Chapter Two
Caius
T heo is visibly shaken by Gareth’s death. I wish he’d learn to button up his emotions better. They’re ripe for exploitation.
In this family, they will be exploited if available.
His are practically presented on a silver platter.
Dark shadows ring his eyes and his lips remain tugged into a perpetual frown. If I know Theo, he’s taking this the hardest. Dad adopted him ten years ago. I was seventeen and Gareth was fifteen. At age ten, he desperately craved love, and Dad doled it out generously. Losing a brother he adored must be heartbreaking for Theo.
Even knowing Gareth’s dark, twisted tendencies, Theo always gave him the benefit of the doubt. He’s loyal like that.
As for me, though?
Me and Gareth never saw eye to eye. He did things that made me blind with rage. I never acted upon that rage…until I finally did.
I lock up that night tightly in my mind. Sitting in front of Dad and Theo while reminiscing on how I lost my shit, subsequently murdering my brother, will only make my guilt obvious.
This is the ultimate psyop.
I’d like to think that if I explained the situation to Dad, he’d forgive me and be understanding. It’s not like he didn’t know Gareth’s issues. However, my losing control and potentially exposing our family is something that is unforgivable. Too much is at stake.
Dad and Theo drift into a conversation about Gareth when he was a teenager. Their laughter should warm my frigid heart, but it doesn’t. My thoughts keep drifting back to the yacht.
Romy has complicated everything.
Sure, she was my ticket into getting closer to Solomon, and that worked, but in return, she jeopardized everything.
She spied on him in his office, for fuck’s sake.
It takes everything in me not to grit my teeth and fist my hands. I’ve spent the better part of a dozen years perfecting my control on my emotions. While the boiling fury never truly goes away, I’ve learned how to keep it stuffed deep down inside me so that no one ever sees its explosive radiance.
Romy saw the real me.
Like I said. She complicates everything.
There’s something about her that stirs up my torturous feelings. At times, I want to—and have—pop off on her, revealing my carefully hidden anger. Other times, I get lost in this false narrative of her being my girlfriend. We both know its bullshit, yet we keep getting swept up in the lies.
So when I saw my brother fucking raping her, I lost it.
Now he’s dead and I’m having to do major cleanup.
Disgust knifes its way through me, nearly causing me to jolt with pain. I’ve worked so hard for so long to find Calista and all my efforts are likely ruined. Solomon sure as hell isn’t going to want to open up to me now that I’ve got the police eyeballing him under a microscope. Accident or not, a man died after having been on his yacht. He’s probably pissed.
Not like I stuck around long enough to find out.
I got Romy the hell out of there as quickly as I could.
“Something on your mind?” Dad asks, turning his attention my way.
It’s then I realize I’m tense and popping my knuckles. I relax my muscles and meet his gaze with an impassive stare.
“Just wondering about the blowback from Gareth’s stupid, drunken mistake,” I clip out, making sure to show just enough annoyance to be believable.
Theo huffs, a flash of anger crossing his features. “Not everything is a power play, Cai,” he barks out. “Sometimes you can live in your feelings a little bit. You should try it sometime.”
Before I can smart off, Dad holds up a hand. “Boys. No need to argue. We’re all upset, but clawing at each other’s throats won’t bring Gareth back.”
Who the hell wants to bring him back?
Wisely, I keep that retort trapped in my mouth.
“I just question Solomon’s loyalty,” I say instead. “Gareth’s untimely death brought attention on Solomon. You know how he is.”
Dad nods. “Solomon can be angry all he wants, but he’s merely an investor. He doesn’t pull the strings around here.”
Who does pull the strings?
This feels like a morsel of truth I’ve never been given before. Probing Dad on it could only shine light on my interest thus having him withhold it. I must tread lightly here.
“Distract him with shiny toys,” Theo offers, demeanor once again calm.
By toys, he means girls.
Girls he can rape, torture, and murder.
“Nah,” Dad says, shaking his head. “Ignore him altogether. I’ve let him have his fun in thinking he’s a part of the future of CUP, but between us, he was never truly a part of that plan.”
I pretend not to be shocked by this news. Theo has a harder time hiding his reaction. Dad’s grin turns wolfish. He’s always taken great satisfaction in throwing surprises our way. On the surface, he wants us to work as a team, but in reality, he’s making many, many moves in the background. I’ve been trying for so long to figure out what those moves are.
“What is the future?” Theo asks, biting on Dad’s bait.
Dad leans back in his chair, sharp gray eyes locking on mine. “We’re going to use our connections wisely.”
I lift a brown in question. “Care to elaborate?”
“Your girlfriend,” he says, eyes narrowing as if to watch my features for even the slightest of reactions. I give him none. “She’s to see her family soon for Christmas.”
“I’ll accompany her and keep her in line.”
Theo tenses at that, but I ignore him. I know he has feelings for Romy—feelings he’ll never get to act on. As long as she’s in this game with us, she’ll be mine to utilize. I cleaned up his mess and claimed her. He can lust after her all he wants.
“I figure with Gareth’s death, we should all get away. I’d like for us to meet up with the Langstons. It’s been ages since I’ve spoken to Gideon. I hear his son is learning the ropes to take over one day. I think it’ll be good for us to connect.” He smirks at me. “Who knows. Perhaps one day we’ll even be family.”
The thought of being forced to marry Romy as a strategic move isn’t horrible, but it’s not desirable either. I have my own agenda to further. She’s proven to impede that, not help it.
“Perhaps,” I agree with indifference. “So you and Theo are going with us?”
“We’ll bring Kaitlyn too,” Dad says. “She’ll need a change of scenery after losing her father.”
My chest tightens at the mention of my niece. Just another casualty of this war I’m constantly in. The child lost her father, but was it really a loss?
Fuck no.
Gareth hurt Emma. She wouldn’t come out and say it, but my intuition told me so. I’d seen the dark circles under her eyes, the continuous, defeated slump of her shoulders, and the terrified glint that flashed in her gaze anytime Gareth was around. And, later, the footage that was found on the security tapes right before her death.
His efforts to utilize CUP methods to wipe her young mind didn’t work. All it did was fracture it. In her desperation to escape him, she went headfirst down the same chute Romy went in, but unlike Romy, Emma didn’t survive.
I thought it was over after that heartbreaking event.
But then he got Kaitlyn.
My stomach churns with disgust. At least my advocating for her to have a live-in nanny may have saved Kaitlyn for whatever he had planned, though the jury’s still out on that one.
Dad and Theo find themselves in another conversation, one I’m easily able to tune out. My phone buzzes in my pocket, jarring me from my inner thoughts.
Unknown Number: I know where she is.
I stare at the message, trying to determine what it means. Rather than replying to the person, I open up an app I use for finding the source and location of a phone number. It only takes a few seconds before the search results populate.
Generated number used on untraceable PC.
I scratch at the facial hair growth on my jawline. I’m in desperate need of a shave.
Whoever texted me is a tech person like myself. If they’re hiding themselves this way, it’ll be difficult for me to uncover the source. That means I need to respond.
Me: Who is this?
Unknown Number: Someone you can trust.
Doubtful.
Me: I don’t believe that.
Unknown Number: Call me S.
Me: Okay, S. Is this a threat?
I save the number to my phone.
S: Threat? No. Truth? Yes.
Me: You’re speaking in riddles.
S: I know who you’re looking for.
I glare at my phone, trying to work out who this person could be. If Gareth weren’t dead, I’d assume it was him fucking with me. Since that’s not happening, I’m at a loss for who it could be.
Me: Don’t know what you’re talking about.
There’s no way this “S” knows I’ve been searching for twelve years for my sister. I’ve never mentioned it to anyone aside from Dad on our first encounter. Even then, I was vague about it. I’d stated I wanted to bring her with me and he said he’d teach me how to do it myself.
After that day, I never saw her again. I also never spoke about it again.
S: I witnessed the anguish that day when you were forced to leave her.
The blood in my veins freezes and I stare unblinking at the text, reading it over and over again.
There’s no denying it. S is absolutely talking about Calista.
How? Who? The only people I recall witnessing said anguish was Dad and Ted. Ted, though loyal to Dad, feeds me intel. We both know I’m taking over one day and it’s in his best interest to keep me in the loop on all things CUP related.
Did Dad tell someone and now they’re using it against me? Or was someone else there, in the peripheral of my shadowy memories, watching and waiting.
Me: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
I’m not about to confirm the truth to this person.
The message doesn’t go through. Number no longer in service. What the actual fuck?
“I have work to do in the lab later,” Dad says, interrupting my racing thoughts. “Care to sit in with me, Caius?”
“New subject?” I ask, attempting to bring my focus back to work.
“It’s a favor for a friend. The veteran has severe PTSD. Taliban captured him and did a number on him. When he was rescued and brought back home, he’s been going off the rails. Meds and therapy aren’t working. They want a full CUP makeover.”
I want to ask who the friend is but bite my tongue. In the past, I learned these important details with patience. If Dad ever sees how eager I am to pull all these threads he holds, he will push me away. It’s in his nature. We’re all actors in his big theatrical production. The ending is by his design.
“Should be easy enough,” I say instead.
War vets, because of the horrors they’ve seen and endured, are some of the most susceptible to success in our program. We spend weeks retraining their brain to forget their traumas through extensive therapy and mind manipulation. Unfortunately for the vets, there’s an ulterior motive behind healing them.
“Will he go into the CUP Stars program?”
Dad nods. “Highly trained killers lying in wait are a valuable resource.”
CUP Stars is an extension of our usual program. It’s a side project Dad created where we use MK Ultra techniques to design a trigger for our subject. Within the reformation that takes place, we implant a series of dormant ideas to be activated at a moment’s notice. These killers are then sold as insurance policies to wealthy people. The subject goes on to live their normal lives, seemingly cured from their PTSD. All it takes, though, is a phone call, text, or email to trigger the subject into carrying out a lethal agenda for the purchaser. The family, who got the subject into the CUP program to begin with, assumes the program was unsuccessful. Our contracts have fine print preparing them for only eighty-percent effectiveness, thus leaving us free from liability.
“Your friend,” I say, leaning forward in my chair to meet Dad’s gleaming stare. “Is he aware of CUP Stars?”
“Of course not. Some secrets never leave this room.”
I’m relieved to see Dad hasn’t lost his trust in me, especially after what happened with Gareth. Maybe I can find Calista after all. I feel so close I can taste it.
I just have to make sure Romy doesn’t fuck things up for me.
And find out who the hell S is.