“I’m such a goddamned idiot.” I turn to Cecelia. “Have you ever typed into Dom’s computer?”
She nods.
“Do you remember what?” I prompt.
She shakes her head. “No, it was just a bunch of his codes, letters, and numbers.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I say.
“Tyler,” Tobias snaps out of patience.
Gripping Cecelia’s finger, I press it to the newly darkened keyboard, and it lights up like Christmas. Tobias’s eyes widen in shock as I exhale. “He was encrypting your fingerprints and programmed them to this keyboard.”
“When?” Tobias asks.
“It’s all about timing, isn’t it?” I sigh, shaking my head.
Tobias nods, knowing exactly when he encrypted them.
“What am I missing?” Cecelia asks.
“The night he died,” Tobias answers for me. “He told Tyler that if anything happened to him, to get the laptop into the right set of hands.”
“The right set of hands,” I whisper, “As in two sets of goddamn hands.”
Tobias had the first passcode, she had the other, and even if he figured it out, Cecelia had to be the one to type it in.
“Do you know the answer, Trésor?”
“I do,” she replies as we both tense up. She positions herself behind his chair before running her palms up his back along the expanse of his raven tattoo. “He and I had the conversation in passing one day. I’m sure you’ve guessed a thousand government-based terms, right?”
“Right,” Tobias nods.
“You’re thinking of a man’s natural enemy.” She bends to whisper in his ear. “What is a Raven’s natural enemy?”
Fingers hovering over the keys, Cecelia types in each letter.
BALD EAGLE
In the next breath, the screen springs to life. A list of files lines up, and one name, in particular, catches my complete attention as Tobias stares up at Cecelia, incredulous. Seconds of stunned silence ensue as Tobias tries to make sense of it. “It was you, Trésor. He knew—”
Cecelia’s eyes fill and I glance over at her.
“We had to be together,” Tobias rasps out. “It was the only way in.”
She nods in perfect understanding, a grief-filled tear sliding down her cheek.
Elation quickly turns to alarm when I recall my conversation with Dom years ago—the day Cecelia arrived in Triple Falls—and Dom tried to explain what he was dealing with.
“That bad?” I ask.
“Worse, these aren’t acts of war.”
I ready myself mentally for whatever we’re about to see as Tobias and Cecelia remain staring at one another, bewildered.
“Please, man, please,” I plead. “I know this is heavy, but I have to know. After all this time, I have to fucking know.”
Tobias stares back at the screen, his own fear coming out to play. “Trésor—”
“Don’t waste your breath,” she shakes her head adamantly, her eyes relaying enough, and he nods. He’s been completely transparent with her since she took Antoine down.
But even I have to voice my objection—at least to warn her. “Cecelia, this is different. This is something you can never unsee.”
“I shot three men today. Don’t fucking preach to me, Jennings,” she snaps, giving us both a pointed look. It would be comical if Tobias and I weren’t truly concerned. This is what tortured our brother and had him acting out of pocket up until his death.
“Okay, Trésor, but please—”
“If it’s too much, I promise to walk away,” she assures us both before Tobias turns back to the laptop, trepidation littering his profile.
Bracing myself, I feel it coming. I know that whatever we’re about to discover will irrevocably change the three of us as Tobias clicks the first file, and a video pops up.
Mere minutes later, I have Tobias pinned to the floor, using every bit of my strength as I press my knee into his back while he roars beneath me in a mix of torment and fury. Agonized cries leave him as Cecelia quickly lays on the floor next to him on her stomach, gently calling his name over and over to bring him out of the darkness that engulfed him. Doing what I can, I chime in as he flails physically and mentally.
“We’ll get every single fucking one of them, T,” I grit out as he struggles against me. “I swear to you, man, we’ll get them all. Every single fucking one.”
“I’m right here, Tobias. Look at me. Please, my love, look at me,” Cecelia begs, her tear-streaked face an inch from his, the horrors we’ve witnessed reflecting in her eyes. She peers back at him, voice soothing as she palms his jaw.
“Trésor,” he gasps just as he goes limp beneath me.
“Tyler, let him go,” Cecelia whispers, not looking away from him.
Unable to think past the second I’m in, I watch them for endless minutes as Cecelia coaxes her king forward in the way only she can.
Like everything else, Dom just fucking knew.
With the way Dom set this up, there was no other way to task Tobias with a future he couldn’t survive without her to fall back on. A plan that was impossible for Tobias to execute without her strength. An undertaking he refused to let him near without Cecelia there to bring him back from the dark places in his mind.
Because that was what she did for Dom.
Cecelia’s always been a reprieve, a safe haven, and had the resilience many of us didn’t.
It’s what none of us could pinpoint inside her because we were the ones who eventually tested it and brought it out of her.
Dom figured it out at some point and gave her the position before she earned it.
Staring back at the start of the video that set Tobias off, nausea churns in my gut at the memory of each horrific second, but I manage to tamp it down.
Our agenda for the foreseeable future is sorted.
The idea that Dom shouldered this on his own is too much to fucking bear. We’d all condemned him for his behavior while daily, he struggled in his own skin. Knowing that there were monsters like these sick fucks out there, doing these things for their own amusement, and worse . . . getting away with it.
But like with all things, knowing or suspecting is one thing, but Dom has always known the value of seeing to believe. I stand shaken to my core by the amount of strength and discipline he had to have mustered, even with the way he acted out.
Inhuman strength.
When our wheels touch down on American soil mere hours later, and we’re safely in the car, I marvel at my chosen brothers—both of them.
From orphans with absolutely nothing to the men they became to this moment. I feel a sense of pride for having witnessed such a miraculous transformation—including the revolution of the woman currently at Tobias’s side. The difference between the beginning of then, to the beginning happening now is mind-boggling. As I study them both in wait for what’s about to transpire, Tobias unlocks eyes with Cecelia, swiveling his head in my direction. After hours of disconnect from him, he’s back, and there’s only one fucking way to discern what’s so clearly written in his eyes. The same look that was in his brothers years ago—Vengeance.
Tyler
Hearing the strain of my pounding feet on the treadmill of my office, I click the channel and browse through Fleet Media news stations.