Page 70 of A Queen and HER Bad Boy (Spies and Royals #4)
Chapter Thirty-Seven
T he intercepted message was practically a death warrant for their attackers!
Bris clutched to the paper and raced through the labyrinthine corridors in search of her father-in-law.
The ancient stone passages stretched endlessly before her, each archway and chamber a reminder of gladiators who’d once faced impossible odds in these very halls.
How fitting that she now found herself trapped in her own deadly arena.
Nestor had directed her to find O Skia in the old training quarters before finally agreeing to leave to contact Clysta.
Please let our plan to rescue Gena not come too late!
Bris was in a nightmare of endless chambers and wrong turns, each corridor looking identical to the last. Her thoughts looped as chaotically as this maze—Aggie lurked in the belly of these prisons like some mythological minotaur, ready to devour Tirreoy the moment he was freed.
Did the Myrdons truly intend to place him on the throne, or would they use Achilles as their puppet ruler?
Either way, they would tear apart everything she and Achilles had fought to protect.
She couldn’t let that happen to her people.
Desperately following Nestor’s directions, she finally heard voices echoing from a chamber ahead. She slowed her pace, straining to listen as O Skia’s commanding voice cut through the stone air.
“Has anyone located Gena yet?” His tone carried the authority of a military commander sharpened with the desperation of a terrified father.
Another man responded with heavy reluctance. “Sir, we’ve confirmed that her assigned bodyguard is a known operative—Dominique is just one of his covers. We know him as Diamond Medes, an assassin with ties to international mercenary networks.”
O Skia’s anguished shout echoed through the tunnel where she was.
Bris rounded the corner in time to see his usually implacable face a mottled canvas of deathly white and burning rage.
“This is personal, make no mistake,” he snarled.
“They plan to use my daughter to squeeze out every last bit of our island’s riches. ”
And what would they force Achilles to do?
He’d break for Gena, shatter like a cheap china doll—she’d seen for herself the fierce protectiveness he had for his sister.
But what about O Skia? She didn’t know him well enough to predict his next move.
He’d already “sacrificed” his family once for his cause; would he do it again? Would Clysta allow it?
The General turned rigid when he spotted her.
He stood in his rebel headquarters converted from these ruins into something modern with computers and harsh lighting.
This numb rage icing her father-in-law’s expression was something she’d witnessed in her own father during his darkest moments.
The walls were closing in like a tomb around her. “Where is my son?” he demanded.
“He surrendered himself… to keep me safe,” her voice cracked at the memory of Achilles’s sacrifice for love. It was the same kind of devotion his father might’ve felt when he’d thought sacrificing his family would save them.
Was Achilles as wrong as his father had been?
“When did Clysta decide to work with you?” she asked softly.
“When she discovered I was alive only a few short months ago.” Decades of heartbreak were compressed into those simple words.
What had Clysta thought when the man she’d worshiped vanished?
What accusations and tears had flowed between them?
The regret, the hopelessness of a family lost?
Was O Skia aware of the abuse his wife had endured at the hands of Atreus Mnon—his worst enemy?
The traitor had spun such convincing lies that even Clysta had once believed Atreus Mnon had tried to save O Skia, rather than have him killed.
Those secrets remained locked behind O Skia’s granite expression. Clysta had activated her contingency plan—the directive to “find her heart; seek the cross”—but even that desperate gambit seemed doomed to failure. Once again, her husband seemed prepared to surrender his family to fate.
His defeated expression suggested he’d already given them all up for dead. Old habits died hard—but so did Bris’s stubborn streak. She’d never given up on anything in her life, and she wouldn’t start now.
Slamming the intercepted message onto the scarred wooden table that dominated the chamber, she fixed him with a fierce stare. “The Myrdons are working with wealthy Americans—I know how to turn their greed against them.”
The paper crackled under her palm, its treacherous words offering the first real advantage they’d had in this deadly game. Now the question lay in what O Skia would do with it—fight in the face of impossible odds or give in to the despair that he’d surrendered to all these years.