The Lost Souls (The Holy Trinity #2.5)
Madeline Sheehan
Dedication
For Virginia and Courtney
Note to Readers
Due to the numerous instances of Romanian and Slovenian language references in this story, an interactive glossary is provided at the end of the book. These terms will be italicized and underlined the first time they appear in the manuscript, and when clicked, will take you to the glossary where the term will be explained. Click on the term again in the glossary, and you will be returned to where you can resume your reading.
Also included at the end of the book is a list of the various families and their family members.
Not all those who wander are lost…
—J. R. R. Tolkien
Prologue
What is fate? Or destiny?
Do we each have a predestined plan—a path mapped out long before we were born to lead us on our journey? Does someone, something, somewhere already know what is yet to come?
Are words such as chance, fortune, and luck just words?
Are we all just pawns in a game being played by a force of power much bigger than us, a force so great, so unfathomably paramount that we, as mere humans, simply do not have the ability to comprehend it?
What if the answer is yes?
What if every step we’ve taken—every choice, every mistake, every success, every sad or happy moment in our lives, every person we’ve met, every emotion we’ve experienced, every single breath from our first to our last, every single second of our lives…
No matter who we are—poor or wealthy, loved or hated, legitimate or criminal…
What if all of it was, is, and will always be an inevitability or a foreordination utterly uncontrollable by us?
Would life still be worth it?
Chapter One
Summer
“There they are.”
Stefan “Hockey” Sava Jr. glanced to where Mihai Asenov was pointing, and watched as Xan Deleanu and Punka Moldoveanu exited a nearby pharmacy. Their arms were full of duffel bags overloaded with food, clothing, and medical supplies. They’d hit the jackpot in whatever shithole town this was. Most of the shops had still been intact, and the goods inside had not yet been picked over.
After an apocalyptic plague had turned most of humanity into flesh-eating monsters, this was what civilization had been reduced to if they wanted to survive. But his Gypsy clan had one thing others didn’t. Magic. And because of their powers, they’d lost very few people. Judging by the empty town, a mirror image of every other town they’d come across, nobody else had been as lucky as they had.
Looking around, he scanned the deserted street, seeking threats. Finding none, he sat down on the tailgate of Xan’s truck.
Xan, a fellow clan member and friend, took a seat beside him and lit up a cigarette. “No one else came back yet, huh?”
Looking away, he shook his head, wishing Xan would stop watching him.
Damn, he hated when people stared at him.
“What’s the matter, frate? You worried about Becki and the baby?”
Turning toward Xan, he said quietly, “It’s not my baby.”
But more than likely, knowing Xan was tight with Tobar, frate had already knew that.
God, it pissed him off how many people knew his wife had been in bed with Tobar. And now, they were well aware it was Tobar’s baby she was pregnant with. Not his.
He’d only been married a short time when he’d left on this supply raid. But before his marriage, he’d been celibate for twenty-five years—mostly due to his mam?’s influence. She had drilled into him that when a man and woman came together, they should be pure in every way.
Becki was far from pure, and Hockey had married her to put a stop to it. Discovering she was pregnant had come as an unexpected shock, but as usual when it came to Becki, he rolled with the punches. He had taken responsibility for the baby because one, he was her husband, and two, he loved her. Only lately, he was starting to feel like the joke was on him.
Xan took a long drag of his cigarette and blew out a dual stream of smoke through his nostrils. “She’s your wife, right? And you love her, right?”
Hockey nodded.
Sniffing, Xan pointed his cigarette at him. “Then, frate, that’s your baby.”
Hockey wasn’t so sure about that.
“Xan, what if Tobar decides he wants the kid? Fuck, what if he decides he wants Becki? He’s already stolen her from me once.”
“Tobar’s not gonna come knocking. He had his chance to claim the kid, and he didn’t. Becki and the contents of her belly are legally bound to you now. Even as the future baró, he can’t do shit about it.”
Xan was right. Even if Tobar were to become baró in the near future, a divorce could only be legally granted if the husband requested one. A Romani woman had no rights when it came to marriage, or otherwise. In the eyes of Romani culture, she was essentially property, the same as a horse or a trailer. But Hockey knew Tobar, and if the man wanted to, he would bend the law to his own will. And then there was Becki…
“She f*cked him, Xan,” he said, his voice cracking. “She snuck around behind my back. Why? Because I’d taken a vow to wait? She knew that when we started seeing each other. And now I don’t trust her.”