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He waited for Bruno’s response. “Oh, how funny—you’re still locked! One moment. Let me think…” He blinked. “Wouldn’t it be funny if I couldn’t remember the code to free you? You’d stay like that forever. I could make you do anything at all, you know. Put a gun to your head, pull the trigger. Mutilate yourself. Stop breathing. The power of DeepWeave as I have conceived it is tremendous.”
Bruno stared at him. Air sawed between his parted lips.
King slowly pronounced a phrase. A racking shudder went through his body. He tried to speak. A scratchy croak came out.
“Bruno, think back to your first encounter with Lily at the diner,” King said. “Remember Lily saying the phrase ‘you are my champion?’”
Bruno coughed, as he heard the words echo in his memory. Lily’s lilting voice. The image of her, bent over her coffee in that black wig, her lips vivid scarlet. That was his memory, private and precious, and he didn’t want it to be fodder for this guy’s crazed agenda. He didn’t want it soiled and dishonored. But he had to know. “What if she did?”
“It was a command phrase, Bruno,” King said. “Programmed into you years ago. I linked it to images of your mother. You were in a phase of development where you continually fantasized about rescuing your mother from monsters. And you dreamed about saving your mother from her attackers for years after her death, no? The perfect set-up.”
Bruno’s jaw ached. He refused to answer. His only defiance.
“Knowing that phrase would trigger all those powerful childhood emotions, I arranged for those emotions to transfer onto Lily. And then, of course, you consummated your sexual relationship immediately.”
Bruno clenched his teeth.
“The sex act that I commanded her to perform with you reinforced the programming. From then on…” He tousled Bruno’s hair. “You were her slave. My poor boy.”
“That’s not true,” he said. “You’re lying.” But even as the words left his mouth, he remembered those words she’d spoken, in the diner. How they made him feel. She’d spoken them again, in the cabin, he suddenly thought. On that wild, incredible night. Soaring emotions, searing sex, right after she’d pronounced it…like a ceremonial vow.
All those feelings, all just because he had been programmed…?
No.He shook his head. “It’s a lie. Why mount those huge attacks? Why not have her drug me while fucking me? She had opportunities. There was no reason to risk your people like that, if Lily was—”
“That was a miscalculation,” King said gravely. “I wanted you alive, for the purposes of my research, and I wanted to perpetuate the fiction that Lily was an innocent victim under your protection for as long as possible. Had I known how difficult you’d be to subdue…” He shrugged. “By all means, I would have done as you suggested, and had Lily take you out herself. Live and learn.”
“No.” Bruno just kept shaking his head, but King was laughing. He’d felt the impact of the barbs as they hit. He knew he’d won.
“I have some things to attend to right now, Bruno, but I see you are upset,” King said. “If you like, I could pronounce a phrase that will put you into a deep sleep, until I choose to wake you. What’ll it be? Sweet oblivion? Or would you prefer to writhe in agony in a locked room, contemplating how you doomed yourself for the sake of a traitorous bitch like Lily Parr?”
The words exploded out of him. “Go fuck yourself.”
King chortled. “Ah, Bruno. Why am I not surprised. Just like your mother. You don’t know when to stop. Hobart, Julian, take him away.”
They cut the bindings, fastened his legs to his hands. The hood swallowed him, drawstring pulled choke-tight. They dragged him somewhere. A door opened. He was flung onto a wooden floor.The door scraped shut. Locking mechanisms turned, clicked. He tried for oblivion himself, by sheer force of will, but his brain, flash-fried on stress hormones, didn’t have that setting available.
Which left him with only writhing agony as an option.
CHAPTER32
Kev hit the floor. He saw Petrie lunge across Zia Rosa’s lap. The picture window was shattered, glass everywhere. Coffee table, too.
Kev looked around for Sean across the carpet, strewn with demi-tasse cups, spattered coffee, broken cookies, shattered glass.
And blood. Costantina sprawled next to the upended metal frame of the coffee table, mouth gaping. Her throat was a raw, bloody mess. Blood pooled behind her head. Her tangle of knotted gold jewelry was like a red wet noose around her neck.
Sean poked his head around the couch. Their eyes met. Zia was yelling. Kev could barely hear it. Deafened by gunfire. The yelling was a good sign. At least she was alive. Petrie still lay across her lap, hand pressed to his side. His hand was red. Ah,shit.Not a good sign.
Kev pointed to himself, gestured towards the foyer. Pointed to Sean, and towards the shattered picture window. Sean nodded.
Kev writhed on his belly over the rug. Don Gaetano lay on his side, each breath a labored whimper. Flecks of blood spattered his lips and chin. He clutched his gut, his hand dripping. Shot in the belly, and it looked like he’d taken one in the thigh, too. Kev was sorry, but he kept on crawling, into the foyer. Couldn’t see out the windows this low, couldn’t tell how many assailants there were, where they were shooting from. He slithered up the stairs to the first landing, peeked between the banister slats, through the high, towering windows.
He saw nobody on the lawn. He kept looking, waiting…
There! A spot of green, shifting and moving against the rose bushes in the fountain. Darting behind the door, and coming this way. Kev clambered up onto the banister, poised himself. Leaped, into empty space. He caught the huge wrought iron candeliera, hung on like a monkey. It swung through the air like a pendulum, creaking madly, the bolts sunk into the wall straining. He willed them to hold.
He careened in wide, lazy arcs, trying to drag himself up into a ball. In the other room, he could just barely see Sean crouched near the picture window. His brother peered past the drapes swaying in gusts of wind. He looked up, shook his head. Kev jerked his chin at the door.
