“How so?” he said, quietly offended.
Casually I answered, “Because, quite frankly, I feel as though I am dealing with someone of, shall I say, inadequate education.” (Osiris’s nostrils flared.) “Or do you just have something against women?”
I glimpsed Osiris’s fist amid the spots before my eyes, and then the world blinked out.
I was unconscious for precisely six minutes—I remembered seeing the time on the bedside clock just before he knocked me out cold. And when I finally came to, everything was as it was before. Except one thing. Artemis was also conscious again.
“Osiris, why are you doing this?” she pleaded with him; her face was bruised; blood smeared across her cheeks, glistened on her teeth. “You’re my brother! Why are you doing this?”
That was how I finally knew they were, in fact, siblings. But I was as confused as Artemis about why he was there, why he put a knife in my hand and wanted me to kill her, his own sister.
Artemis tried to get to her feet but she fell, too disoriented to maintain her balance. She reached out her hand to her brother. “Please, Osiris, tell me what this is about. Is it because of Mama and Papa?” Then she started to cry. And wail. “Oh please, God, tell me you didn’t! Tell me you aren’t the one who’s been killing everyone!” Then she became frantic. “Where’s Apollo?! Osiris, where’s my brother!”
“Your brother?” Osiris shook his head; he pointed his gun at his chest in place of his finger. “I’M YOUR BROTHER!” he roared. “I was part of this family too!”
My eyes went back and forth between them; my ears hung onto their family squabble. Artemis began to back her way toward me; I was still bound to the chair by my ankles and one wrist. My free hand still gripped the knife; I hoped for an opportunity. I cursed myself quietly for not taking the one I just had when Osiris pointed his gun away from me for that briefest of moments. But then I knew, too, that my knife-throwing hand was the one still bound to the chair, and that my aim was off by thirty-percent with the other—if it was not going to be precise, I was not going to risk it.
Osiris continued to walk toward Artemis, and she continued to walk backward until eventually she fell onto my lap. “Please, brother, let’s talk about this.”
But Osiris had nothing more to say to his sister.
He looked only at me. And the knife in my hand.
“Do you work for The Order?” I asked him.
“No,” he said, and kept his gun trained on me. “I’m the fucking client. I’m the one who commissioned your employer to kill my family.”
Upon hearing his admission, Artemis threw her head back and bellowed; instinctively my free hand held onto her around her waist, the knife blade harmlessly pressed against her ribs. She laid her head on my chest and cried against me.
But then she stopped, and she raised her head and looked into my eyes, realizing for the first time that her brother was not the only person in the room who betrayed her.
“Hestia was right,” she said; her mind seemed to know what it wanted to do—to get away from me—but her body was paralyzed by the realization, the shock. “You killed my brothers…you…Hestia was right!” Her mind finally caught up and she jumped off my lap, fell onto the floor again trying to get away.
Osiris was on top of her before I could blink; he pulled her up by the back of her hair; her nakedness on full display. She screamed and kicked and tried to bite him, but her efforts were wasted; he held on to her easily, as if she were a defenseless child in his powerful grip.
“What is this about, Osiris?” I asked, trying to buy time. “Artemis is right—you should talk this out.”
“NO!” He pointed the gun in the air toward me; Artemis continued to flail in his grasp. “It doesn’t fucking matter why I’m doing this! All that matters is that it’s done!”
“Then why don’t you do it yourself?” I suggested. “If you wanted your family dead so badly, why outsource the job? Why not just do it yourself?”
“BECAUSE I CAN’T!”
“He can’t kill us,” Artemis said in a strained voice, as Osiris’s arm put pressure on her throat. “He’ll sour his bloodline; he’ll be cursed…and his children, and his children’s children will be cursed. He can’t…kill his own blood. Not with…his own hands.”
I could not escape Artemis’s pleading eyes staring down at me from just a few feet away; that look destroyed me inside. I knew she loved me the way a woman loves a man for the rest of her life; I knew that woman would have died for me, killed for me, would have done anything for me, even still after finding out the truth that I was the one who killed her family. I knew it. And I could not look away from her eyes. Please, Victor, help me, her eyes told me. I love you more than anything or anyone I could ever or will ever love; please don’t let him kill me. Because he will, Victor. If you won’t do it, Osiris will, despite the curse, because his anger is too great. Please…
I tore my gaze away finally, swallowing a strange lump that had formed in my throat. My eyes began to sting and water. It made me angry, and I tried to push that anger down, but it just kept building.
For the…second time in my life, I did not know what to do. For the second time in my life and in my career, my emotions were at war with my duties, my nature—because of a woman. But this time, it was very different; Artemis was very…consuming.
I raised my head, looked at Osiris standing behind Artemis. “I cannot kill a woman who I have not been commissioned or ordered to kill, a woman who is not a threat to me, or to the organization I work for.” At that moment, I had hoped Osiris would not kill her himself. I wanted to calm him down, let the two of them talk, so that, perhaps, Osiris would have a change of heart.