BONUS CHAPTER
CODE NAME: POSEIDON

Oleander

Two days ago, Nemesis, a woman I greatly admired, had made the announcement that Archer “Z” Alexander was missing. In her statement, she likened him to another agent who had been missing for nearly a year—Puck.

Poseidon and I had left for the States shortly after the conclusion of her briefing, where we intended to interview Manual Varilla. He was imprisoned for his role in loading people, human beings, into several shipping containers bound from Mexico to the Port of Felixstowe in the UK.

Like so many others we’d hoped to interview in an effort to take down the masterminds behind the organizations that traded in the lives of others, by the time we arrived, he was dead. Killed by a fellow inmate.

There’d been a time when this would’ve devastated me in a very personal way. It would’ve meant that the vendetta for which I’d lived my entire life would once again be out of my reach.

I didn’t celebrate the loss of human life, even the lives of bad guys. I believed in karma far too much to do so. And karma is what had saved me from myself. Not it alone, but Poseidon too.

He’d given me the unconditional, unwavering love I’d long believed I didn’t deserve. He’d convinced me otherwise.

The day I’d feared I had mere seconds to live, all I could think about was him, how I didn’t want to leave him, how much I wanted to experience happiness and joy in my life. It was an epiphany. My “aha” moment.

Poseidon had burst through the door that day, killing those who were about to kill me and shouting my name—Aurora. It was my real name. The name I’d been given the day I was born, the one no one living, other than him, knew. 

In one way, he’d saved my life. In another, Oleander had died that day, and out of her ashes, Aurora had emerged. I’dexperienced rebirth, becoming a new version of myself. One capable of love and forgiveness.

Today, the eleventh of December, I would proclaim the love I felt for Poseidon and vow to spend the rest of what I hoped to be a very long life with him.

He’d teased me about saying I didn’t believe in marriage when two of our friends had wed a year ago. He knew, though, that, now, I did.

How? Because he knew me in a way no one else ever had. Even my beloved parents. He knew what I needed even when I didn’t realize it myself. 

Before we’d wed, he and I would go to my flat in London and I would share the contents of the wall safe I kept there. Things I’d never shared with anyone. Once he saw it all, there’d be no more secrets between us. I’d never again try to hide myself, or anything about me, from him. I knew in my heart that he would vow the same.

“Ready?” he asked, walking into the kitchen of the residence we lovingly referred to as the “Chintz House,” given there wasn’t a single space in its eight bedrooms, five baths, kitchen, and sitting areas without the cotton textile as its centerpiece.

While the agent who’d originally walked us through the property anticipated we’d rescind Poseidon’s sight-unseen offer, we’d instead embraced the uniqueness of our home in the same way we celebrated it in each other.

Poseidon held out his hand, and I took it.

“We do not have to do this today, or ever, Aurora. Neither sharing what’s in your safe nor putting your flat on the market is a prerequisite to us marrying.”

“I know, but I want to.”

During the hour-long drive from Shere to London, I told him the story of my life that he’d only known bits and pieces about.

“As you know, I was sixteen when my parents died. My father spent the five years prior to his death trying to prove a man he’d once believed was a friend was actually evil personified.”

“Salvatore Rávdos.”

“Yes,” I answered even though Poseidon hadn’t phrased it as a question. “Also the man I believe was responsible for the plane crash that took my mother’s and father’s lives.”

“After they were killed, my grandmother—my father’s mother—came to live with me in the house I grew up in. Right before my eighteenth birthday, she gave me some news I was entirely unprepared for.”

Poseidon reached over and took my hand in his.

“She told me that upon her passing, I would be the sole heir to the Bennett family fortune—her family. I went from knowing very little about finances to having a net worth close to a billion dollars. Now, thirteen years later, it’s grown to over two billion.”

He smiled. “When we first saw the Pernicious, Zeppelin and Magnet both suggested we’d been missing out by not going to work for Unit 23.”

I shook my head. “As if.” I thought about some of the things my grandmother said to me then. Mainly, how I could never divulge my fortune. “She also told me that fortune hunters would do anything to gain access to the kind of money I had. Yet another metaphoric nail in the coffin of my ability to trust anyone.” 

“So, we’re rich,” he said, winking.

“We are that.”

The playful expression left his face. “Money means nothing to me. You are all that matters.”

“I suppose believing that without a single doubt is part of what led me to tell you. There is one thing we need to discuss about those accounts.”

“Go on.”

“While this may be hard to believe, it is purely coincidental that the money is held in Mauritian accounts.”

He laughed out loud, which in turn, made me do the same. “The irony…”

“I agree.” I took a deep breath. “The rest of what’s in the safe pertains mainly to my father’s investigation of Rávdos. There are also photographs of my parents and me, my birth certificate, things like that.”

“I’ve never seen a photo of you as a child.”

“No one has. At least, no one living.”

He brought my hand to his lips and kissed my palm. “I bet you were as beautiful then as you are now.”

“I had no hair until I was two.”

“Would you think me any less handsome if I had no hair?”

“Hmm.” I weaved my fingers into his long dark locks. “Maybe.”

“But you wouldn’t love me less.”

“You’re right. Nothing would diminish what I feel for you, Kai.”

Perhaps it was my use of his given name that made him take a deep breath and mutter words of thanks to a God I wasn’t certain I believed in. There’d been a time I would’ve said I absolutely did not believe in a higher power. However, his saving my life the night I was sure I’d die had changed a lot of beliefs I held.

We’d ridden in silence for several minutes when Poseidon brought up Z’s rescue. “I’m trying to wrap my head around the fact that Puck kidnapped Z and, now, there’s a team dedicated to finding Seshat.”

During the search for Z, it came to light that the woman who’d abducted me, who was ordered to kill me by Pharaoh, was not Seshat, as we’d all believed, but a twin. 

Desperately wanting to find the real woman and, apparently, the baby she’d had—Puck’s child—was the impetus that led him to abduct Z in the first place. If he hadn’t gone to such extreme measures, no one would’ve believed it was not Seshat’s body being kept in the MI6 morgue at Vauxhall Cross.

“I want to help.”

Poseidon looked between me and the road in front of us. “You do?”

I nodded. “Frankly, I’m as surprised as you are. However, my instincts are telling me I should.”

“Then, that’s what we’ll do.”

“It feels odd, making decisions without thinking about Typhon’s reaction. Not that his disapproval ever stopped me in the past. He was more of a nuisance.”

Part of my near-death epiphany was resigning from Unit 23. I no longer wanted to be an assassin, the job those of us in the unit were expected to carry out. Typhon’s quiet acceptance when I told him I quit was surprising until it dawned on me he had been telling the truth all the times he said he cared about me.

One of Z’s last acts before resigning as chief of MI6 was giving me the job of special advisor to SIS. In that role, I could pick and choose the ops I wanted to assist with and those I didn’t. That employment status was what led me to the next conversation I wanted to have with Poseidon. However, given we were only minutes away, it could wait until we arrived at my flat.

— • —

I’d loved Oleander from the moment I met her, thirteen years, two months, and eleven days ago. In hindsight, it was easy to recognize it for what it was.

For a long time, I doubted I’d ever see her again. As much as I hated AMPS and every other human trafficker in existence, it was our investigation into them that had brought her back into my life. And now, in just a few hours, she’d be my wife.

When I told her money didn’t matter to me, I meant it. After losing my older brother to an incurable disease, I realized the old adage of “money can’t buy happiness” was one of the truest. No amount, even billions, could’ve saved my brother’s life.

Tomorrow, after spending a very romantic post-nuptial night together, we’d leave London and travel to Italy to see my family. The trip was my soon-to-be bride’s idea, and even after suggesting endless other honeymoon locales, she was intransigent that Val d’Orcia was where she wanted to go, and rather than stay in a private villa on our own, she wanted to spend our time at the one my parents owned.

“They’re hosting a celebration for us,” she’d said after she rang my mother to inform her of our arrival. A phone call I had no idea took place. But, like so many other ways Aurora surprised me, I accepted the changes I saw in her as the gifts from God they were.

“Here we are,” I said, pulling into the private parking area beneath her flat’s building. 

We were silent on the lift ride up to the top floor and equally so when she unlocked the door and invited me inside.

I walked over to the wall of windows. “You’re sure you want to give up this view?” I asked. “It must be spectacular at night.”

“It is,” she murmured, turning in a circle and surveying the space. “This was never really my home, Kai. Apart from being a place to keep my belongings, it felt almost like a hotel.”

“What if you decide you want to spend more time in London?”

“Then, we’ll find something else. This flat belongs to a person who doesn’t exist anymore.”

“As long as you’re certain. Maybe you should wait until after we return from Italy to list it.”

She shook her head and motioned for me to follow her into the bedroom. “My mind is made up.”

I watched as she walked over to a painting, lifted it from the wall, and opened the safe behind it. She removed its contents, set them on the bed, then invited me to join her.

“This is Salvatore Rávdos,” she said, handing me a photograph. “That’s my mother, me, and my father with him. I was six at the time.”

I studied the image. In it, Rávdos had his arm around Aurora’s father and the two were smiling. I couldn’t imagine the sense of betrayal he must’ve felt, learning, years later, that a man he’d been close to was instead his nemesis.

I stopped short of stroking the image of the six-year-old girl standing between her parents. “As I thought, just as beautiful.”

Her cheeks flushed, and she smiled, pulling out another envelope and dumping the pictures in it on the bed. She plucked one from the pile. “See? No hair.”

Her gorgeous green-gray eyes stood out the most in the photo of a tiny toddler. “You were so little.”

She nodded, randomly choosing other images she’d study, then hand to me.

“There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

I set the last she’d given me on the pile and looked into her eyes. “Go on.”

“I’ve given this a lot of thought.”

As hard as I tried not to wonder if Aurora was about to call off our wedding, I couldn’t help the feelings of insecurity that sat closer to the surface than I’d thought.

“There’s no easy way to say this, so here goes. I’ve decided I want to have a baby, Kai.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as my eyes filled with tears of joy. “You do?”

She nodded. “And don’t get angry, but…” 

I raised a brow, unable to fathom anything that she could say to turn my elation to something negative.

“I have names picked out. Vasileios Nathanial for a boy, and Virginia Britta for a girl. When we have more, we can name another boy for your father.”

The tears that filled my eyes spilled onto my cheeks as I wept openly.

“Are they that bad? The names, I mean.”

She was teasing me. “That you want to name our son for my brother…I simply have no words. I am overwhelmed with gratitude.”

“And my father—Nathanial.”

I nodded. “Virginia for your mother, and Britta for mine.”

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I could not have chosen more perfect names.” I was unable to stop my flow of tears. “You have made me the happiest man alive, Aurora.”

“Happy enough to marry me in, um, an hour?”

I looked at my watch, incredulous at the amount of time that had passed.

“They’ll be waiting for us.”

Aurora had asked Nemesis to stand with her, and I’d asked Cayman. Their spouses, Ares and Bexli, were joining them, and when the ceremony at the register office ended, the six of us would have dinner before our flight to Italy in the morning.

I stared into the eyes of the woman I’d just promised to have and to hold, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and cherish for the rest of my life, and listened as she repeated the same words back to me.

Aurora smiled as tears spilled onto my cheeks when I heard the words that meant the most. We were man and wife. I cupped her cheek. “I love you, Aurora.”

“I love you, Kai.”

Code Name: Ares | Code Name: Cayman | Code Name: Poseidon | Code Name: Zeppelin | Code Name: Magnet