Chapter 9
Lincoln
It’s past midnight by the time I get home, but Pierre is waiting for me like he always is. I find him in my basement, or my
secret lair. The bank of computer screens illuminates the familiar features of his face in the otherwise dark room.
“You are late,” he accuses.
I resist the urge to remind him that I’m a grown man and I never asked him to wait up for me. He’s still pissed at me for
leaving unexpectedly, and on top of that he always worries when I leave. And now, with Imogen here too, if something were
to happen to me, then he would be left with the burden of protecting her. And my oldest friend doesn’t deserve to carry the
weight of that. He shouldn’t have to pay for my mistakes. “I had to stop off and change.” I drop the bag at his feet.
“Change your clothes?”
“Yes. They got a little . . . messy.”
He makes a soft humming noise. “That is very unlike you.”
“This was a special case.” I fall into the chair beside him and scan the monitors, glancing over the coding programs as they
continue to run in an endless loop and the security cameras and heat sensors that cover the perimeter of my property. After
a moment, I satisfy myself that everything is as it should be.
“Did Edgar assist you?” Pierre asks.
“No, there was no time to involve him.”
Edgar North is my link with the outside world. A man with infinite connections in the criminal underworld, and one who has
reason to hate, and to hunt, the Brotherhood as much as I do. In an alternate universe, one where my sister didn’t die, I
guess he’d be my brother-in-law, maybe a doting father to my nieces and nephews by now. As it is, he’s a man just like me.
Living like a ghost and hell-bent on revenge.
“It was someone from the auction you paid a visit to, then?” Pierre asks, perceptive to a fault.
“Yes.”
I feel his disapproval radiating from him in waves.
“What, Pierre?”
He holds up his hands in surrender. “I said nothing.”
“I can hear you judging me.”
“Merde! You have spent eighteen years taking every precaution necessary, and now you go and . . .” He mutters some more French curse
words.
“Now I what?”
“Now you draw attention by killing someone who is directly linked to the girl, and doing so in a manner which is likely to
draw scrutiny. I do not understand it.” His accent grows more pronounced the angrier he gets.
“It may draw attention but not to us. He’s one of dozens of Pawns involved in those auctions.”
“So why this one, Lincoln?”
“Because he touched her, Pierre. And I saw the fear in her eyes when he did. That’s why.” I don’t add that I would hunt down
every last one of them and give them the same treatment if I could, because he already knows that. One day, I will.
He remains silent. Deep in thought.
“How has she been?”
He snorts. “She spends her days reading in your library or the garden and her nights watching television in her room. She does not make a mess. She speaks when spoken to. She eats whatever I cook. A perfect little pet, waiting for her master’s return.”
An unexpected growl rumbles in my chest. She is not my pet and I’m certainly not her master. “Did you encourage her to talk?
To make some decisions for herself? Ask her what she wanted to eat?”
He frowns. “I am not her babysitter, nor her therapist, Lincoln.”
I bite my tongue, because he’s still annoyed with me for bringing her here, and with good reason. Experience tells me there’s
no point in arguing with him when he’s like this. Instead I stare at the screens, waiting for him to get so uncomfortable
with the silence that he can’t resist filling it. “Of course I asked her what she wished to eat, and her response was always
the same—that whatever I was eating would be fine. Except for breakfast, which as you know for me consists of coffee and more
coffee. Meanwhile she would ask for a disgusting blend of oatmeal made with only water.” He makes a gagging sound.
“But that’s a good thing? She asked for what she wanted.”
“Non.” He shakes his head. “Because she does not like the oatmeal. I can tell from the little sounds she does not make while eating. And I . . .” He jabs his finger into his chest. “I am forced to make the foul-smelling sludge when she
does not even enjoy it. Did you know she has never been exposed to good music? She did not even know who Bruce Springsteen
was!” He appears particularly furious about that and it makes me grin.
“She’s twenty-one, not fifty-one, old friend. And not everyone agrees with your questionable taste in music.”
He gasps loudly, like I’ve just insulted his mother and not his favorite music artist. “My questionable taste? This from a
man who enjoys the sounds of people screaming and wailing into a microphone?”
I unlace my boots. “It’s called heavy metal, and you know that’s not all I listen to.” As pleasant as this conversation is, it’s not my most pressing concern. “Back to Imogen,” I remind him.
He harrumphs, arms folded over his chest, still not forgiving me for my dig at the Boss. “As I said, she has done little but
read, listen to music and watch TV. She is meek and obedient.”
I rub my temples. I’m tired and my conversation with Pierre is leaving me confused. The whole situation with Imogen has me
confused, if I’m honest. I recall clearly the fire in her at the night of the auction. So why the obvious change in her? I
understand her being uncertain, given the circumstances of her being here, but she doesn’t speak, doesn’t ask questions. Is
she playing us? Is she one of them? Or did they hide her all this time only to use her to lure me out of hiding?
I intended to bring Imogen here as soon as I saw her name in that damn brochure, but I have no idea what to do with her now
that she is. “So she eats oatmeal but doesn’t like it?”
“Oui. And when I ask why, she tells me that it is healthy and nutritious. Like it is a mantra she must repeat to herself in order to ingest such blandness.” He snorts with disgust.
“Did you find out anything of interest about her upbringing, aside from her not knowing who some aging rocker is?”
He ignores my barb and rolls his shoulders, like he’s shrugging out of his bad mood. “Of course. You asked me to, did you
not?”
“I did, and I knew you wouldn’t let me down.” I considered interrogating her myself, but figured she’d be more likely to open
up to the gentle, if often temperamental, blind Frenchman than to the monster who just bought her.
“She was indeed raised by her grandfather, Saul DeMotta, and her upbringing appears to have been very sheltered.”
I nod, deep in thought. Imogen’s father, Luca, rarely spoke of his father, Saul.
They were never close. Saul is a billionaire and mean with it.
His grandfather made their money in oil in the early 1900s and the family wealth continues to grow, but he rarely spends a cent he doesn’t absolutely have to.
A devout Christian and a staunch advocate for traditional family values.
It’s well-documented that he disinherited his only son after he got his girlfriend pregnant when she was just eighteen.
The old bigot insisted that they marry or Luca would be cut off. Luca told him to go to hell and just for spite he waited
for their child to be born before he married the love of his life.
If only I had known all these years that Imogen was alive and in the care of the meanest man alive. But I was led to believe
she perished along with her mother, only a week after her father was killed. A child’s body was found, and all of the news
reports said it was her. The Brotherhood would never have been merciful enough to let her live.
And then I saw her name in the program.
Every Brotherhood auction has fifty lots. This time there were fifty-one. Each woman has a bio, detailing her age, her “purity
level,” and whether she has any particular talents. There are rarely names attached, mostly numbers. Only the most prized lots are deemed worthy of a name. And alongside Imogen’s
bio was her name, and the fact that she was the daughter of a traitor. I could practically hear the mob baying for her blood.
“She also spoke of a woman—Larissa.” Pierre’s voice drags me back to the present. “I got the impression she was almost like
a governess. Strict, but nurturing. The girl credits this Larissa with teaching her all she knows. She claims to have had a pleasant childhood.”
“You think she is lying about that?”
“Don’t you?” he scoffs.
“Perhaps she was loved still.” From what we know so far, Imogen was taken in by her grandfather with the promise that he would hand her over once she turned twenty-one, to be returned to the Brotherhood to do with as they pleased.
Perhaps I simply want to believe that she spent the last eighteen years of her life being loved and cared for by someone.
If not by her grandfather, who I would wager is incapable of such emotions, then perhaps by this Larissa woman she told Pierre of.
Maybe I just need to believe that because the alternative makes me feel like I can’t breathe.
It also makes me want to hunt down Saul DeMotta and carve out his still-beating heart. One day . . .
“Would you give up a child that you had loved and raised to the Brotherhood, Lincoln?”
“No,” I admit. Her grandfather should be sold at a fucking auction for what he did, no matter what kind of deal he made. “But
Larissa? Maybe it was her who showed Imogen kindness? Love?”
“Per’aps.” Then he stands and grabs my bag from the floor. “I’ll take care of these tomorrow.”
“I can do that.”
“Agh! I have always been better at getting blood out of clothes than you are. And what else do I have to do?”
I roll my eyes as he walks toward the door. He pauses, his hand resting on the doorframe and his head bent low. “Did you make
him suffer, mon ami?”
“Of course, Pierre.”
“Bien.”
He disappears from sight, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
So Imogen is being the perfectly behaved houseguest. Now that I have time to think, I tell myself that’s to be expected, given
that she’s been here for less than a week. And even more so, given that she was quite clearly prepared for an auction. The
way she stood on that stage, stoic and defiant proved to me that she had been well primed for what was to come, and if that
was the case, she’d have been prepared for the aftermath too. So her obedience actually makes perfect sense.
I can imagine what that kind of training must have been like.
Do what you’re told when you’re told. Be obedient.
Don’t cause trouble. Look for any opportunity to escape and then take it—the lot’s handbook for survival.
I can’t imagine the horrors she was coached to endure though.
She’s probably terrified out of her mind, wondering when something awful is going to happen to her.
I should do something about that, but I imagine that no amount of reassurance from me will make her feel at ease, and I suspect
only time will do that. Still, I’ll try anyway.