Time Eternal (24 page)

Antonio staggered a few steps backward and glared back at him but was wise enough to take off, disappearing into the shadows beyond the barn door. Rei turned back to Elizabeth’s father. “Elizabeth did not die. She is lost in time.” There was confusion in the old man’s eyes before a sudden realization dawned on his desolate face. His mouth gaped open, and he was about to say something, but Rei didn’t give him a chance. He turned around and left the barn with Sloan following behind him…

Rei’s attention came back to the present, catching the tail end of his brother’s theory, “…it is possible that Antonio’s still working for Fernando. And it’s also possible that Antonio was the one who tipped off Mr. X. So Fernando is connected to Mr. X.”

Rei’s jaw tightened; he threw his drink into the fireplace, causing the fire to roar like the pain and anger burning through him now. This was all wrong. The gods could not be so cruel, finally leading him to Elizabeth but also leading him back to where it all started. He was going to tell his brother to go back in time and kill off Fernando once and for all, the gods and their edict about the Medici’s family be damned, but a soft snick came from the study door.

“I hope your house is insured for fire hazard.” He turned around and saw Skyla swinging her sexy hips and long legs into his study. Without letting him react to her unannounced visit, she raised her chin and stated, “We need to talk.” Her bright eyes looked straight at his, daring him to refuse her. And right behind her was Knox. Why must Knox always be wherever she was?

Suppressing a caveman growl, he turned to Sloan. “Take a few men with you to Florence, right after we left, and finish him.”

His brother nodded and left the study without as much as a glance at Skyla. He knew his brother was deliberately snubbing her, and he could tell from the stiffened posture of Skyla that her tolerance was reaching its limit. Not a damn good time for this sort of distraction. “What’s on your mind?” He drew her attention away from Sloan.

Waiting for Sloan’s footsteps to recede, Skyla went to close the study door. “You’ve a traitor here.” She said it to him with such conviction, a certainty that he found charming. His soft innocent Elizabeth had the same stubborn trait as Skyla did when it came to what she believed in. The faint blush on her porcelain cheeks from the thorough lovemaking they had this afternoon was still visible. His groin leaped at the memory.

“What makes you so sure that’s the case?” His voice was as plain as he would have been talking to one of his men, even though his mind was imagining Skyla naked and sprawled across his bed. Good thing she couldn’t read his mind, or she would be blushing at the things he was doing to her in his head right now.

He grinned until Skyla looked back at Knox, who was standing against the door with his arms crossed over his chest like a bodyguard, as if she needed to make sure Knox was fine with what she was going to say before she would proceed. That again annoyed the hell of Rei. It made him want to shove Knox out of the door and then claim Skyla right in the middle of his study. If Knox didn’t speak up first, he might very well be doing that.

“The handmaiden was in my room a few minutes ago.” Knox repeated the warning from the handmaiden.

“What else did she say?” Rei held his breath.

“Just the warning, and then she vanished into thin air.” Knox pushed himself off the door and came toe-to-toe with Rei. Something flashed in Knox’s sea-blue eyes. It was so quick, Rei was not sure whether it was his imagination or not.

“You know her warning of betrayal meant you or your men. The next logical question is why she came to tell me but not you.” Knox held his gaze.

Well damn and hell. He knew why Edda went to Knox. Since Antonio had shown up, his suspicions had grown, but he was not prepared to share them with Skyla or Knox yet. If he did, they would think it was he who betrayed them and their precious Agency. He needed evidence first, and fast. So he went on the offense instead.

“If I were a betting man, I’d say Edda feels more at ease discussing the brewing troubles with her own kind.” He gave Knox a pointed look. His vague hint and accusation definitely created the diversion he needed. Skyla’s eyebrows knitted together, the same adorable look Elizabeth had whenever she was on the verge of solving a complicated mathematical problem. Rei smiled at Knox, all teeth.

“Knox?” Skyla turned to him, but Knox refused to meet her eyes. Instead, he glared back at Rei.

“Stay out of my business.” Without another word, Knox abruptly left the study.

“Guess your precious Knox has something to hide, too, love.” He knew he was baiting her, and he knew her tolerance level was as thin as his was at the moment. She shot him a black look. Instead of telling him to fuck off, she narrowed her eyes. There it was again, more of his Elizabeth surfacing. Thank the goddess!

Before he realized what was happening, Skyla smoothed her suspicious expression and gave him a sly smile instead. “Why did you provoke Knox on purpose?”

Dammit. She knew he was playing her, playing them. Her smile was more crafty then seductive. But his lower body was happy to oblige regardless. After five centuries of celibacy, his body was ready to get inside her at anytime, anywhere, whether she had seduction on her mind or not. They’d just exhausted each other merely a couple hours ago. His body was still humming from it, yet it was demanding to have what belonged to him again, and again, and again. Rei had to force himself to count from ten, backward, in Latin so that his mind could do the thinking instead of his dick. He knew that until he had proof, he could not tell her what he knew about Knox, and his speculation about what the gods were planning.

So he leaned down and kissed her gently, the way he used to kiss Elizabeth. Skyla didn’t seem to expect the gentleness in his reverent kisses. She stood there frozen before her arms slowly wound around his neck. This time it was sweeter and tenderer, not the raging burn they both felt earlier. This time it seemed they both wanted to savor and remember how it was between them, until they heard a rather loud
harrumph
. Skyla broke the contact first, looking a bit flushed and confused. Rei winced inwardly; even after what they shared this morning, she still had doubts about him, about them.

“Master Rei. Dinner is ready.” Herbert made the announcement and then left as if he hadn’t just seen his master slowly devouring his guest in his study.

Looking back at Skyla, he saw their moment had passed. Her face was still prettily blushed from the tender kisses, but the cool detachment was back in her big brown eyes. Without a word to him, she turned and left the study too.

Shadowing sucked. Skyla had forgotten how boring bodyguard duty could be, especially when the person being protected did not know he had a shadowing team. That made the job ten times more difficult and unpredictable because there was no way to set up a controlled perimeter around the person’s daily activities.

After dinner, Rei had divided up his men into three teams, two of the teams shadowing Senator Glass and Congressman Steagalls around the clock, the remaining team gathering intel on any connection between her ancient cousin Antonio and Mr. X.

The thought of her cousin brought anguished tears to her eyes. Her memory had come back in full force. These past few nights, her dreams of the past were more emotional, more intense, and she was no longer dreaming as an observer, like a movie audience, but as Elizabeth. Last night, she’d dreamed of the day that Rei had told her who he was and of his plan to take her away. But she, Elizabeth, refused to leave her family behind, including her ambitious cousin Antonio. She watched one of her cousin’s guards pierce Rei’s side with a saber, and she could think of nothing else but saving him. So she traded her life for his. She had woken up gasping, her pillow soaked with tears.

And the night before, she’d dreamed of her carefree days spent with Rei and the day he proposed to her with a huge oval ruby ring. The color and clarity of the ruby put the twenty-three-carat Mogok Burmese ruby ring to shame. The Mogok was housed in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. After reading Rei’s journal, now she knew the ring he proposed to Elizabeth with was from his mother, the Serbian Empress. That night she woke up staring at her ring finger, wishing she could be Elizabeth again, giving all of herself to Rei again, but she knew it could never be. She was no longer the mild-mannered, innocent girl from the sixteenth century, nor did she wish to be.

“Look.” Rei’s voice brought her attention to the present, and she saw a man wearing a dark trench coat with his face hidden under a dark fedora. The man was walking briskly into the office building where the congressman and senator were meeting with Treasury Secretary Woodin. They were having a series of weeklong meetings to iron out the details of the Banking Act of 1933, part of the legislation that would include the creation of the FDIC, authorizing the government to guarantee bank deposits. It was the last weapon President Franklin D. Roosevelt had in his arsenal to prevent another nationwide bank run and to lift the country out of the Great Depression. And eighty-something years from now, the creation of the FDIC would save the U.S. and its western allies from a total economic and political collapse during the early twenty-first century, and without which World War III wouldn’t be unimaginable, because no doubt, various terrorist groups would exploit such chaos.

Rei had strategically assigned his men around the building perimeter in concentric circles, making sure no one unwanted could get into the building without his men knowing about it. The fact that this man was walking right into the building and none of Rei’s men raised any signal didn’t bode well for this bodyguard mission. Rei frowned as the man walked into the building, probably thinking the same thing as she was.

They quietly left the car and followed the man inside the building. The congressmen’s meeting was purposely being held in the late evening in order to avoid the press. That was why there was no one inside the lobby. The ping from the elevator brought their attention to the ascending machine. It had an old-school clock hand swinging from left to right with the floor numbers forming an arch. It stopped at the fifth floor where the meeting was being held. They immediately turned to the staircase next to the elevator bank and ran up the five flights of stairs. At the fifth-floor door, they both drew out their guns. Rei gave her a nod and then quietly opened the door into the hallway. They took up either side of the hallway before proceeding forward. As soon as they rounded the first corner, they caught a glimpse of the man’s dark trench coat turning left.

“Shit.” Muttering under her breath, she sped up, following the man while Rei kept behind her. They knew there would be federal agents posted outside the suite. She carefully peeked her head slightly around the corner wall and saw just that, two men from either the Feds or the Secret Service slumped on the floor, while the door next to the suite was left ajar. She tilted her head forward, signaling to Rei the direction. They didn’t bother to wait and check out the room next to the congressmen’s meeting room. Instead they crashed into the adjacent room, using the element of surprise. And there was the man in the dark trench coat standing on top of a desk by the far side of the wall. He was about to blow some sort of smoke through the ventilation on the common wall between the two rooms. No time to waste. She rushed up to him, knocking him and the pipe off the desk. The thick carpet in the room muffled the noise of their fall. Rei quickly kicked the pipe away from them and hauled the man up.

“Oh my god…” The fedora fell off the man, and Skyla let out a gasp. “Antonio…”

Her cousin stared back at her with cold, flat eyes, the complete opposite of the steadfast, brotherly love in Elizabeth’s memories. Elizabeth had adored her older cousin. She thought the world of him. He was her older brother, her protector. She had stood up for him when her uncle found out that Antonio had gone into the military instead of following in the family footsteps, becoming a scientist. Even during the years he had worked up the ranks within the Medici’s private army and had become colder and less concerned with the family affairs, Elizabeth had supported him and his chosen path. And even when he tried numerous times to persuade Papa to marry her off to Fernando, Elizabeth still loved her cousin unconditionally. It hurt so much seeing Antonio standing in front of them, yet again betraying his honor, his family.

Rei had Antonio’s arms secured and pressed behind his back. It couldn’t be comfortable, yet his lips snarled into a cold, sarcastic grin. “You don’t look happy to see me, cousin.”

He was baiting her, and she knew better than to let him get to her this easily, but the raw fury inside her was burning too bright. Elizabeth had loved her cousin until the last day, until he sold her out. The girl back then might not have had the courage to fight back, but Skyla was not that girl anymore. TSCAA policy forbade agents using unnecessary force against suspects and enemies in combat who posed no risk. But that didn’t matter. Her fist simply flew out and punched him straight in his nose. The bone-cracking sound was actually quite satisfying. “That was for Elizabeth.” And she punched him again. “And that was for betraying your own family.” Blood was streaming out from Antonio’s nose and the corner of his mouth, but his face remained expressionless. There was no regret, no remorse in his eyes. And at that moment, she hated him more than she hated Fernando himself.

“Skyla, we need to go. Those two agents outside will regain consciousness soon.” Rei’s voice somehow centered her back. She nodded and stepped away from her treacherous cousin.

Rei twisted Antonio’s arms harder while pushing him out of the room. It was well past midnight, and their retreating path was clear and deserted until they were in the dark alley next to the office building. Three men were standing right in front of their car. Two of them, with the physiques of pro wrestlers, flanked a shorter, average-built man in the middle.