Chapter Twenty-Five
Cian
When the elevator doors opened into the lobby, I stared at the carpet.
“Mr. McCarthy? Is everything all right?”
I heard Walter, the doorman’s voice, but it was hollow, far away. I nodded without thinking as I stepped into the lobby and headed for the front door. Walter quickly stepped in front of me, opening it for me, and the sounds of Boston swirled around me.
I started walking with no destination in mind. I didn’t want to go to the office; I didn’t want to ask Sal the question that was on my mind. The truth was, I feared the answer.
Did he know?
Did Duncan?
Mac?
Had they all known the truth of who I was and said nothing? When my parents told me I was adopted, they said they didn’t know who my biological parents were. That they weren’t told.
I assumed they meant it was a closed adoption. I’d considered looking for them, but I didn’t want to hurt my mother. She was quiet when my father told me the truth. Her face filled with fear. At the time, I’d assumed she was afraid of losing me. Of being replaced by my biological mother.
She could never have been replaced. Even if I’d chosen to seek them out, they would never take the place of the two people who raised me, who loved me.
Now I understood her fear.
She was afraid I’d become like them. There was no doubt in my mind that my mother and father, the two people I trusted most in this world, had lied to my face.
They hadn’t trusted me. Hadn’t believed in the man they raised. Sure, I’d joined the family. I worked for Eamon, the same as my father. I was a criminal.
But I wasn’t a fucking monster.
I’d read the files. I knew what they’d done. The people they’d hurt. The children they’d stolen and tortured. The information we had was over twenty years old. How many more men, women, and children had the people responsible for my life hurt? How many more lives had they destroyed?
I was lost in my head. Lost in the countless names in the files. Faceless men, women, and children whose lives had been destroyed by the people who gave me life. Lost in the deception and betrayal from the two people I never thought would lie to me.
Two people I couldn’t confront because they were already gone.
Everyone with answers was fucking dead!
I walked around the city for hours before I finally made it back to the office. As soon as I stepped out of the elevator into the lobby, Sal was there. By the look on his face, he was ready to tear me a new asshole.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
I shook my head at him, ignoring his question as I walked past. He gripped my arm and spun me around as he snarled, “Where the fuck have you been? My sister called me freaking the fuck out because you walked out on her.”
“I didn’t walk out on her,” I said, wrenching my arm free. Duncan stood in his doorway, watching the scene our boss was making. “I went for a fuckin’ walk.”
I marched into my office and sank down on the couch across the room from my desk. If I sat in front of my computer, I would look up their names. I would dig up every piece of dirt I could find on both of them.
Sal and Duncan followed me. Duncan went straight to the bar and poured a drink. He held it in front of me, shaking it slightly until I took it. As I knocked it back, Mac walked in. Looking from Sal to Duncan to me, he asked, “What happened?”
I handed my glass to Duncan, who refilled it and handed it back. I wasn’t opposed to drinking with the guys, but I didn’t usually drink at work. I needed my head clear and my eyes sharp for what I did.
I looked at Sal, one of my best friends. A man I trusted with my life, a man I would give my life for if it came to it.
“Did you know?”
“Know what?”
“Who my parents were?”
Duncan looked at Sal. “What the fuck is he talking about?”
Mac watched me, a look on his face I couldn’t quite decipher. Confusion, maybe, or a breach of trust.
“I wasn’t aware you knew you were adopted,” Sal confessed.
“Because it never mattered. I never said anything, so how did you know?”
“My father told me during one of his rants.”
“About me?” I asked with a chuckle. Sal looked at the floor, not wanting to answer. “I know the old man hated me; I just never knew why.” I shook my head. “Until now, anyway. So you knew?” I asked again.
“No, he never told me who your parents were.” He swallowed hard, and it was clear that he knew something.
“What?” I ground out.
“When he’d been drinking, he’d start ranting about you. Saying you couldn’t be trusted, and I was a fool for bringing you on. He never said why, but it pissed him off that I wouldn’t listen to him.”
“Well, maybe if he’d told you the truth, you would have,” I said, taking a drink from the glass in my hand.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Mac growled. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell us you were adopted?”
I laid my head back on the couch. “It didn’t matter. Daniel and Tabitha were my parents. They were the only parents I wanted. I never looked into where I came from because it didn’t matter.”
“And now?” Duncan asked.
“Now it fuckin’ matters.” I sighed. “Eamon brokered my adoption. My birth mother was raped, and she went to him to get rid of me. Only, she never told him who had raped her. If she had, he would have killed me years ago, rather than just threatening it. Caity found the information in his office.”
“So, who are they?” Mac asked, his arms crossed over his chest. I knew he was angry I hadn’t shared the truth with him, but it was my life. It had nothing to fucking do with him.
“My mother was Sylvia St. James.”
Mac’s arms dropped to his side.
“Fuck,” Duncan cursed.
Sal eyed me. He was waiting for me to reveal the worst of it. But I needed him to ask. I needed to hear the question in the tone of his voice. I needed to know for sure that he didn’t know and kept the truth from me.
“And your father?” he asked. The fear I saw flash in his eyes told me what I wanted to know. I emptied my glass and set it on the table in front of me.
“Henry Craven.”
“Holy fuck,” Mac gasped.
Sal opened his mouth to say something when his phone rang. He looked down at the name, and a small smile broke out on his face.
“Son,” he answered, putting the phone to his ear. He listened for a moment before his smile dropped. “Hold on.” He pressed the button for the speaker and placed the phone on the table. “Start from the beginning.”
Sal’s son King began, “I have a woman here. My enforcer’s old lady. Her name is Kate Porter, but she goes by Indigo Cambridge. She grew up in the Trick Pony.”
Sal stiffened as he looked at me.
“Hey, King, Cian here,” I said, standing up and moving to my computer. “Is she okay?”
“Well, that’s subjective,” he answered.
“What does that mean?” Duncan asked.
“Physically, she’s more than okay. Emotionally, well, when I tell you what we know, you can come to your own conclusion,” he said cryptically.
“Kate Porter was abducted from a mall in Arizona when she was four years old. Her mother had taken her school shopping. She escaped the Trick Pony ten years later, where she moved around trying to stay ahead of the people who were hunting her.”
Likely my parents.
My fingers flew over my keyboard as I typed in the girl’s name. I quickly typed in the names Sylvia St. James and Henry Craven into two other searches.
“King, I’m not finding much on Kate Porter,” I told him when a dozen articles came up about her disappearance, but nothing after that.
“You won’t. Not unless you have access to the files that were taken from the Trick Pony.”
I looked at Sal as he paced my office, Duncan and Mac both staying out of his way.
“Son, what does this have to do with us?” Sal asked. King was quiet, and I expected him to snap back at Sal, but all I heard was a deep sigh.
“I’m getting there. Kate and eleven other girls, all between the ages of four and six, were taken and placed in a special program.”
“Jesus fuck,” Mac cursed.
“Whatever you’re thinking, Mac, trust me, it’s worse,” King said. “When Indie opened up to us, she told us what she remembered.” King took a deep breath. “The abuse is exactly what you’re thinking, so I won’t go into detail, but it’s worse. So much fucking worse.”
“How can it be worse?” Duncan asked, and I had to wonder myself what could possibly be worse than a child forced to have sex with grown men and women?
“I’m going to tell you something, and I am trusting you, Sal, that no one else will know this information.” King was quiet as he waited for Sal to answer.
Sal looked at each of us, and we nodded. “You have my word.”
Another beat passed before King shared what he knew. “I have the files from the Trick Pony.”
All four of us in that room froze. We looked at each other, wondering how to ask the question we desperately needed the answer to.
“How far back do they go, King?” Mac asked. When Sal glared at him, he shrugged. Leave it to Mac to bulldoze right through.
“2002,” he answered, and we all collectively sighed. He had the information we needed.
“I need those files, King.” I could use those to cross-reference the names we had.
“They won’t do you any good.”
“Why not?” Duncan asked.
“Because, according to Indie, Devlin Scott was the face of the Trick Pony, but he wasn’t running the show. We have client lists and victim lists. But we don’t have the money.”
“How does she know this? How old is she, twenty-seven, twenty-eight?”
“She’s twenty.”
“Then how would she know anything? If she was only fourteen when she escaped, she was a kid,” I argued.
“She was,” he confirmed. “I haven’t told you everything yet. Indie was part of another program. One where the children were hypnotized and trained.”
“I thought you weren’t going to go into details?” Duncan asked, glaring at the phone.
“This was different. Indie didn’t remember this training.
It wasn’t until Nav found information on the program and we asked Indie about it.
That was when we learned what she had been through.
” King paused. “She was trained to be an assassin. They hypnotized four- and five-year-old girls for ten years and taught them how to fight. And how to kill. There were dozens of them. And when Indie remembered everything... Jesus, I still can’t believe it, and I’ve seen what she can do.
They pitted the girls against each other until only the strongest survived. ”
I sat back in my chair. Sal sank down onto the couch, and Duncan stared out the window. Mac, though, he took it the hardest. He put his fist through my wall.
Mac’s father was an evil son of a bitch. He taught Mac how to fight by beating the hell out of him when he was growing up. Claimed he was teaching his son to be a man.
“Where are the rest of the girls?” Duncan asked, breaking the silence.
“We know one of the girls killed herself after they escaped. Indie thinks maybe Jenny remembered what they’d done, or she just couldn’t handle what she did remember.
Either way, she took her life to end her suffering.
Another one of the girls is in Oklahoma.
As far as we know, she doesn’t remember anything. ”
“How did Indie remember?” I asked.
“There were poems in the files. Triggers to set them off, allowing whoever said the trigger to control what they did. There was also a failsafe. A way to release them completely, with their memories intact. Indie chose that option. She didn’t just remember her training; she remembered names.
Men and women who were part of the program. ”
Sal’s head snapped up, his attention focused on the phone. “Please don’t say it, son.”
“I’m sorry, Sal. Tyran Fitzpatrick was one of those names.”
“SON OF A BITCH!” Sal yelled. He grabbed the glass I’d left on the coffee table and threw it across the room.
“King,” I said. “What were the other names she mentioned?”
“George and Dakota Stone, Sylvia St. James, Jane Craven, Gary Hughes. Those were the ones she mentioned first. There are others.”
“Can you send me those names?” I asked, trying to ignore the fact that the woman who gave birth to me and another woman who I’d come to realize was my sister, were both mentioned.
“Nav will send you an email.”
“Thank you.”
“Sal?” King questioned. Sal rubbed his hands over his face and then picked up the phone. He took the phone off speaker and walked out of my office.