But if Elias had seen the future, he would have known that Losham hadn't betrayed Navuh. He hadn't been the one who had ended his life. He was just trying to hold the Brotherhood together as best he could. He was doing precisely what Navuh would have wanted him to do.
Even breaching the enclosure made sense if Navuh was dead. Whatever was in there belonged to the Brotherhood, and Losham needed to find out what it was. Wasn't that what a leader was supposed to do?
The other option was that Navuh wasn't dead at all, and that he had staged all of this and was now watching from the shadows, waiting to see what his sons would do in his absence. It fit Navuh's personality to devise such an elaborate test—to disappear and let his heirs think they were free to start their game of thrones.
Perhaps Navuh's objective was to find the most suitable successor, and then to reveal himself when the right son rose above the others, or conversely, at the moment of maximum chaos, in case the situation devolved into an all-out war between the brothers.
Losham's phone resumed buzzing, with more messages coming in—responses from his brothers, no doubt. With hands that shook more than slightly, he scrolled through the messages. His brothers were reacting to the alert with various degrees of confusion and alarm. Some demanded explanations. Others announced they were booking immediate flights back to the island. A few accused each other of being the traitor mentioned in the alert.
Chaos.
And Losham was standing at the center of it, covered in dust from the explosion he'd caused, surrounded by evidence of his attempt to breach their father's secrets.
Was there a way to still save the house of cards he had built?
Would Dave be able to turn this shipwreck around?
Losham forced himself to take a breath. Then another.
Panic wouldn't help him now. He needed to think, to plan, to find a way out of this trap before it enclosed him completely.
He walked into the mansion and took in the damage with a critical eye. Cracks ran through the plaster walls like the mansion itself was bleeding. Several of the ornate light fixtures had fallen from the ceiling, leaving tangles of wire and broken glass scattered across the cracked granite floors. A fine layer of dust covered everything, turning the once-immaculate space into what looked like a war zone.
Fitting. His father had abandoned this place when he'd thrown himself off that cliff, had left Losham to pick up the pieces, and with that alert had declared an outright war between his sons.
Navuh had instructed them to form a council and take all decisions unanimously, but Losham knew that would never work.
3
KIAN
Lokan stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows of Kian's office, arms crossed over his chest, staring out at the village below. "Losham knows I defected. He's not going to answer."
"He will answer out of curiosity and to gloat." Kian swiveled his chair to face him. "You said so yourself. He'll want to know what you're up to and let you know that he's in charge now."
"Perhaps." Lokan returned to the conference table and sat next to Toven. "It's fifty-fifty. Suspicion will wage war with curiosity and pride, and I pray that the latter two will prevail."
Toven shook his head. "I think he will answer, but he might hang up as soon as he hears my voice instead of yours. I will need to hit him with compulsion before he has time to think."
Kian leaned forward. "What do you intend to say?"
"I'll say, 'Listen to me, Losham. Don't hang up.'" Toven's voice took on the resonant quality that accompanied compulsion, and Kian felt the pull of the command even though it hadn't been directed at him. "I'll pour everything I have into the openingwords." Toven reached for Mia's hand and turned to face her. "With you enhancing my power, we're invincible." He shifted his gaze back to Kian. "Thankfully, we know that Losham is not immune because Navuh had him under his complete control."
"I'm not sure about that," Lokan said. "Losham is clever, and he could've been pretending to be controlled while doing his own thing. I know that he was accumulating wealth outside the Brotherhood, but I want to believe that he had just found loopholes to exploit in Navuh's compulsion."
Kian hoped Lokan was right about that. Their entire operation rested on the assumption that they could compel Losham to stop trying to breach the enclosure in Navuh's basement, so he wouldn't trigger the booby traps before they had a chance to disarm them and remove Khiann and his companions from the mausoleum that Navuh had built for them.
He glanced at his watch, wondering what was keeping William.
It was ten minutes after five in the afternoon in Los Angeles, which meant it was ten minutes after six in the morning on the island. It should be early enough to catch Losham alone, before he left his house, so there would be no witnesses to the phone call.
"Where is William?" Lokan asked. "We were supposed to call Losham at six in the morning island time."
"He'll be here," Toven said. "A few minutes won't make a difference."
They'd timed the call for when it was reasonable for Losham to be awake, but still too early for him to start his workday. If they miscalculated, and he was already at the office, he might have company, which would make the call suspicious and reveal theirhand. He might also be trying to breach that glass enclosure and trigger those damn booby traps.
When the door opened, and William rushed in, breathless and clutching a briefcase under his arm, a communal sigh of relief was released.
