“Hector?” Camila whispered, her voice trembling with disbelief. She reached out, her fingers shaking as she moved to pull back his white mask.
The man gently caught her wrist. With his other hand, he pressed a single finger to her lips, silencing her. “Come with me,” he murmured. The voice was unmistakable—it was Hector’s.
As the crowd fell into a stunned hush, the two of them began to walk away, hand in hand.
“Go!” Spion hissed, nudging Trevor. As they hurried after the couple, Spion shouted to the gawking guests, “FBI! Clear a path!” Trevor quickly flashed the badge they had borrowed from Camila’s studio. They didn’t know who this masked man was yet, but they had to stay in control of the scene as planned.
They caught up to them just as they reached the elevators. “They’re with me,” Camila told the man, her eyes never leaving his mask. “They’re friends.”
“In the room. We talk there,” Trevor commanded, waving the badge at the onlookers. “Official investigation. Do not approach.”
The elevator doors hissed shut, and moments later, they were inside the safety of a private suite. The second the door locked, Camila ripped off her mask. “Where have you been? I’ve been out of my mind!”
The man finally removed his mask. The face was identical to the photos: the square jaw, the wide, masculine brow—but he looked weathered. His beard was thick and unkempt, his hair long and matted.
“I’m sorry, Camila,” he said softly. His eyes then shifted to Trevor and Spion, narrowing with suspicion. “Who are they?”
“They’re detectives. I hired them to find you,” she explained breathlessly. “We thought… we thought you were… We thought something had happened to you. We set a trap to catch whoever was behind it.”
Trevor stepped forward, his eyes scanning Hector for any signs of deception. “Hector, what happened? Were you kidnapped? Why have you been hiding?”
“I would be dead if I hadn’t been saved,” Hector began, his voice raspy as he sat heavily on the sofa. “I don’t know who did it. I was drugged, knocked unconscious… and when I woke up, I was sinking into the river.”
He began to recount the morning of his disappearance. He had planned to visit a wounded soldier at the hospital. It was just before 10:30 a.m. when he left the office. Coincidentally, Will and Bran were attending a fundraiser at the Temple of Ares that day, and it was on his way to the hospital. So, he had arranged to stop for a quick lunch with them. But when he arrived at the temple, he saw JackToy’s fundraising banner hanging at the entrance.
“I knew Goblinez was pursuing you,” Hector said, his tone darkening. “I assumed he was inside. I thought it was time we had a talk, man to man.”
Camila sat beside him and took his hand, squeezing it gently. “You don’t need to worry about him,” she said softly. “I love you. And I don’t think he’s really into me.”
Hector let out a breath of relief and continued his story. He had watched two JackToy employees slip through the temple’s rear entrance and assumed Goblinez was hiding in the lounge. Using his Wounded Warrior Project credentials to talk his way past the inner threshold, he gained access to the opisthodomos.
The lounge was eerily silent. Aside from the main area, the only other door led to the treasury, which remained permanently bolted—there was no way the employees could have entered it. As he scanned the room, Hector noticed a hairline gap in the massive built-in bookshelf, as if a heavy door hadn’t quite settled into its frame. He tried to pry at the wood, but it wouldn’t budge. Then, his eyes fell on a red-bound copy of War and Peace resting near the edge. While the other books featured pristine, gilded lettering on their spines, this one was frayed and discolored, as if thousands of hands had gripped it. Nobody reads Tolstoy in a temple lounge, he thought. Curious, he pulled the book and found a concealed red button on the back, embossed with the symbol of a shield and spear.
“I pressed it, and the wall moved,” Hector whispered.
He had descended a set of stone stairs into a secret room. Behind a heavy wooden door, he heard voices raised in a heated argument. He pressed his ear to the wood, catching only fragments of a terrifying conversation: “Now is the time… the protesters have been massacred… the perfect opportunity to provoke conflict… do it at the Soirée…”
Trevor’s eyes widened in horror. “What… what did they mean? What were they planning?”
“I don’t know,” Hector said, shaking his head. “But I wanted to stay and learn more. I pressed my ear to the door… and I was so focused on listening that I didn’t hear someone behind me,” He paused for seconds, then went on. “A damp cloth covered my face. I smelled something sweet… then total darkness.”
When he woke up, he was in the freezing blackness of the river, bound hand and foot. He had accepted his death. But when he opened his eyes again, he was in a swaying bed. The rhythmic thrum of an engine told him he was on a boat. There were only two men on board—fishermen who had pulled him from the water that morning. It sounded like a fairy tale, but they swore it was the truth: they hadn’t found him floating. They had found him inside the belly of a giant sturgeon.
“A miracle,” Camila sobbed, tears of joy streaming down her face. “Your zodiac sign protected you.”
“I guess the fish saved me from the cold and the current,” Hector said grimly. “But I was stuck in its throat. I think I choked the poor creature to death from the inside.”
“That is… incredible,” Trevor said, his mind racing. “So you stayed with the fishermen until today?”
“No,” Hector said, his voice dropping to a low, mournful register. He stood up, pulling his hand away from Camila’s. He walked to the window, staring out at the moonlight reflecting off the city. “I came back on Monday. I saw you, Camila. At the apartment. But I was afraid.”
“Why?” she asked, her heart breaking. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
Hector turned back, the moonlight catching a strange, predatory glint in his eyes.
“Because I’m a werewolf now,” he said, his voice a haunting growl. “I was on the verge of death when they found me. The only way those fishermen could save me was with a curse. They are part of a pack… and now, so am I.”