“Is this going to take long?” she asked, keying in the passcode. The door slid open, and heat engulfed them both, making her fan her face.
“Depends on what’s wrong,” Noah explained, stepping in first and heading down the aisle directly to thecentral AC. He tipped his chin at his tool case when he reached the massive unit. “I might be ten minutes or two hours, so… you can step out for lunch if you want.”
She contemplated it, but shook her head. “I guess I’ll go afterwards.”
Noah had expected to be supervised since contractors working on Empire premises had to be accompanied by a regular employee at all times. Even if, technically, he wasn’t supposed to know this was property of the Church.
Wasting no time, he began tinkering with the AC while blabbering on in technical lingo to give himself more credibility. From the emails to the repair company, he’d gathered that the problem was a faulty coil, and he’d been practicing how to deal with it for the past week, so he was quite confident in his ability to fix it.
“And… done,” he said half an hour later, closing the lid of his tool case. “I’ll just have a look at the readings to make sure it’s all working fine, and I’ll be on my way.”
“Okay, sure,” the woman muttered, following him as he walked over to the main server. Conveniently, the port he was looking for was on the side, so he somewhat obscured the data stick he plugged into it while doing the diagnostics readings. It took less than a minute for the spyware to offload itself.
“Looking good,” he told her, grabbing the stick as he turned around. “This shouldn’t cause you any more problems.”
“Thanks, I’ll let the manager know.”
They didn’t linger about, both eager for Noah to leave.
“Oh, and don’t forget to cancel that visit on Friday so you don’t get charged twice!” he told her as she unlocked the front door. “Have a nice day.”
Two minutes later, Noah hopped into the car he’d rented, letting out a deep sigh as his body slumped. He did it, as smoothly and as low-key as he could. Nearly two weeks of planning and preparations, and he’d finally moved things along. On his own. With this, the hard part was over, though now he was stuck waiting until the Head of Intelligence got some useful data. Somehow, this seemed even worse than the nerve-wrecking performance he’d just put on. It gave him too much free time and free time was the opposite of what he needed, because whenever he wasn’t focusing on something, he was thinking about Reign.
Reign, who’d left just like that without an explanation.
Noah squeezed the steering wheel and focused on breathing so he could clear his mind.Deep inhales, slow exhales.
It hurt. His body, his heart, his soul, they ached for Reign and he couldn’t do anything about it. Reign’s absence was like a sudden void, like a hole inside Noah that needed filling but couldn’t be filled with anything other than the demon himself. Noah had tried to call, to get hold of Reign somehow, he’d gone as far as to ask at the Foreign Affairs’ office, but no one could tell him anything. It was like the earth had swallowed Reign, his disappearance so absolute it was starting to feel like he’d never truly existed and Noah had imagined him all along.
Flattening his palm against the mark of Lucifer, proof that Reign had not been a figment of his imagination, Noah closed his eyes. The dull throb of it grounded him these days, a reminder that life moved on even if his heart couldn’t. He wondered, as he often did, if that would change eventually, if he would get over Reign and forget.
Maybe. Humans were wired like that, after all. They possessed the innate ability to overcome almost anything, to plow through and survive and rise again. He just, in this very moment, wasn’t sure he wanted to, not when he felt so hollow inside. It was his own fault too, for getting attached, for developing these feelings, for not killing them when he’d still had the chance.A fitting punishment,the Church would deem it, to befall those who’d willingly sold their souls to the devil.
And yet, even if Noah could redo it all, he didn’t think he would change any of his choices, because as short and as heartbreaking as his time with his demon had been, he’d gotten to live his life the way he’d always wanted to.
33
For the next two months, things looked good. No useful information had made it over to the Federation yet, but its spyware was in place and working, and Barbatos’ fake server was fooling the Empire into thinking it had the upper hand. Noah could mostly function again, his bouts of depression confined only to those nights he would spend alone in his bed at the Embassy’s residential complex. As for the rest…
Noah waved his empty glass at the bartender, requesting a refill. The cute college guy with the bleached hair didn’t waste any time getting it to him, smiling impishly with those pouty lips as he poured more whiskey into the glass.
“I finish in fifteen,” he said, twirling a lock with his fingers. “If you can make that last until then, I have somethingbetterat home.”
Noah gave him a once-over, his gaze lingering on the guy’s pierced bellybutton and then trailing down toward the low waist of his hot pants. He was small and pretty, the kind that Noah seemed to have developed a preference for, and he’d been sending sexy winks Noah’s way whenever their gazes clashed.
“I can try,” Noah shot back, taking a sip. He let one of the ice cubes slip into his mouth, needing something to occupy him so he wouldn’t down this glass like the last one.
Half an hour later, he left with the cute guy. He slept over, opting for a run before he returned to his place so he could get ready for work.
Since it was the first Thursday of the month, he would be stuck in a general meeting all morning. He wasn’t looking forward to it and not only because it was going to be boring. There was little he could do though, so he showered, changed his clothes, got his bag and headed for the Embassy offices.
The first clue that something was wrong was the person at the reception, whom Noah hadn’t seen before. The middle-aged woman with the gold-framed glasses and the pearl earrings was gone, and instead, a stern-looking man with a neatly trimmed goatee occupied the desk. The second clue was the fact that the man knew Noah and sent him straight to the conference room, even though the general meeting wasn’t supposed to start for another thirty minutes.
And the third clue? The moment he entered the room, the tension, raised voices and frowns made it abundantly clear that something was going on.
“Noah, there you are!” the ambassador said when he saw Noah, his voice carrying over the ruckus.
“Good morning, Agostino,” Noah greeted in turn, his gut feeling telling him he was about to walk into something he definitely didn’t want to walk into. “What’s going on?”
