Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-eight

Meanwhile, on an unnamed island somewhere in the South Pacific…

Adriana Irene Steen left the Irene Morgan identity behind when she boarded the private jet that would take her home to the island. Cutler would have been proud, she thought. His painstaking efforts to conceal himself and his empire had proven successful, even after his death. When the authorities tried to investigate the victim of the explosion in the cove they hit a very solid wall. There were no links to the island or to Adriana and her half siblings, Celina and Benedict.

The three of them gathered at the island mansion for a private memorial service. Champagne and caviar were served on the veranda. It was, after all, a celebration. There had been a few glitches along the way, but in the end they had achieved their goal. Cutler Steen had been permanently removed and his offspring had inherited the empire.

“I was sure the old man had started using the serum,” Benedict said. “It was obvious he wasn’t tolerating it well, but it didn’t occur to me he was being poisoned.”

“The question is, why did the directors of the lab decide to get rid of him?” Celina asked. “They needed those drug trials and it’s not as if there are a lot of organizations that can run expensive off-the-books experiments like that.”

“I think we can assume that the people running the Aurora Islands operation decided they could no longer trust Cutler,” Adriana said. “They were right to be worried. We know he was obsessed with locating the lab and getting control of the formula. It would have been a very hostile takeover. Whoever is responsible for producing the drug would not have survived. They must have known that.”

“The only thing we can be sure of is that Aurora Islands is a very small outfit,” Benedict said. “They knew they didn’t have the resources required to take the risk of trying to get rid of someone like Cutler.”

“So the lab directors got him addicted to a version of the drug that required boosters and slowly poisoned him,” Adriana said. “Very, very clever.”

“In hindsight we could have skipped the fireworks at the end,” Benedict said. “The poisoned serum probably would have done the job for us.”

Celina leaned back in her lounger. “Maybe, but we couldn’t be certain. He was deteriorating. Taking risks. Making mistakes. We all saw that. If the authorities had arrested him he probably would have taken down the three of us. We had to be sure.”

Adriana tightened her grip on her champagne flute. “I can tell you that there was something very satisfying about the explosion.”

“Yes,” Benedict said. “Payback for arranging the murders of each of our mothers.”

“We were his first round of experiments,” Adriana said. “He wanted to find out if his talent could be passed on to his offspring. But that’s all we ever were to him. Experiments.”

Benedict smiled a sharklike smile and raised his glass. “ Successful experiments. The old man should have remembered the lesson of Frankenstein. In the end, the creature always turns on you.”

“To us,” Celina said. “Cutler’s Steen’s creatures.”

“To us,” Adriana said. She sipped some champagne and lowered the glass. “Now we need to talk about the future. We’ve got a global company to run.”

“The old man was old-school,” Benedict said. “It’s time to move on. The arms dealing business is too competitive, too dangerous, and too dirty. The future is in information gathering and analysis.”

“Here’s to the future,” Celina said, raising her glass, “ our future.”

“Our future,” Adriana said. She swallowed some of the champagne and lowered the glass. “I have to tell you that it was rather pleasant pretending to live a normal life for a while.”

“What are you calling normal?” Benedict said.

“Living in an apartment without bodyguards hovering in the shadows. Having a friend down the hall, someone to share a bottle of wine and a pizza and a streaming movie with.”

“You’re talking about Amelia Rivers, aren’t you?” Celina said.

Adriana nodded. “She saved my life there at the end.”

Celina’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

“Cutler concluded I had betrayed him. He had a gun and he was unstable. I’m sure he would have pulled the trigger. But Amelia convinced him that I hadn’t turned on him. Fortunately for me, he believed her.”

“Look at it this way, you never intended for her to get kidnapped and killed,” Benedict said. “In a way you were trying to protect her from Falcon and the others.”

“I hope she realizes that,” Adriana said. “Because I told her the truth when I said that in another life we could have been friends.”