19. Jaxson
19
Jaxson
M y first mistake was asking J if Serenity ever complained about the Priest and not thinking that he would take that to mean I wanted information about him. My second mistake was underestimating Serenity Yates, which is saying something considering I singled her out as someone to watch in the first place because of her apparent intelligence, wit, and commanding personality.
I didn’t take into account her fearlessness. The Sovereignty doesn’t typically breed children who grow up not fearing the consequences of what will happen if they push too far or push a toe out of line. The punishment, or rather passive inaction, of the Supreme Force if you disobey its hierarchy or step outside its bounds and rules are drilled into you from birth. Not many people see its contradictions for what they actually are: lies made up to enforce strict obedience, control, and conformity.
To some degree, Serenity must have figured that out. At least enough to storm into my penthouse hotel suite with a bashful J trailing behind her and demanding to know what I, an heir to the Sovereignty and son of the Oracle, am up to without any fear of the consequences .
I raise my eyebrow at her as she stares expectantly at me.
“What are you talking about, young lady?” I finally ask because gaslighting is the tried and true method of getting suspicion off your back.
Gaslighting turns out not to be effective on Serenity.
“Do you know how I scored the highest possible score on the SAT and graduated five years early from Sovereignty University?” she asks bluntly. She answers without delay, “Pattern recognition. My neurodivergent brain learned to recognize the patterns in the answers on the tests they gave me. So even if I didn’t know the answer or the wording didn’t make sense, I could figure out which one was right. All that said, you think I wouldn’t notice when you sent your kid fishing for information?”
“I didn’t send him fishing for anything,” I say, giving said kid a pointed look, to which he gives a bashful shrug as he nods his head at Serenity like there was nothing he could do to stop her from sniffing out a plot. Perhaps there wasn’t.
“Maybe not, but he didn’t all of a sudden start asking me about Priest Asston for no reason,” she points out.
I ignore her purposeful pronunciation of Ashton Maine’s name. I couldn’t care less what she calls the man.
“Maybe he didn’t, but that still doesn’t explain to me why you barged into my office accusing me of sending a child to spy on you.”
“I didn’t say spy. I said fishing for information,” Serenity corrects.
My amusement at her boldness lessening by the second, I cut to the chase.
“Start talking, or you can talk to your dad about this,” I say .
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve never gotten the impression that Serenity has one ounce of fear of her father. I know what a child looks like when they fear their parent. But I have gotten the impression that she’d rather not waste time or energy trying to talk him down or going back and forth trying to convince him why her actions are sensible.
“He already knows,” Serenity says with a shrug.
Either she’s bluffing, or she means something different than I do.
“You’re going to have to elaborate,” I say.
“He knows that I think you’re here for more than you’re saying. He just thinks I’m too suspicious and that Chicago is finally recognizing his hard work here and giving him the recognition he deserves by soliciting his advice and help,” Serenity says with a roll of her eyes. “As if Chicago cares about anything beyond the checks for national dues he sends them every month.”
I’m not going to argue with Serenity about that. She’s not the first Sovereignty baby who, having been indoctrinated with the rules and beliefs since she was on her mother’s breast, has such a jaded outlook on the Sovereignty. We all do. We’re just smart enough not to say it to anyone. Either Serenity isn’t that smart, or she’s just that fearless. Since it’s been established that she’s smart, I go with the latter.
“And what exactly do you think that I’m here for?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Serenity admits. “But I do know that coming to Charleston under the pretense of learning about the people and transferring that to a city in Georgia with completely different demographics is a terrible excuse to anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together. ”
Or anyone who doesn’t take what one of their cult leaders says at face value, which Serenity apparently doesn’t despite her indoctrination. The fact that she’s here, facing me down and questioning my intentions is an anomaly to the typical behavior drilled into a Sovereign. So I can’t treat her like one. I can’t manipulate her like I manipulated her father or the men a few nights ago. She’s too smart for it. The only way to get her off my back is to let her in on my intentions. Or, at least, make her think I am. Because no Sovereignty baby raised halfway the way a Sovereign is supposed to raise their kid would ever entertain for a second someone trying to find potential dirt on the Oracle to use to either usurp him or destroy the Sovereignty completely.
I decide to play into her bias against Ashton Maines.
Finally, I answer, “I’m going to pretend that the brain cell comment doesn’t say something about what you think about most people. To be fair, I think the same things about them. Which is the reason why whatever Ashton Maines is up to has gone unnoticed thus far, and after all your father’s requests to relieve him of his post, I petitioned the Oracle to allow me to come here and investigate.”
Serenity narrows her eyes, intrigued but not convinced.
“To investigate what exactly?” she asks.
“There’s been money disappearing from the national Sovereignty accounts for some years now, and though I’m not sure who’s making the transactions, the money is showing a transfer to a Charleston, South Carolina account. I’m trying to figure out who the account belongs to and what the money is being used for, and I think Ashton Maines has something to do with it. ”
“People are stealing from the National Sovereignty accounts, and you all are just now noticing? But throw a fit if the weekly national donations are a day late?” Serenity asks with a roll of her eyes. “And you didn’t send your kid to fish for information from me on Priest Asston because...?”
“You run the treasury departments. If anyone knew anything about mysterious money in the accounts that were coming from Ashton, it would be you. You probably know more about the accounts than your father. Don’t you?” I ask.
Serenity rolls her eyes, chest puffing in both pride and indignation. “Of course, I do. The lights wouldn’t stay on if it weren’t for me paying the bills and balancing the books.”
Child prodigy that she is, at the end of the day, Serenity is still a child born and raised in the Sovereignty. That means she’s been raised from birth to do whatever is in her power for the good of the Sovereignty. She may be smart and more suspicious and observant than most, but she’s still not able to rise above her indoctrination at the end of the day. Perhaps in a few years, when she’s been duped and betrayed one too many times, she’ll be a little more savvy. For now, it suits my machinations.
I take out a tablet and swipe it to an Excel spreadsheet, but before I slide it over to her, I say, “I trust that it’s understood that this stays between the two of us.”
“Three of us,” J interrupts sourly, probably at the fact that I gave Serenity more information than I gave him initially about all of this. “I’m right here. ”
Both Serenity and I ignore him as she eagerly nods her assent, proving something else that’s also true of child prodigies. That people have gotten so used to her intelligence that they expect it of her, and she likely doesn’t get half the recognition she deserves and looks for every opportunity to outdo herself and gain the validation she so desperately craves. If I were some sick child predator, half the battle to making her think she was in love with me so I could violate her would be done. Lucky for her, I’m not a child predator.
I slide the tablet over to Serenity, and after barely a second, she says, “Oh. Those are the donations from our angel investor.”
“Angel investor?” I ask.
“Yeah. He sends random amounts of money into the accounts every month to go towards the maintenance of the restaurant,” Serenity says, sliding the tablet back over.
“Just random amounts like this?”
Serenity shrugs. “I just take care of the Sovereignty’s accounts and allocate money where it needs to go. When I asked, apparently the price of seafood fluctuates depending on the month and what specialty the cook wants to do that month. Some months, he orders really expensive scallops, and other months, he orders cheap tilapia.”
“Do you have access to the restaurant’s account?” I ask. I could probably hack into the account and look for the matching transactions, but seeing as the girl with the keys to the coffers is standing right in front of me, I might as well take advantage.
“Do I?” she asks, immediately opening a browser to go to the banking website to pull up the account.
Good thing the tablet is already encrypted seven ways to hell .
“They’re right there,” she says, handing the tablet to me and showing me the transactions of money debited from the account.
“Apparently they are,” I mutter, downloading the statements from the last year so I can investigate the supposed seafood distribution center that’s debiting money from the account. But that’s for later. In the meantime… “Do you have any idea who this supposed angel investor is?”
Serenity gives me an unimpressed look. “Of course, I do. Mr. Sanford. He’s one of our Senior Sovereigns. He doesn’t come out anymore because it’s hard for him to get around, but Maines checks on him every month and helped him set up the monthly transfers for his monthly donations and his so-called angel investment.”
“Are you certain?”
“They both come out of the same accounts.”
“Do you have his address?”
Serenity gives me that look again, like she can’t believe I’m asking her such a stupid question, it apparently not occurring to her that, of course, I know she has access to his address. All the names, numbers, and addresses of members are in the national Sovereignty database, maintained by their local Altar. But asking her questions I already know the answer to makes her not only feel useful but also makes her underestimate me so she doesn’t start asking too many questions about what I’m doing. It helps that she doesn’t seem to hold the Sovereignty’s priests in much high esteem—something her instincts are right about in general. Just not about me.
She hands me the tablet again with the address on screen .
“Thank you for your assistance,” I say as I get up from my desk to leave. “I’ll have someone drive you back home. J, you can order yourself dinner. I don’t know what time I’ll be back.”
Both teens jump up at that.
“Wait a minute!” J begins.
“You can’t just leave us!” Serenity states.
“I can, and I am.”
“You can’t just exclude me while you get to do the fun part after I gave you all the intel,” Serenity insists.
“And I appreciate your assistance. You’ve done a great service to the Sovereignty and the Oracle. But this is where that service ends,” I state. “You being here is already inappropriate as it is.”
Serenity laughs. “Inappropriate? You think my parents would care? They’d be thrilled. You’re the future Oracle. As far as they or anyone would be concerned, you’re showing interest in me as a future conduit or something.”
She’s, unfortunately, not wrong about that. It wouldn’t be the first time someone has tried to practically sell their daughters to me.
“I haven’t been named that, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make that assumption. We can’t presume to know how the Supreme Force will guide the Oracle,” I repeat like I always do if someone points that out, even though it’s true.
Serenity, like she’s been doing, states the obvious. “Who else? Priest Mason is too old. And High Priest Landon is… High Priest Landon. Let’s be serious here.”
I don't bother asking what she means about Landon. Likely whatever she means, she's right anyway .
“If you don’t take us, we’ll just call an Uber and meet you there,” J says, getting us back on point.
My first instinct is to tell them I’ll lock them in this penthouse with security posted at all possible escapes until I return. But this isn’t Lauressa’s stubbornness I’m dealing with. Even through her stubbornness, I can make her eventually see reason. I can make her see that what I’m doing isn’t for my selfish purposes. Not just my selfish purposes anyway. I can make her see that what benefits me also benefits her in the end. It’s why I knew after I stripped her bare of everything that was holding her back and keeping her from being who and what she truly was, that we would be a perfect pair.
On the other hand, Serenity is one, a child, and two, not an adult woman who I have romantic aspirations for. If she were at least an adult, I’d have no problem holding her captive until I returned and then getting any information I need. But children are notoriously more stubborn and harder to manipulate through force than adults. Adults have a lot of pride and are reluctant to go to others for help after they’ve been humiliated. Children, even as teens testing their independence, are much less embarrassed to go running to their parents if they need to, no matter how indoctrinated they are. I have to be delicate about this if I still want Serenity’s cooperation afterward.
“Do precisely what I say,” I say, pretending to be grudging for the benefit of continuing to manipulate Serenity and making her think she’s the one in control.
“Got it,” Serenity and J say simultaneously.
I give Serenity a warning look. “I mean it.”
“Okay,” she says, holding her hands up in surrender.
I nod for them to follow me as I leave.