“Ah, yes. I don’t think you’ll be able to get hold of her tonight.” Refocusing on Noah, he nodded. “As for her announcement—she wanted to keep her engagement a surprise until tonight’s celebration. I believe… it happened early summer that Mr. Lennox reached out to her? They started talking, found out they shared a similar vision about the Church’s role in the world and then he proposed.”
Noah coiled his hand tighter around the blade, letting the serrations sink into his palm as the pressure in his chest worsened. He couldn’t experience the pain or the tension fully; it was as if they were phantom sensations, there and not quite there, telling him that his nervous system wasn’t capable of functioning properly anymore.
“Reign Lennox was the one who asked Teresa to marry him?” Noah said, cocking his head to one side.
“Indeed. Teresa tells me he flew all the way to Seoul to do it in person, too.” The Cardinal chuckled, taking out a bottle of wine from that same cabinet behind his desk. “It seems he’s quite infatuated with her.”
Noah watched the wine’s journey from the bottle to the glasses, placing the exactlywhenof the proposal to the first week of August. It was when Teresa hadn’t asked him out for dinner even once despite being in Seoul. He’d been too focused on trying to solve the spyware issue to care why he’d gotten so lucky.
Tilting his head to the other side as the Cardinal slid one glass toward him, he asked, “Did he sleep with her?”
The question seemed to surprise the Cardinal, who frowned in distaste and reached for something in one of the desk’s drawers. Noah’s eyes tracked the movement of the muscles in the Cardinal’s arm.
“I am unsure why it would be of concern to you,” the man clipped in an authoritative tone that didn’t match the pleased smile stretching his face, and lifted a beaded cross bracelet to his lips.
“She can’t have him,” Noah said calmly, examining the strange accessory.
Waving it in the air, the Cardinal snorted. “What are you saying? This is way better than any outcome we could’ve hoped for.” He hummed, this time fishing for something in his pocket. “I am sure… you understand what this win means for the Empire.”
Noah kept his eyes on the Cardinal as a pause ensued, staring him down, catching the tension as it formed in his brow, in the set of his jaw and the rhythm of his breathing. Was it anticipation? Fear? Apprehension? Excitement? The hairs on Noah’s arms stood up.
“He’s mine,” he said, pouring into that declaration everything he felt for Reign.
Time stilled, the two of them caught in a stalemate, and Noah clasped the knife as comprehension dawned on the Cardinal, who was still rummaging in his pocket for whatever weapon he had stowed there.
“What are yo—”
Noah lunged. Over the desk with his entire body, going for the neck. He didn’t let the Cardinal speak and stall for time, somehow slitting his throat before he managed to fire the gun he’d taken out. Blood spurted everywhere, hitting Noah in the face and soaking his shirt, a chokingnoise the only fight the Cardinal put up as life drained from him in a stream of red.
Noah got off the desk and hovered above the messy, limp body still sitting in the chair. The shock he expected, the nausea, the urge to puke his guts out because he’d ended the life of another human being, didn’t come. He felt… no different. Or maybe he simply couldn’t. His attention shifted to the monitor, disassociation keeping him focused on locating Teresa. He wiped the blood off the screen, or tried to, the task harder than he would’ve thought as his fingers simply kept smudging red everywhere.
And then there was a knock.
Noah considered ignoring it as he cut out a piece off the Cardinal’s sleeve and used it to wipe enough of the blood. But the knocking continued, growing more insistent and grating on his nerves.
“Yes?” he said with a smile as he opened the door the tiniest bit.
The two ministers on the other side stared at him, frowning. One was John, if Noah wasn’t wrong, and the other one… someone he didn’t know.
“We are looking for the Cardinal. He said he’d be joining us for pool at nine thirty,” John said, stroking his beard. “It’s already past that and he’s not picking up his phone.”
“He’s indisposed.”
The other minister scowled. “What are you doing in his office and what is… this smell?” he demanded, pressing on the door to force it open. Noah tried to push back, but John joined in, assisting his companion by shoving Noah out of the way.
“Oh, God!” John shrieked, rushing toward the desk as the other man froze in terror not two steps after entering the office.
Noah didn’t hesitate; he slammed the door closed and jammed the knife in the horrified man’s neck before he had the chance to pull himself together and retaliate. Arms shooting up to clutch the wound, he collapsed to the floor, twitching and choking in a way so similar to the way the Cardinal had struggled.
“What have you done?!” John roared, colliding into Noah from the side and knocking them both to the floor.
Noah lost hold of the knife, but that didn’t bother him, and neither did the brawl that ensued. It had been a mistake on John’s part—Noah’s fitter, bigger build was too strong for his scrawny self. He should’ve simply run and called for help instead of charging forward on impulse.
John did put up a fight, lasting a few minutes before Noah wrapped both hands around his neck and put him out of his misery.
Once he’d caught his breath, Noah stood up and looked at the two bodies, then at his fingers where the blood from the Cardinal, as well as his own, had already dried. His heart rate remained steady, unaffected, and so he went back to the computer, shoved the body off the chair and sat in it, pulling up a minimized feed of cameras that he assumed was the reason behind the Cardinal’s earlier amusement. Noah didn’t really care about that, but checking the cameras was also his best bet if he wanted to find Teresa.
And as soon as he switched to the last feed the Cardinal had accessed, he found Teresa. Naked, smiling and straddling Reign’s hips.
