Page 46 of Unleash Hades
There were only a few weeks left in her incarceration with Richard.
I clenched and unclenched my fists, remembering the feel of her against me. It had been better than I had remembered. It was better than anything I had ever had.
We took off, and I was left to the reverie of my sweet summer goddess. My springtime. My flower. The light in the darkness I lived in.
“We need to talk to the Sideshow freaks about the She-Bear,” Alastair said after we stabilized in the air, “You gave her the tracker, yes? Did you explain how to use it?”
“I gave it to her but couldn’t explain. There wasn’t time.” I looked at Rose, and the devotion in her eyes as she looked at her children.
I knew Cali didn’t have her sons as newborns. She had them when they were toddlers. Adoption. But did she look at her own twins like that?
If so, would she ever be mine, as much as she wastheirmother? A possessive, unreasonable, jealous feeling swept over me, as I thought about her, and how finite her time was. All human time was finite, but we had waited for ten years. Would I get anything from her in what little we’d have left after Richard was dragged to Hell where he belonged?
Would she ever be mine?
Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t even have her in the first place.
I dismissed that intrusive thought. She was mine. I knew it. She knew it. She said it in every broadcast in small, unnoticeable ways. The number of ways she cried out my old callsign - Hades.
I smiled, realizing that when the camera captured a moment of surprise, she did not cry “Oh my God!”... no, she cried “Holy Hades.”
A warm feeling flickered in my chest, along with the tension in my shoulders that wanted me to spring to action and run to her side. To be the dark God that she called for…
Did that make her my Persephone? Cursed to be divided between me and the world in the light?
I pulled out my phone, hooking onto the plane’s wifi. I didn’t subscribe to television. That shit would rot your brain.
I did, however, subscribe to the Laurent Channel, which had subsidiaries across multiple platforms - news, gossip, documentaries, and talk shows. I watched for her.
I scrolled through what was broadcast, scanning for her name to see if she was going to appear in any of them.
“Hugo,” Rose’s voice cut into my bitter judgments, and I watched as her hazel eyes examined me with an annoying look of concern and sympathy. “I know that you care about her, but…”
She tried to smile, and I rolled my eyes.
“Get to the point!” I raised my voice and regretted it right away when a baby’s scream cut through the cabin, as one of the little spawns woke up.
Rose placed her hand in the crib, and started stroking the little devil’s belly until it was soothed back to sleep.
“I’m saying that maybe you deserve better than a married woman who has only spoken to you once or twice in ten years!” she said in a harsh whisper. “Do you think she’s treating you fairly? You spend every dime you have on her security, and the only thing she gives you isoneconversation? Don’t you think that’s insane?”
She was saying what every other man in Caledonia Security thought, but never had the balls to say out loud to me. I could appreciate that about Rose.
But she was wrong.
There is nothing fair about life. There is nothing fair about love, either.
“You haven’t been with a woman since her for ten years,” Rose said, shaking her head. “And she’smarried! Do you think she’s kept her legs shut to her husband?”
“You will not talk about her like that,” I said, bringing up a reprimanding finger in warning. “You don’t know what he’s like.”
I did. I did know that she went to bed alone, in her own company. At night, she was as solitary as I was. But they didn't know the depth of my devotion. They didn’t know how eagerly I watched. They didn’t know what lengths I would go to see her.
They’d never approve of the cameras in her room, in her house, in her office.
We had a tenuous relationship with respecting privacy, but they weren’tthatloose.
They also didn’t know what horrors I had watched.
