IKARIA, GREECE
RENA WAITED FOR THE DOCTOR TO COME OUT OF HER UNCLE’S bedroom, and when he did, she could tell from his expression that the news was bad.
He shut the door behind him and shook his head as he walked toward her. “There’s nothing more I can do for him except make him comfortable.”
“Is he in pain?” she asked, her chest constricting.
“He says no, but he’s having a very hard time getting a breath, which is . . . very uncomfortable to say the least. And when he starts coughing, he can’t stop. We could do more for him in the hospital.”
“He insists on staying here. He doesn’t want to die in a hospital.”
He sighed. “I’ll call in a prescription for morphine. That will help greatly.” He put a hand on her arm. “It won’t be long now.”
After he left, she pushed the door open and stood at the threshold, watching as her uncle’s chest rose and fell in shallow waves, his labored breathing filling the room with a hissing sound. The grayness of his skin made her heart sink. Now that his congestive heart failure had stopped responding to medicine, his time was limited. She sat in a chair next to the bed and took his hand in hers. It was clammy and limp.
“Uncle, can you hear me?”
He didn’t open his eyes but she saw them move under his lids. “I don’t know how to live in this world without you.” Her voice broke, and she wiped the wetness from her cheeks as her tears flowed. “I should have told you sooner. I blamed you for years for taking me from my family, but I forgive you for what you did. I understand that you were only doing what you had to.”
He didn’t respond, but she thought she felt him give her hand a slight squeeze.
The day her world had come to a crashing end, over twenty years ago, had started off like any other one. Her daughter had left for school, running out the door with a wave and not so much as a backward glance. Had she known that was the last time she’d see her child, she’d have taken her in her arms and never let go. But she had gone about her morning, then met her best friend for lunch. She’d thought it strange when her husband had called her and asked her to pick up his tuxedo for an event that evening—they had plenty of staff for that—but he’d claimed their housekeeper was ill.
In the parking lot of the dry cleaners, she felt something wet on her face before she even opened her car door. The next thing she knew, she woke up alone in a basement. When she began to scream, the door at the top of the stairs opened and a man came down the steps. He looked middle-aged, maybe in his forties, with dark hair and a full beard.
“Who are you? What am I doing here?” she yelled.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I’m trying to help you.” He came closer and she recoiled, shielding her face, afraid he was going to hit her. “Here,” he said, holding a phone out to her. She took it, surprised to hear her uncle Yiannis’s voice come over the line. “My dear. You’re safe. You can trust Father Demetrios.”
She looked at the man and was more confused than ever. “Father Demetrios? I don’t understand.”
“He’s with the church. Lucky he found out what they were planning to do,” Yiannis assured her.
“What who was planning?” She couldn’t make sense of what was happening.
“He will it explain it all. I will see you soon. He’s going to bring you to Greece. To me.”
Her heart was racing and she felt as though she could faint. “What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”
Her uncle continued. “I’m sorry, my dear. There is no other way. Listen to him.” The line went dead.
“Theíos Yannis!” she yelled but he was gone. She looked at this Father Demetrios, terror seizing her. “What’s going on? Why did you take me? Where am I?”
“You’re safe here. But a man was hired to torture you until you told him where the Judas coins are, and then kill you.”
How did he know about the coins? She’d been told to never speak of them to strangers. Maybe this was some kind of a trick. She been warned not to trust anyone. Just because her uncle had been on the other end of the line didn’t mean he wasn’t someone’s prisoner, too. She pretended not to know what he was talking about. “What man? What coins?”
His voice was gentle, and he spoke slowly. “The church has people watching over you, protecting you. We have many people making sure these coins are never all brought back together again. We have connections in law enforcement and one of them, posing as a hitman, was contracted to kill you. He got in touch with the church and let us know.”
“That’s crazy. I don’t know anything about any Judas coins,” she insisted.
He shook his head. “I know everything. Your uncle brought them to you for safekeeping many years ago, after your parents were killed.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m on your side. How many times have you watched Casablanca?” he asked.
She looked at him in surprise. “Four. You?”
“At least eleven.”
That was the code language her parents had included in the letter she’d opened after their deaths. It proved he was one of them.
“Okay, I believe you. But why do you have me down here as a prisoner?”
“You’re not a prisoner. I’m saving your life. But you need to leave the country and take the coins. They’re not safe anymore and neither are you.”
“But the coins have been hidden for years. I’ve told no one about them. I don’t see how anyone could know.”
“We don’t have time to debate this. There’s a powerful and nefarious man named Damon Crosse who has somehow found out you have the coins. His orders were to torture you until you gave up their location.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“We have to fake your death. You have to take the coins with you to Greece and hide them. Your uncle is leaving Patmos and finding a new island where you can both go, one where no one knows you. You’ll live with him and protect them.”
“Are you insane? I have a family. My daughter’s only fourteen. I can’t abandon her.”
He gave her a long look. “You’re going to leave her, either voluntarily or involuntarily. They’ll find you if you stay in the country, and next time we won’t be able to save you. And if you don’t listen to me, you could be putting her life in danger, too.”
Her heart was beating wildly, the information far too much to process all at once. She thought back to the note her parents had left with their will in case anything happened to them. It told her about the coins—their power, their legacy, and her duty to uphold the family’s sacred trust. She wondered now if the car accident that had killed her parents had really been an accident. She knew only one thing for sure: she couldn’t risk her daughter’s life—even if it meant leaving her without saying good-bye.
“Isn’t there another way? I could hire guards. Anything. There must be some way for me to protect the coins without losing everything. Even if this man did get his hands on me, I’ll never give the coins to him. My uncle has told me what will happen if they fall into the wrong hands. I’ll die protecting them.”
He stared at her for a long moment. “You think that, but you don’t know what these people are capable of.” He left and came back with another man—big and bald with a jagged scar running down his left cheek. “This is Minos. He’s a bodyguard who works for the church.”
Minos grabbed her hand, and before she realized what he was doing, he’d handcuffed her to the bed frame.
“What are you doing?” she yelled, as she broke out in a cold sweat.
He pulled a lighter from his pocket and clicked it. She backed away from the flame as he pulled a cigarette from his pocket. Then he lit it and took a deep drag before he grabbed her uncuffed hand and held the cigarette against her palm.
She tried to jerk away, screaming in agony as her flesh burned. “Stop it! You’re crazy!” Tears blinded her eyes, and she felt like she was going to throw up. “Father, help me!”
Father Demetrios merely looked away.
Just when she thought she’d pass out, Minos moved the cigarette away just long enough for her to be flooded with relief . . . until he brought it back down, this time on her arm. She howled again.
“Where are the coins?” he demanded.
“I’ll . . . never tell,” she choked out.
He moved the cigarette to her cheek and the searing pain lanced through her face. “Your eye is next.”
“Stop.” She was panting now, out of breath. “Please, no more.”
“That’s enough,” Demetrios said, his voice shaking.
Minos threw the cigarette to the floor and ground it out with his boot, then walked back upstairs.
“They’ll do much worse, and by the time they’re finished, they will have destroyed you and they’ll have the coins.” Demetrios moved toward the staircase. “I’ll be right back.”
She rocked back and forth, moaning in pain, her flesh burning, her soul sick.
Demetrios returned and dressed her wounds. “I’m sorry I had to let him do that. But I needed you to understand that you really don’t have a choice. Do you see now? We need to get Crosse to think you’re dead.”
“How?” she asked, resignation heavy in her voice.
“In about a month, the police will find a body in the Potomac River wearing your jewelry. The decomposition will be advanced enough so the body won’t be recognizable, but your husband should be able to ID you from your necklace and bracelet.”
She shivered. “You’re going to kill someone else?”
“Of course not. We have our connections in the police department. We’ll get a body from the morgue.”
“Can’t I go into some sort of protection program instead?”
“No, I don’t work for witness protection and I can’t get you that kind of arrangement. Unless we make it seem like you are dead, your daughter and husband will never be safe. I know it feels like I’m asking the impossible here, and I wish there was another way. But this is the only hope for you. They will find you and kill you. The only way you and your family are safe is if they believe you’re already dead.”
“How do I know they won’t still come after my family?”
Demetrios said, “Because they are aware of the dictates of this family trust and know that you’ve taken a vow not to tell anyone, even your husband. And your daughter is not to be entrusted with the knowledge until she’s twenty-one. They are safe as long as you’re gone. If you stay, they might kidnap your daughter as leverage to get the coins’ location from you.”
She couldn’t allow her child’s life to be in danger. She’d rather die a thousand deaths than let any harm come to her daughter. She took a deep breath and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Okay,” she whispered.
They used makeup to make her look beaten and bruised and took photographs that he would develop and send as proof of her death to the man who had hired him.
She told them that the coins had been hidden at Agape Women’s Shelter, a short distance from her home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The coins were embedded in the tile walls along with similar-looking coins.
“I need to figure out the best way to extract them from there,” Demetrios mused.
“If you take the coins, their removal will be noticed,” she told him.
“We’re going to replace them with fakes. We’ll just need some time, so someone can go look at them and create believable forgeries of them.”
She stayed in that basement for three weeks, mourning her family and mentally preparing herself to leave them. When everything was ready, she packed the real coins into a small bag and boarded a private plane to Greece.
That was when Eva had died and Rena had been born.