Loyalty’s Betrayal Read online

  Loyalty’s Betrayal

  Mari Carr

  Lila Dubois

  Contents

  Loyalty’s Betrayal

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Pleasure’s Fury

  About the Authors

  Loyalty’s Betrayal

  Head of security for the world’s most powerful secret society isn’t an easy job. Mateo failed in his duties, and people died. When he’s offered a chance to prove himself and unmask a traitor, he accepts without hesitation.

  His chance for redemption comes with a condition, a deadline…and an ultimatum. The condition? Mateo won’t be working alone. He’s partnered with Cecilia–a brilliant woman who knows more about the Masters’ Admiralty than anyone, and Dimitri, an arrogant man with a dangerous skill set.

  The deadline? He has one week to find the traitor or lose his position as captain of the Spartan Guard. The ultimatum? Cecilia and Dimitri think Mateo is going to be their third in an arranged menage marriage. They can’t know there’s a chance the union will be dissolved if Mateo finds the traitor in time.

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Lexi Blake for allowing us to “crossover” briefly between with her Masters and Mercenaries world. This was done so with her permission. She rocks!

  Prologue

  There was something wrong.

  He knew it the moment he walked in the front door. The house was too still, too quiet. Typically, the smell of dinner was the first thing he noticed upon arriving home, but today the only scent he could detect was the tanginess of the pomegranate blossoms in the bouquet of fresh flowers his mother always kept on a side table in the foyer.

  The silence was unnerving and unfamiliar. He was an only child, something his parents seemed to overcompensate for by constantly filling their large house with noise—be it from the radio, the television, laughter, or conversation—and constant activity. They were a family in perpetual motion. It had been that way for as long as he could remember.

  He had stayed after school for fútbol practice, having made starting midfielder on the team during his final year of Educación Secundaria Obligatoria, a fairly substantial feat in a city like Seville, where everyone ate, drank and dreamed fútbol.

  His father hadn’t been surprised by his success on the field. After all, Papa had declared him a born runner, swearing his first steps hadn’t been made walking, but rather in a mad forty-meter dash.

  He was going to continue his education next year in Bachillerato, before following in his parents’ footsteps and heading to university. Like him, they’d been born and raised in Seville, leaving only to attend university and medical school in Barcelona, then returning home to accept residencies at the local hospital. Both of his parents were renowned surgeons, esteemed in their fields. His mother was a neurosurgeon, Papa’s specialty vascular surgery, and their aspirations for him were the same, both of them certain he would follow in their footsteps to pursue a career in medicine.

  The three of them had spent a great deal of time discussing which discipline he would pursue, perusing the medical journals, discussing the pros and cons of each. His parents were peaceful, loving people. To them, a life well lived meant saving lives through medical care, not through force or politics or financial gain.

  They lived close enough to his school that he walked each day, enjoying those few minutes of solitude. He was an alert, astute boy, constantly taking in the world around him. He’d grown more quiet with each passing year and had begun to master the art of blending in. His father was boisterous, lively, typically the life of every party they attended, so Papa wasn’t sure what to do with a brooding son. Lately, he’d begun resenting his father’s comments about him needing to speak up, to share what was on his mind, so in a typical act of teen rebelliousness, he’d gone even quieter, simply to annoy Papa.

  Glancing around the front foyer, he spotted his mother’s purse, overturned on the floor. It looked as if she’d missed the table when setting it down, and it had fallen, the contents scattering on the hardwood. A tube of lipstick, pack of tissues, two pens, several credit cards. He catalogued the items in his mind, noting the details. Mama often made a game of his ability to see everything at a glance. Whenever they were driving somewhere, she’d tell him to close his eyes, then ask him to describe something that lay ahead of them—a billboard, a building, a person walking on the sidewalk. She’d ask random questions and he always knew every exacting detail perfectly.

  He thought it strange that Mama had left her purse lying there that way. She took tidiness to new heights, something he thought indicative of a slightly obsessive-compulsive nature.

  “Mama?” he called out, his voice echoing slightly, thanks to the tall ceiling in the foyer. The door on the right, which led to the formal dining room, was usually open, but he noticed it was closed. In fact, all the first-floor doors were closed. He pondered if he’d ever seen them so.

  He called for his mother again. No response.

  He briefly considered heading straight upstairs to drop off his school bag and grab a quick shower, but there was something about the silence that told him all of this was wrong. Terribly wrong.

  He opened the dining room door.

  It took him a moment to understand what he was seeing.

  The room was awash in red, the splatters covering the off-white walls in a style reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock painting.

  He was the sixteen-year-old son of two surgeons. He’d seen pictures of bodies, cut open on the operating tables, in his parents’ medical journals and textbooks. Blood didn’t scare him. It was as necessary to life as water and air. The walls held his attention for far longer than they should have. Perhaps because he wasn’t emotionally able to turn his gaze toward the table.

  Peripherally, he could see what was there. Understood that his entire life had changed in the blink of an eye.

  He was an intelligent boy, perfectly capable of reasoning things out. He’d always been proud of his ability to analyze a situation and see the next fifteen steps. His papa told him that would make him an excellent surgeon.

  He sucked in a deep breath, swallowing heavily to dislodge the bile in this throat, then turned his eyes to the table.

  There, lying side by side, their chests ripped apart with one long, deep gash down the center of each, as if by a machete, were his parents. Both of them had died with their eyes open, their final expressions the perfect blend of horror and pain.

  It was nothing like the images in medical books. In those, neat, clean incisions were surrounded by sterile blue cloth. It hid the person, made it easier to treat the body as a puzzle or a machine, his father had explained once.

  He could see his father’s heart. At least he thought that was what the mangled lump was. The powerful blow that had opened his father from chest to belly button had broken some of his ribs, leaving his chest cavity open. There was a gray mass under all the blood, and he thought it might be the lungs.

  His mother’s wound started lower, at the bottom of her sternum, but it cut deep into her belly, and things that looked like half-formed sausage links trailed out of her.

  The screaming in his head made it hard to think. To breathe. He took th
e source of those screams, shoved it in a box and closed the lid. Later, he would let it out. Later, he would dream of this. Nightmares, no doubt.

  Whoever had done this had staged the bodies, placed them in their current positions after killing them. His mother hadn’t died here but by the front window, the trail of her blood starting just below the damask curtains she had purchased last spring to replace the heavy velvet ones that had been gathering dust in the room since before his birth. Had their killer reached into her, pulling out her intestines to drape them over the table?

  His father had been killed in the kitchen, his own bright red trail beginning beyond the closed swinging door that separated that room from this one. They were murdered and dragged here by their killer, placed on their own dining room table, their bodies displayed to mirror the looks of the patients they treated in the hospital.

  His eyes lingered on his mama’s face, her pale, lifeless blue eyes. Every part of him longed to run to her, to hug her, to kiss her, to beg her not to be dead.

  She was his beloved mama, the woman who understood him, loved him, made him laugh.

  He reached out to her, but stopped. He couldn’t touch her, couldn’t destroy any of the evidence that might lead the polícia to find her killer.

  He forced himself to look at everything. To commit it to memory. It was easy, given the numbness, the shock taking over his body. The emotions would come later—pain, grief, fear, anger. For now, all of it remained at bay, his own soul as lifeless as those of his beloved parents.

  He forced himself to scan the room once again. All of this mattered. Every detail needed to be noted, filed away. He would have to call the polícia soon. They would take him from here, probably place him in a home with some distant relative—a cousin or great aunt. It was the one unusual thing about his parents. Unlike his friends at school, he wasn’t constantly surrounded by an extended family.

  He turned to go back to the foyer, to place the call. That was when he saw it.

  Written on the back of the door he’d just passed through, in his parents’ blood, were two words.

  Comienza aquí.

  It begins here.

  A chill ran through his body and he shivered violently.

  Walking to the phone, he dialed the authorities, then went into the living room on the opposite side of the house to wait. He left the doors between him and his parents open, the way they were supposed to be, so he could watch over their bodies.

  Sirens blared, lights flashed through the front windows and within minutes, the house was filled with men. Several of them came into the room where he remained, one at a time or in pairs, and asked him the same questions, over and over.

  What time did you get home?

  Was anyone else in the house?

  Did your parents have enemies?

  Had they received threats?

  What do the words comienza aqui mean to you?

  He answered them all, his responses never changing. He knew nothing. He saw nothing. The words meant nothing to him.

  Hours passed as the polícia took photographs, gathered evidence, removed his parents from the house.

  Through it all, he remained a statue on the couch, his eyes taking it in.

  He listened to the baffled detectives and knew deep in his heart that these men would never be able to solve the mystery, to bring the killer to justice.

  Finally, at the end of the evening, a stranger approached him, placing a firm, strong hand on his shoulder.

  He looked up into the man’s gaze and saw something he hadn’t in the eyes of the polícia. Confidence, strength, answers. And then, looking deeper into the man’s face, he also saw the same pain that he felt. The man may be a stranger to him, but it was clear he was grieving. How could the stranger feel the death of his parents as keenly as he?

  “It will be alright, son. I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner, chiquito,” the stranger said.

  Chiquito? He wasn’t a little boy. But the man’s tone hadn’t been patronizing. It was affectionate—the term of endearment used almost habitually.

  That couldn’t be. He’d never seen the stranger before.

  No. That wasn’t the truth. The stranger looked terribly, sickeningly familiar.

  A sense of otherness gripped him, and the world seemed to tip as if the ground under him had suddenly gone sideways. The man’s eyes…

  That was when he recognized they were same eyes that stared back at him in the mirror each morning.

  This stranger looked like him. Just like him.

  “Who are you?” he whispered, a sense of awe and fear washing through him.

  The stranger gave him a sad smile. “I’m your father. I’ve been watching over you your entire life.”

  “No, you are not my papa.” His father was dead. Dead and now gone from their house, never to return. He swallowed down the pain.

  “Not your papa, your padre.” He used the more formal word for father.

  “What does that mean?” A thought occurred to him, and he stiffened. Was this man the murderer?

  As if sensing the direction of his thoughts, the stranger held up his hands. “I am here to help you. I will take care of you.”

  “Why? Who are you?” This time the question was harsh, the tears he hadn’t cried tightened his throat.

  “I told you. I am your father.”

  “Liar!” He leapt for the stranger, who stepped back, putting a chair between them. “My papa is dead! You are no one.”

  “I wish we’d done things differently. I wish we’d told you.”

  “Told me what?” His throat hurt, but he would not cry.

  “The man who died here today was your papa in every way, except one. You are my blood. Look at me, and you will know the truth.”

  He frowned, confused. He wanted to dispute the fact. To scream from the rafters that his father had just been brutally murdered. But the words didn’t come. Because he saw the details. Saw the truth.

  “What do you know about the Masters’ Admiralty?” the stranger asked.

  The words were foreign to him.

  “Nothing, sir.”

  The stranger gave him a kind smile. “I will teach you. You’re coming home with me, Mateo.”

  1

  “I don’t mean to question your authority, sir, but—”

  “The very nature of that sentence implies a question, Arthur,” the fleet admiral interjected.

  “I understand that, but I would be a very poor leader in my own right if I didn’t question something that gave me pause, caused me concern.”

  “You have…concerns…about what I’ve ordered you to do?”

  Arthur considered whether it was wise to forge on. Eric Ericsson was the new fleet admiral, installed shortly after his predecessor had been murdered. Arthur had been there, had witnessed that brutal killing.

  As admiral of England’s territory, Arthur had to walk a fine line with his new boss. He was honorable and believed in rules and order, things that had been ingrained in him since his days as a knight. There were codes and traditions that had to be protected and honored. The most important one was that ultimate authority of the Masters’ Admiralty rested with the fleet admiral. He should obey Eric without question.

  However, his new position required more of him. Suddenly, every decision made for the territory of England rested with him, which meant speaking up in times like this.

  Of course, a smarter man would also know which battles to pick, and Arthur wasn’t sure he wanted to die on this hill.

  “Arthur?” the fleet admiral prompted. “If you’re going to question me, do it. Do not prevaricate.” The carefully enunciated English word sounded odd coming from the Eric. He was a huge blond man who looked like a Viking king. His nickname—“the Viking”—though unimaginative, was fitting.

  Arthur considered his options, and then took up the figurative sword. “I do have concerns about this request, Fleet Admiral.”

  “Why?” Eric turned the tables on him, and su
ddenly he was the one faced with answering questions. “This doesn’t involve anyone in your territory. Just do what I’ve ordered.”

  “It’s Mateo Bernard. I’ve had the opportunity to get to know him over the course of the past few weeks. He won’t be happy about this, and I—”

  “Happy? Bernard’s happiness has no bearing on my decision.”

  “I understand that. I’m simply concerned he will view your actions as punishment.”

  Arthur met Mateo when the former fleet admiral, Kacper Kujakski, had been poisoned. They’d worked together further as they hunted for the sniper who had used the murder of the fleet admiral as an opportunity to take out two more admirals and one of his fellow knights. Mateo, head of the Spartan Guard, felt he’d failed in his duty to protect their leader, and he was anxious for an opportunity to redeem himself with the new fleet admiral.

  Obviously, Eric Ericsson didn’t give second chances. “He is head of the guard and he allowed the fleet admiral to be poisoned and then murdered. Mateo was standing right there, and the fleet admiral was shot. You think I should trust him to be my head of security?”

  Arthur took the fleet admiral’s words as an insult. Because Mateo hadn’t been the only one standing there when the fleet admiral was killed. What made the man’s comment sting even worse was that wasn’t the only murder Arthur had witnessed in the past few months. “I was a knight in this territory, sworn to protect my own admiral. He was gunned down in front of my eyes. As a result—”

  “As a result, you were made admiral of the England territory. Are you saying you don’t feel as if you were punished?” Eric’s tone was morose. There had been a rumor Eric hadn’t wanted the job of fleet admiral.