him by for their twenty years in The Organization’s prison, had been the oldest among them and the one who’d been there longest. Each had found him already established as The Organization’s rising star when they’d come to the prison they’d eventually called Black Castle. Almost twenty-five of Numair’s forty years had been spent there, at first being trained, then later training others, starting with them. He had taught them his every stealthy and lethal method in espionage and execution.
He hadn’t only been the best operative in The Organization’s history, he’d also been the shrewdest, the one who’d chosen Raiden and his brothers out of hundreds of boys, judging them to be not only the best of the best but kindred spirits. Taking them on, making them his team, he’d guided them through the endless years of captivity. He was the one who’d forged their brotherhood and their blood oath to one day escape, amass wealth and power and bring down those who’d sold them as slaves and The Organization itself.
Numair had worked to that end since he’d been only ten. It had been his mind-bogglingly convoluted and long-term plan that had made it possible for them to finally escape, disappear and create their new identities. He and Richard, Rafael’s former handler, had also been the ones who’d led them into creating Black Castle Enterprises.
But like Raiden, Numair had remembered no specific details about his family before he’d been sold to The Organization. He’d only remembered a few names. One he’d ended up calling himself. The others he’d long realized were those of desert kingdoms. He’d searched, like Raiden, for his bloodline since their escape, and he’d recently found out that not only did he come from one of those kingdoms, but before his abduction, he’d been the heir to its throne.
But reclaiming his legacy wouldn’t be as easy as it was for Raiden. Numair’s return to his kingdom would turn his region upside down. It could even ignite a war.
Which was fine by Numair. Nothing would stop him from claiming what was his. And it wouldn’t be the first time he’d instigated armed conflicts.
Now he regarded Raiden with eyes as still and fathomless as an abyss. But his absolute calmness didn’t fool him. That abyss was filled with flesh-melting acid.
Raiden had compromised everything Numair had strived for—their freedoms, their achievements, their very lives. Numair was coldly angry. And when he was like this, he was deadly. Anyone with any sense of self-preservation would be afraid. Very afraid.
“So what took you so long to let us know?” That was Wildcard. Of Russian origins, he’d come to The Organization old enough to remember his past life. But he’d chosen not to make contact with his family after his escape, adopting the name Ivan Kostantinov instead. Still a Russian name, but he hadn’t told any of them the significance of his choice. Many of his rivals in the cyber development world thought Ivan the Terrible suited him far more.
Ivan’s mockery grew more caustic when Raiden made no response. “Did you change your name from Lightning to Turtle without telling us?”
“Maybe since he’s a ninja, he’s always been one.”
Ivan glared at Bones, the most blasé of the brothers. If only in comparison to the rest of them. To the rest of the world Antonio Balducci was a whirlwind of energy and achievements, an enigmatic, awe-inspiring figure who was a wizard in medicine and with the women who catapulted themselves at his feet. As their former medical expert and field surgeon, Antonio was now in charge of Black Castle’s medical R&D business and a reconstructive-trauma surgical god whose work bordered on magic.
On the personal level, ever since their days in Black Castle, Antonio and Ivan couldn’t stop harassing each other, but neither one could live without the other, either.
“You knew that she knew,” Ivan said, resuming the corrosive scolding Antonio had interrupted. “And you not only let her go then, you’re back with her again now. Don’t you—”
“I had no idea what she was up to until it was too late,” Raiden interrupted Ivan. “I let her go bec
ause she gave me her word she’d never use her knowledge. She kept it and I—”
“You had no way of knowing she would,” Numair interrupted him in turn. “That was a blind, insane gamble. You jeopardized yourself and, by association, all of us. You compounded your mistakes when you made the decision to keep us in the dark. It could have meant our very lives.”
From the bare facts, it did look like that, Raiden conceded. But it had been his gut feeling that he’d gone with then. Still, he couldn’t admit that. It would make him look even more unreliable, and Scarlett more dangerous.
He finally exhaled. “I made the call to believe her. And I was right to.”
