Page 3 of Condemned By Betrayal
And I know she must have given it to him. With his dark blue eyes, curly brown hair, tanned skin, six-foot-four frame, muscular build, and that charming smile, he makes every girl look twice. Unlike me, people have no trouble holding eye contact with him, either.
He chuckles, takes one last drag, then flicks the cigarette onto the wet concrete and crushes it beneath his black shoe.
“Someone has to take care of the beautiful hearts of beautiful women.”
I open the door and slide behind the wheel. He takes the passenger seat.
“To the Piston’s.”
I nod and steer us steadily along the familiar roads of Toronto. It’s our usual route, from our workplace to Hot Spice club to Piston’s roadside food stall to our apartment in Hestin. Everything except Piston’s food—including both of us—belongs to Chris Flisher, son of Declan Flisher.
Logan and I are his weapons. His most precious weapons, as he calls us. For the past year, we’ve both been working toward one goal, the destruction of four men whom even God can’t touch. They sit in a place where no one can see them, but theycan see everyone. The man who rules the underworld—Alessio. His son, Matleon. The man who controls the U.S. military and the armies of many allied nations—Alexander Bennett. And his son-in-law, who is also his adopted son—Zloban Bennett.
Zloban killed Declan and took Canada from the Flishers. Later, his son Charlie tried to kill Zloban but failed, and Matleon killed him for it. Now Chris wants them dead and to take all of Canada back, which I can now say with confidence is nothing more than wishful thinking. It’s impossible to reach them, let alone kill them. There are no loose strings that lead to them, but Chris believes we can do it. According to him, we’re capable of it. We didgreatthings before we lost our memories in an accident a year ago.
We’re both orphans, raised at the Flisher Orphanage. When we came of age, Declan saw our potential, trained us, and made us what we are today.
Logan and I don’t have any memory of any of this, but we have the knowledge—hacking, breaching the toughest security, killing—it all comes so naturally to us. There are things we like and things we don’t, for no reason at all. It was suffocating to live like this at first, but now it’s become a habit.Living without a soul.I have no doubt that in a few years, if things keep going the way they are, we’ll become just like the robots working for Flisher—no purpose of living and no goal of our own.
I park the car in front of the stall. Fifty-year-old Mrs. Whitaker peeks her head out, smiling at the sight of our car.
We get out and settle onto the small bench with its tiny stools. This stall isn’t for bulky men like us, it’s for college kids. But we like the food here.
One night, six months ago, some local goons were causing havoc here when we saw them on our way home. I ignored it, as always, but Logan was a knight in a past life, he has a problem with wrong happening to helpless people. So he made me stopthe car. After beating the shit out of those men and giving them a death warning, he helped the Whitaker couple and gave them money. While he was playing superhero, I sat in the car smoking a cigarette.
The couple gave him two taco rolls out of gratitude. He gave me one even though I hadn’t done anything. We liked them, and from then on, we started eating here.
The couple insisted we eat for free, but of course Logan’s good heart couldn’t accept that, so we pay them twice what we eat.I don’t have a problem with spending money, it’s not like I have anywhere else to spend it. And Flisher pays us enough to afford life’s luxuries.
Mr. Whitaker comes over with two plates of poutine and butter tarts.
“How was your day?” he asks Logan, his weathered face creasing into a grin.
“Fantastic,” Logan answers, flashing at least twenty teeth. “What about you?”
He nods. “Very good, very good. Enjoy the meal.”
“Thanks for the food,” Logan says before digging in.
I’ve already started eating. These pleasantries aren’t for me anyway. After trying to talk to me a few times, the couple started treating me like I don’t exist. Logan justified my behavior by saying I’m not good with social interactions. He always does that—justifies my actions, cleans up after me whenever I lose control and create chaos.
He takes the butter tart from my plate and moves it to his. “It’s got nuts.”
I hate nuts. I’m not allergic to them, and they don’t cause indigestion, I just don’t like them. Whenever I accidentally eat them, I lose my mind. If not for Logan stopping me, I would have killed many people by now for putting them in my food.I know it’s not their fault when I don’t specify, but my brain doesn’t care.
Logan’s phone pings. He takes it out, reads the message, then types something and puts the phone back in his cargo pocket.
“We’ve got the entry passes as founders of Rockwell.”
I nod.
“We leave tomorrow.”
A strange tightness grips my chest. I slow my chewing, grinding the food between my molars with more force than necessary. We’ve been working toward this day for a year, but the tightness isn’t from that, and the frustrating part is I don’t know what it’s from.
Tomorrow we leave for the U.S. The day after tomorrow, we enter King Alessio’s house through the party.
Chris handed us this startup—Rockwell—eight months ago. We made it successful enough that the King, or any other member of that family, would consider investing. Last month, that happened. We got investment from Matleon. For the past month, we’ve been working with Matleon’s team, and they’re impressed with us. Last week we got to talk with him, too. I was just there beside Logan, he did all the talking. Matleon is smart, really smart. We have to walk on eggshells around him, or he’ll catch us in a blink.
