Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
SLADE
Two days is too long to go without hearing from my grandfather. Which means, when I step off the elevator, I have a strong feeling he’ll be waiting for me in my office.
The messages poured in shortly after the news story broke last Saturday, considering his security team placed me at his mansion. My grandfather, along with the other seven of the Eight, wanted to know what I was doing, what I’d seen, why I took “the girl.”
To which I responded via text: I stopped by to discuss business and found him passed out in the kitchen. Found the girl chained up and terrified, so I took her as a fail-safe. Security would notify authorities, and I was looking out for the organization by taking evidence.
The beauty of it all? Bishop didn’t believe in surveillance inside his home. He said that real privacy was priceless and the true luxury of the rich. No cameras inside, especially not in the kitchen. He scoffed and said, “If you need to watch yourself eat, you’ve already lost.”
Outside surveillance and security? Yes. But inside …
The truth is uglier than that. He didn’t want eyes on what happened behind his closed door. The control. The violence. The sick pleasure he took in torturing the girls while no one was watching. He hoarded those moments of suffering. They belonged to him and him alone, unshared and unrecorded.
The elevator dings, and I don’t even have to step out before I hear him.
“Snacks? You made this into a hippie office.” His voice cuts down the hallway like honed, pointed steel. It’s venomous with fury, but I know it’s not directed toward the staff. He’s been here plenty of times. “And whose idea was it to paint the walls blue? White was fine! Just fine, I tell you!”
I step out slowly, my jaw already aching as I clench it.
“Your, um, grandfather is here,” Elliot says, morphing into step beside me. “He canceled all your meetings for the day. I-I tried to reschedule, but, um …”
My grandfather demanding bottled water from the office manager has me stepping quicker toward them.
When I finally make it outside my office door, he’s positioned himself in the threshold.
His tie is askew from his flailing hands, and beads of perspiration stipple his brow.
“No respect. I ran this office for twenty years, and now it’s practically run by interns with weak stomachs.
We’re the damn DuPonts. Where’s the respect?
I could have all of you out on your asses.
” He snarls his words, laced with a wild ferocity.
Spit forms, building at the corners of his mouth, frothing as if he’s feral.
“And you …” He points to Elliot’s secretary and lets the sentence hang as she trembles in a seat behind her desk.
I roll my eyes. Typical Henry DuPont posturing. He’s out of control because of Bishop—the fact I was there, and he doesn’t know why. I smirk. Perhaps I should let him stew.
“Slade. There you are. Your office staff is deplorable. They should all be fired right now, but I need to speak with you.” He turns, marches into my office, and moves behind my desk to stare out the window. His shoulders move up and down in an exaggerated fashion, as if he’s trying to calm himself.
“Should I get you two coffee?” Elliot asks.
I shake my head. The prick doesn’t demand a thing from my staff.
Calmly, I close the door and eye the old man.
“They’ve closed the case on Bishop, internally, that is.”
Kenji told me, but I school my expression into nonchalance.
“Ruled it a heart attack based on the coroner’s report. You said it was business when you went over there?”
I nod.
“And he was already unconscious on the floor?”
I nod again.
“You took the girl because you were trying to keep any evidence of EV out of his home for when police were called? The Eight were impressed by your quick thinking. Bishop’s security and staff aren’t privileged to his involvement with EV, so it was only a matter of time before they called local law enforcement as opposed to our own cleanup team. ”
Yes. It’s true. Most affluent men keep their wives, business partners, staff, and security in the dark about their involvement in a secret society.
It wouldn’t be so secret if they told anyone.
Edmond and Stefan are some of the only outsiders privy to my membership.
Even then, I don’t burden them with it all. I can’t.
“All girls were returned to EV this morning, and because of the incident with Bishop and continued questioning from Chicago PD and media, they’ve decided to take a week off from the Market.
Instead, they are going to do something …
different.” He leans back, shoving both hands into his pockets as if he’s somehow magically relaxed.
I don’t mean to show interest, but this is the first I’m hearing about the canceled Market.
Different? I try to catch every word. My head tilts slightly, and I wrestle with my body wanting to drift forward, to ask.
Staring at him, I study his countenance, the way his expression shifts from annoyed about paint colors to purely sadistic, as if this was the news he’s been waiting to tell me for two days.
I nod once to coax him to continue. What are they going to be doing? Grandfather does a poor job hiding that he’s purposely toying with me. His eyes dart to me then back out the window several times, and he rustles around in his pockets to keep the long stretch of silence dragged out.
Finally, he budges. Turning, he rubs his hands together and says, “A live show. They’ve decided to make the Market girls dance live.
A secure connection will be set up, and Chicago’s chapter will stream to every EV location around North America.
Girls will be paired and the other locations will vote by way of guard coin who they like best. The girl who earns the most is safe.
The girl who earns the least is placed into the pot for the Culling. ”
My brow furrows.
“They’ve done a live show once before, the year before you became a member. Needed to clear out some girls due to age and appeal—they weren’t bringing in enough money with the Market. So, three ladies were Culled. The point is … we get a show this Friday, and we get to save money.”
How so?
My grandfather can’t help himself. “Local members aren’t allowed to vote. The EV members want to appeal to those outside our local chapter.”
My heart races. Can’t contribute? Can’t bid or … whatever they’re calling it? The girls who lose are just placed in a random draw to be culled out? Shipped off to someplace worse. It’s more of a grotesque dance-off soaked in power and degradation, and instead of applause the losers bleed.
No.
This is a showcase of obedience, and not for the girls—they’re already humiliated without a choice.
This is for the members. This is a stark reminder that the Eight own Chicago, and Graves …
He’s not happy about Bishop. Yes, they might accept the coroner’s report, the man I paid off to lie about the cause of death, but they’re making a statement with this.
“You know …” My grandfather turns to study me, the glint in his eyes shifting from gleaming to predatory. “Bishop was slated to take Mr. Howel’s spot in the Eight since he retired back to New York.”
I shrug, but mull over that fact. It doesn’t surprise me they were interested in him, but this is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for. The opportunity I need to make bigger moves.
Smirking, I mirror my grandfather and tuck my hands into both my pockets.
He frowns. “I’ve already told Graves it’s time for a DuPont.”
I roll my shoulders back. A DuPont will sit on the Eight, for reasons you’ll never see coming.
“I’ve bled for this place more than half the bastards sitting in those chairs.”
Shit.
He continues. “Most of them have hidden behind masks and tradition, letting us powerful members do the work, clean up their messes, and keep their secrets. I’ve fed the machine, dumped money in.” He points at me. “Given them fresh blood. I’ve earned my seat. I demand it.”
It’d be a heartwarming speech if I cared. I don’t.
I let out a snort, and his eyes bulge. “I’ll carve my name into the Echelon Order myself, damn it.”
If there’s any DuPont who should be in the seat, it’s me. But … access through my grandfather would be a step closer. Though the Severing—I’m not sure I have the mental fortitude to break what the guard demands, or who they demand. Does my grandfather? Who would they choose as his Offering?
My thoughts flash to Thea, her in the kitchen at the island with Stefan—because I, unlike Bishop, do have cameras there.
He’d made her breakfast. An omelet, from the looks of it behind my precision capture security.
Unfortunately, it had to be one with long molten cheese that strung gooey and dripping as it clung to her fork, then to her lips.
She rubbed them together, as if it were the best thing she’d tasted all week, and I walked into the elevator doors as they were closing.
It shouldn’t get to me. It’s breakfast. But something about watching her on my phone during my commute to work, about the way she eats in my kitchen, legs bare and knotted at the knees—it burns. What’s worse: the worn shirt hanging off her too-thin frame. One of mine.
The comic panel printed across the front, half-cracked, was a favorite of mine, and I forgot I even had it.
I used to wear it to school all the time in the sixth grade when apparently it was no longer “cool.” “Comic Boy,” they’d call me.
I went home and stuffed it in the bottom of my drawer, only to bring it out on the nights I locked myself in my room to block out my grandfather’s world.
Of course, Edmond pulled it out and gave it to her.
My grandfather drones on about how he’s ready for the scripted rite, but my focus has vanished.
I reach for my phone and pull it out to scroll for the screenshot I took of her.
It was supposed to be nothing, just a quick tap of the screen, a still frame of the feed to …
prove the feed was running? Yeah. But the image that landed …
The pad of her thumb had just slid across her bottom lip, smearing a bit of the cheese she didn’t realize was there, as if she didn’t know she’d just branded herself into my memory with that one damn motion.
The screenshot froze there: her eyes down, lips caught in a half-smooshed pucker. Unintentionally devastating.
I shouldn’t have kept it. But here it is, and I can’t bring myself to delete it.
I shouldn’t be imagining what it’d take to make her look at me like that—expression half lidded, mouth parted, but … there’s something about her. Unrefined and wild, yet delicate all the same.
My grandfather always called them divine. Elegant. Polished. Desired by men like them. He wanted the women weighed down by crystals and jewels or luxury fabric on display.
But I—in the quiet recesses of my mind—didn’t want sculpted or sexy.
Real, I’d thought. Beautiful in a messy, barefoot, tangled hair, cheese-stuck-to-her-chin way.
The image wrecks me, and I swipe away thinking about how she’ll be a picture of desire for my grandfather this Friday. Trying to dance for her life. Sickening.
My grip tightens, fingers digging into the screen of the phone, pressing hard enough liquid-like ripples bloom beneath the glass. Part of me wishes it would break, so the temptation to look at her, knowing how she looks in my house, my room, wouldn’t be there.
But it doesn’t.
It only warps underneath my thumb, reflecting my own aching expression back at me in the dark glass.
“—need your support with Graves. Slade? Damn it! Are you listening to me?”
I blink, turn over my phone, and lift my head. Huh?
“With Graves, Slade. Kenji listens to you. Hell if we know where Vaughan is, but I need your support, and I need you to garner it from them.”
Yeah, as if I haven’t already handed over every damn piece of myself he asked for. As if I didn’t walk straight into his old congressional seat with my hands tied behind my back and his personal agenda pinned between my shoulder blades.
I’ve given him my aspirations to a make true change in my city.
My silence. My face for the cameras. I’ve sold my soul, marred my body, voted the way he told me to, and now he wants more.
It’s never enough, and it never will be.
I’m stuck carrying the torch for his debased legacy, not mine.
All the while he watches in waiting, dictating it all.