Authors note: Hello everyone. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to vote and comment, as always I have been overwhelmed by the generosity of the people who read this series. Thank you once again to Paul who continues to be my second set of eyes. ~ellie.
*****
"Fucking control freaks!" Dante grumbled. "You're as bad as Josh, and this was supposed to be a holiday for me, not more babysitting duty."
"I know you didn't mean that as a compliment, but being compared to Josh isn't a bad thing, in my mind," Matteo shrugged.
"He's right," Phil weighed in. "There aren't many of us who could have weathered so much death and destruction and come out as such a strong leader to rebuild it all in record time. Whether you want to admit it or not, the man is a powerhouse, and I imagine you and everyone else on your table have a tough gig keeping up with him."
"What he said," Matteo chuckled when Dante looked to him for support.
"It's not so tough. You realise he doesn't do it all alone, right?" Dante grumbled.
"None of us do," Phil laughed. "But it's people like Josh and our friend, Matt, here, who push and badger the rest of us into getting shit done. Speaking of getting shit done," he looked up as Nathanael walked in.
All eight of the men who had met in Kuala Lumpur had come on the next leg of Matteo's business trip. He had been right, each family had their own agenda for being in the Australasian Pacific, if not East Timor itself. They'd spent the night there waiting for news from home about the expected attack on the Papillo, but it never came, and, with great relief, they all started departing the following day to head home to their respective families. None of them discounted any of the theories they had come up with and promised greater transparency with each other, if no one else.
"I guess I'm off," Nathanael said. "Do any of you need a lift to the airport?"
"Nah, we're good, our flights aren't for a few hours yet," Matteo said easily.
"For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure something went down, but there was enough forewarning to nullify the threat," the serious Nathanael said as if he had given it a great deal of thought. "I'll trust Phil's gut feelings over most people's, including mine anytime."
"Thanks, brother," Phil got up and embraced his friend. "Have a good flight back. We'll catch up at the wedding. For what it's worth, you were right too. We have an amazing network of friendship and trust here. Our fathers probably did want us to reconnect on a better level. It's been years since we all got together like this."
"Yeah, we'll try to do it at least once a year," Matteo got to his feet to farewell the man.
"Yeah, that's what I need in my life, more control freaks," Dante grinned and embraced Nathanael.
"Yeah," Nathanael chuckled and left the house.
"It's just the three of us now," Dante said pointedly. "So, spill it, Phil," he sat back and looked at the man who had counted his twin, Lio, as his best friend. "You have the cone of silence, nothing goes beyond the three of us from this point on."
"You believed me about the Papillo, so you know I can sometimes just..." he struggled to find the words. He hated talking about his sixth sense in terms other than just a gut feeling. His family knew about the depth of his abilities, but he rarely trusted others not to shoot him down or be suspicious of how he came by his information.
"Yeah, you can see dead people," Dante chuckled.
"I wish I could I give a million bucks to have Lio here right now," he let out a large breath. "Look, I know who you saw in Ghost Town, Matt. Don't ask me how, but I know, and you should tell him before we leave. It's important for some reason, but aside from that, if the hacktivists have, or are still trying to get into the Papillo, you have to say something." He glanced at Dante and back at Matteo.
"Who was the older of the people I saw?" Matteo asked, testing his friend.
"Your mother, Maria," Phil said sadly.
"Wait! What?" Dante exclaimed. "Fuck!" he spat at a loss to even comprehend how hard that would have been for Matteo to find out that the mother who tried to murder him was alive and living in a family facility.
"Yeah," Matteo confirmed. "Jacobi had been on a power trip since I had isolated myself, and the five of us, Maria's children, all had issues of some sort that was stopping my fathers' from naming the table. Ricco had fucked up his relationship with Cat, then I had fucked it up, Trista was becoming a sociopathic princess, like Nik, and Theresa needed to see that in full bloom. So we were all taken to Ghost Town for a reality check."
"I wondered why they told you now, of all times," Phil mused.
"When we came back from Ghost Town, both Ricco and I knew how badly we had fucked up. I still had a chance to make it right, so I came back to Brisbane and claimed my bride, so to speak. Which you know," he looked at Dante. "What you don't know is that I had closure with Nik and finally moved on and let the pain and humiliation of that time with her go," Matteo said. "How could you know, we all thought Nik was dead."
"Nik... alive..." Dante said as if not comprehending what was being said. "In the place where the twelve's secrets go to die..."
"Roberto said that Joseph decided not to tell Josh because of what happened to Peri, and when he died the thirteenth decided your family had already been through enough and decided to keep the knowledge of her survival from you," Matteo said. "Once I was officially chair I would have told you, but until then Roberto is the chair and gave his word."
"I think we always knew. Josh didn't mourn her the way you would expect him to. I think I put that down to Peri and what had happened, as you said. It was a relief more than anything that she was gone. We had planned to send her there, but she died before we could pull it off. I guess it doesn't matter who faked her death, that was always the end goal," Dante said calmly.
"So if the Papillo gets hacked, the monsters that scare our loved ones could reappear, or at least news of their whereabouts could get out. You're not the only family with monsters under the bed, so to speak," Phil said.
"Tell Josh or don't tell Josh, it's up to you, but you should tell Ben, at the very least. Nik still believes he will come and release her. She still claims she has done nothing wrong. She still hates Peri for turning Josh against her, and she believes Lio's death was his own fault for... well, you know what for." Matteo said, making sure Dante knew that time had not healed her narcissistic tendencies.
