I am exactly like those girls he kills.
I am an incurable disease.
He walks up to me, places both his hands on my cheeks just like he did a few minutes ago, and stares down into my evil blue eyes. “Everything you were just thinking, I want you to say it out loud.”
I suck in a deep breath, shake my head, and look down at my feet.
Nick tips my chin back up, forcing me to see him. “Everything. Out loud. Now.”
But I can’t say those things. Because I have this sneaky feeling that he’s never thought of me that way. That he truly does love me. That I am his rock, the same way he is mine. And if I say these words out loud, he will change his mind about me. I will plant doubts inside him and those doubts will work their bad magic and turn our good thing into something rank and sour.
So instead, I pull out the smooth, worn, folded piece of paper with the words ‘Kisses with Nick’ written across the front, and I hand it to him.
He looks down at the paper, then back up at me. He takes these other words from my hand and then I do what I do best.
I walk away.
But I don’t leave, that’s the important part. I head towards the bathroom.
“Is this a fuck-you?” Nick calls after me.
“No.” I stop in the doorway to the bathroom and then look over my shoulder. “I think it’s… I think it’s what you want to hear, Nick. But even if it isn’t, it’s how I feel. And that’s all I’m gonna say about it.”
Then I go inside the bathroom, close and lock the door, and start a bubble bath.
As I take off my clothes I think about the cure.
It always comes back to the cure.
PART TWO - THE WICKED
“Wicked men obey from fear; good men, from love.”
― Aristotle
CHAPTER EIGHT - NICK
TODAY
“Where are you, Nathan? I’ve been calling you for three days. Pick up the fucking phone! I had a call with Adam. Adam, Nathan. And do you know what he told me?” I pause. Because I’m shaking and it’s starting to come out in my voice. “We need to talk. Now. Call. Me. Back!”
I press end on the screen and shove my phone into my pocket, then stare out over Dog River and sigh. I’m so wound up and tense, my neck and shoulders ache.
I’m in the backyard of the safehouse. Well, it used to be the safehouse. It’s been abandoned for years now. I never sold it though. I never sell anything. You never know when you might need a place to crash in the South. Mississippi was never my first choice for this, but all of Florida is off limits at the moment. Louisiana too. Fucking Adam and his directives. Like I take orders from that asshole.
I don’t.
But I don’t want to fight with him over territory right now because no one is picking up my calls and this is not good. Not good.
I pull my phone back out, press Wendy’s contact for the hundredth time, then… hope.
Pick up.
Pick up.
Pick up the fucking phone!
She doesn’t pick up.
She hasn’t picked up a call from me in eight months so this is nothing new, but everything is different right now. Donovan has changed the trajectory of my life and I don’t like it. I need… assurances. I need to hear her voice.
How does she not understand this? Wendy Gale knows me better than anyone on this fucking planet. She is the only one who knows me. So, in times like this—in times of uncertainty—she should do me a fucking favor and pick up the damn phone.
This is not brain surgery, right? It’s common fucking courtesy.
It’s not like I’m asking her to check in or anything. Just pick up the phone. Two words. That’s all I need from her, then she can hang up and not talk to me again until this is all over. But right now, I need to hear it. I need to hear her say, “I’m good.”
That’s it. That’s all I want.
I run both hands down my face and continue to stare out across Dog River, my mind wandering back to the last time we used this house. Then I look over my shoulder at the trees that block the view of the house. Santos and I were collecting little girls in that house. Girls we should’ve killed, but didn’t.
Instead, he pardoned them. And I sent them into what I now refer to as the Company foster care system.
This almost makes me smile. If it wasn’t so fucking insane, I might give in to the urge. But it was a mistake. Letting them live was never gonna be the answer to this Company breeding program problem.
There were five of them that day. Angelica, the baby who is now called Hannah, Daphne, Avery, and Lily. Little killers. Well, only Angelica was an actual killer at that point. But the others were of the same breeding stock. It was all but inevitable.
Lauren was never on the kill list. She was always going to be placed with Sasha because I can’t bring down evil and be a good father at the same time. I knew this since the day I picked her up when she was only a couple months old. And I guess my brother figured… if Lauren gets a second chance, why not these girls too?
What choice did I have? What the hell was I gonna do with five other girls? I couldn’t give Sasha all of them.
So I doled them out. I gave Angelica to my sister, Harper, and James Fenici because James was the only one I trusted to keep that girl in line. I gave them baby Hannah, too. Because I wanted Harper to have a baby and I knew she would never get pregnant. She would never want to pass on the bloodline. And fuck it, right? Hannah was already born. The only way to stop it at that point was by killing her, and even I have a problem with killing babies. Even if one day she might lose her mind and turn into a maniac.
The only other guy I knew who could handle Company Zeroes was Merc. He was paranoid enough and scary enough to handle the three little sisters we took out of a breeding compound in Wyoming—Daphne, Avery, and Lily. All under the age of five. Plus, Sydney already knew the girls. She was part of that compound.
And it all worked out, right?
None of them have killed anyone. I think Angelica is even going to college somewhere in… well, I don’t fucking know. Asia, maybe. But not a tightly regulated place. Some island, probably. If I wanted to find her, I probably could. But if I went looking, James would see me.
Overprotective doesn’t even come close to how James feels about his adopted progeny.
And what would be the point of that? I have been pretending to be dead for a decade. There is no point in throwing all that away.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and my heart skips, hoping for Wendy.
It’s not Wendy. It’s Nathan.
I press accept and start walking back towards the woods. “Finally, you fucking asshole. What the hell, Nathan? I’ve been calling you for three days.”
“Yeah, we’ve been a little busy here.”
I stop walking. “Indie?”
“Good guess. Nathan’s not gonna answer your calls. And I’m tired of you calling. It puts him in a bad mood.”
“Do… you know who you’re talking to?”
She scoffs. “What do I look like? A child? Of course I know who I’m talking to, Nick.”
My heart skips again. Because even though I’ve known that everything I’ve been doing for the past fourteen years was a risk, and eventually it would all catch up with me, I never properly prepared myself for the actual moment and now that it’s here, I don’t know what to do.