Page 133 of Stolen Faith
“Stop.” She put her wrist dramatically against her forehead.
“I wanted to rent a tux for our wedding, but Brennon made me buy one.”
“Rented. Tux.” Now the horror looked genuine. “Husband, you need to let me take care of you.”
He knew she was talking about his clothes… Actually, looking at her face, this might have started out as a conversation about clothes, but she meant what she’d said.
“We’re all going to take care of each other,” Brennon added softly.
Rowan nodded. He would let himself be loved, and love them in return, until the day he died.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“You have a call, Grand Master.”
Juliette paused, the heavy gold chain halfway over her head. Devon, who was right behind her, plucked the ceremonial chain from her hand, carefully pulling it out from under the hood of her robe, which she’d flung back once they reached her office deep in the underground labyrinth that was the headquarters of the Trinity Masters.
“A call?” Juliette’s voice was lower than normal as she looked at Sebastian, who was standing just inside the door of the large office.
Juliette pulled off the black face-and-neck gaiter she’d worn to perform the wedding ceremonies. Then she peeled the voice modulator strip off her throat. Devon took that too, putting it back in a special acrylic case.
Traditionally, the Grand Master wore a black robe with a deep hood and the gold chain of the office—the chain worn shoulder to shoulder rather than around the neck. The hood, plus the low lighting, was—had been, enough to conceal the Grand Master’s identity.
After everything that had happened a month and a half ago, Franco, Devon, and Sebastian had all wanted to do more to hide her identity. It felt like closing the barn door after the horses were out, but if it made them feel better, she’d cover her face and wear a voice modulator.
And the additions seemed to work. Rowan had frowned in confusion at her at the start of his ceremony, as if trying to see into the shadows of the hood, but then he’d been too caught up in marrying the people he loved to care that she was too tall and sounded different from his fellow prisoner.
Kailani Iona had visibly jumped when Juliette spoke, and Benjamin Dara and John Wilson had studied her when she’d first walked out, both of them looking a little unsure.
Selene—Selene…dear Lord—had dissolved Benjamin, Kailani, and John’s trinity during her short time as Grand Master. Juliette had reinstated it—she’d had a good reason for putting them together—then called the trio to the altar, admittedly a few weeks later than was customary. As punishment for them thinking they could dissolve their trinity, she’d given Izabel, Rowan, and Brennon the trinity suite at the hotel, despite the fact that Izabel had a condo only a few blocks away.
Since Kailani was one of the keyholders, she and her trinity had been privy to secrets, and they knew—or thought they knew—Juliette’s identity. And given the news coverage of what had happened, she was sure they had questions.
Questions Juliette wouldn’t answer.
Juliette introduced herself as Juliette Lissand during that press conference. Among the society, especially the legacy members, everyone knew her as Juliette Adams.
But Adams was technically her middle name, and Lissand—her mother’s last name—was her legal surname. She’d hated the name Adams for a long time because she’d hated her father. Sebastian used to tease her by addressing her as Ms. Adams.
It was an open secret within the society that the Grand Master position was held by descendants of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. She’d known when she’d taken on the role of Grand Master that it would be harder to keep her identity a secret than it had been for either her father or brother. She was the first ever female Grand Master, and the instant people heard a female voice coming from inside the hood of the Grand Master’s robe, the guesses started flying.
Rose Hancock, Tess Hamilton, Juliette Adams…those were the names members tossed around. It wasn’t all that hard for legacy members to use some deductive reasoning and guess that the woman they knew as Juliette Adams was the Grand Master.
Given everything that happened, her councilors were desperate to obscure her identity, or at least cast some doubts.
Hence, the modifications to her Grand Master “uniform.”
Rather than being a clearly female person, now the Grand Master was an over six-foot-tall figure with admittedly narrow shoulders and a voice lower than was common for women but higher than normal for men. Going forward, anyone who had contact with the Grand Master would wonder if they’d been wrong about the Grand Master being a woman…or assume that there was a new Grand Master.
There had been a new Grand Master for just under a week, but Juliette had taken the office back from Selene once she’d left Atlanta. Selene was maybe not the calmest choice for acting head of the society, but the keyholder protocol had been set up generations ago, and Selene had done what was needed, keeping the members of the society, and the society itself, safe.
Her and Lachlan’s actions in sending out an alert and running a roll-call check had prevented three additional kidnappings.
In the debrief with Black Arrow, the PMSC revealed that their investigation led them to identify over fifteen potential targets for kidnapping. Fifteen potential members of the Trinity Masters.
Harrison—Juliette’s brother—and his trinity were on the top of the list, as were Izabel’s parents. Izabel had been on the list, but not Rowan and Brennon. Taking Izabel and her trinity had been a last-minute decision, made only after she’d been pictured with both men.
Black Arrow had always planned that the initial kidnappings would be from Boston, which allowed them to keep captives together rather than dividing manpower across locations. If they hadn’t made a last-minute decision to grab Izabel, Harrison and his trinity would probably have been taken. Harrison’s home security had proved slightly better than Izabel’s, and that was the deciding factor. Juliette didn’t like to think how close her brother, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law had come to being taken.