14 Everett
May 11th, 2022
I watched from a coffee cart down the street as Olivia slowed and glanced back, and seconds later, a girl with natural red hair appeared feet in front of her.
They exchanged a few words, Lucy stepping between them a moment later as Olivia’s fake smile shifted to something more guarded.
After a moment, she shook her head, and the girl laughed and waved her off before Olivia turned away and continued for the sidewalk.
A moment later, she clocked a black van, watching it for half a block once she reached the sidewalk before she continued down the street, away from me.
I turned back to that woman, casually walking down the path into the park, pausing at another person and asking for directions, I assumed.
I turned back to the vendor, handing him a 10. Poor girl was so desperate to feel what I had given her, that she went to the park and waited for me like a pup waiting for her master, her collar only haphazardly covered by a black scarf, as if she were getting tired of trying to cover it up.
“I’ll be your master, little writer, but you’ll have to beg me for it first.”
I almost felt inclined to show her how bad an idea that had been, but I held back. While my cock was in desperate need for release, I had my own tail today, and while getting a payment in front of him was seen as normal in our world, I had a feeling what he wanted to discuss was important.
“No bike today?”
I took my coffee, nodding a thanks. “I’m not following her.”
Not today. I had other issues to deal with, although dropping in hadn’t been a bad idea. I had to make sure she wasn’t doing anything stupid like waiting for a masked stalker in the middle of a park to come take her again, but now I had to get back to work.
“She’s the one paying off Mr. Pelgard’s debt, right? The one you said was useless because her mind was broken.”
I took a drink of my coffee and joined him as we slowly made our way down the sidewalk. “She has money, if that’s what you’re asking. Pelgard will still pay us half the debt while she will pay me using her body. Malachi should have told you about it, he’s the one that suggested it.”
In more words, I suppose.
Beckett took a drink of his own coffee. “He did.”
He was quiet a moment. “You couldn’t find pussy any other way?”
I shrugged. “This is more fun.”
Beckett went silent, and I took the time to watch her. It was the third time she glanced back. Something about that girl set her on edge. Perhaps she just wasn’t used to people approaching her in this city. She played the part of ‘nobody’ so well that she had forgotten what it was like to live with that silver spoon in her mouth.
“The last time one of you boys started having fun with a target, you claimed and married them.”
Luckily for me, I wasn’t an idiot. “I won’t make the same mistake.”
Besides, this was all on Malachi’s orders, not by my choice. Not completely, anyway.
“Then pay for a whore and get over it.”
“She’s my whore,”
I replied coldly, finding his bright blue eyes, “and she’s paying me. Besides, I still haven’t put together why there was someone else following her the other day.”
I turned back to her, taking another drink. “I want to solve that before this ends.”
I had talked to the other people in this city who offer loans with a stipulation like ours. None had any debts with Mr. Pelgard, so I was back to square one.
Evelyn was scouring over Olivia’s website, her social media, but so far, that was a dead end too. There was no overly obsessed fan of Abigail Ross or ex of Olivia Lemont who was trying to connect with her, but Evie hadn’t given up yet. Whoever was following her, we’d take care of it, get the rest of our payments collected, and finish this.
“A coincidence?”
“Or someone going after Malachi,”
I replied with a shrug. “Sees a young female meeting with him over dinner, assumes he cares for her, or she has money on hand.”
I thought about it. “Maybe I should have let him get to her. I would’ve solved the riddle a lot faster.”
“But you would have lost your toy,”
he half-teased.
I could hear the bitterness in his voice. He never liked the idea of the Claim. He never liked the idea of having civilians sitting pretty in the family, which one of them was.
Emily was a civilian. Rae not so much, but Emily? She was useless without Greyson, who was planning on settling down in their city anyway, but even so, there would come a day when he wouldn’t have a choice but leave on assignment, no matter what Malachi did, and he would have to leave Emily all alone.
Jeremy was strong, smart, but he wasn’t a Shadow, just an Initiate. The Claims would always be in danger. The moment they were tied to us, they were in danger. One day, Emily would get into the kind of trouble she wouldn’t survive, and Greyson wouldn’t be able to make it to her in time.
Despite that, Beckett couldn’t stop it from happening. Jack made his Claim, Greyson made his, but rest assured, Azrael and I would never cross that line.
“Oh well, she’s a means to an end, Becks, nothing more.”
“I heard she’s got millions. Why don’t you just take his payments and go?”
My brows furrowed and I finally turned to face him, coming to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. I looked him over, the confusion only growing. “What’s the problem, Beckett? We’ve done this before. We don’t absolutely need the money, so why not use it for some fun while it lasts?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, getting attached seems to be a running theme these last three years. I’d hate to lose you to decent pussy too.”
I searched his eyes. I suppose his fear was valid. Since meeting Rae, Jack had grown softer, and Greyson? Well, as far as I knew, he hadn’t been completely set on settling in one city until meeting Emily, but this was different. It was wholly different. “In six months, if her boyfriend hasn’t paid up, then I’ll kill them both,”
I compromised.
He looked less than convinced, but that was his problem. I wasn’t going to stand here and try and convince him that I wasn’t falling for this girl. It was ridiculous that what Jack and Greyson had done caused him to doubt my intentions. I honestly would have punched him if I held any less respect for him.
Instead, I turned away from him, watching as that woman climbed into that black van Olivia had seen earlier. She climbed into the back and slid the door shut quickly.
I took a drink of my coffee, trying to catch a glimpse of the driver beyond the glare, but no dice.
Hmm, maybe her sixth sense was onto something. “I’ve been thinking about what I want this thing to be in the future,”
I brought up confidently. It was time to test it out with him because in a few years time, I might not have a choice. Malachi would be looking for a solution to a problem that had started years ago, and I believed I had it.
“Oh? Hoping Malachi kicks the bucket so soon?”
“Thinking of a successful future when we are all long since gone,”
I countered. “Thinking of how long this will last as it’s going.”
“Well, tell me. What ideas have you come up with?”
Something I had brought up to Azrael in the past, and he seemed to like it. Although, there was no way to tell whether he actually liked something or not with that creepy smile he always wore.
I straightened. “The chances of us keeping our identities a secret for the next few decades is slim,”
I said, gesturing to my face which was maskless today so that my targets wouldn’t recognize they were in trouble before I was snapping their necks. “Along with the fact that eventually, we will run out of people to recruit before word gets out about what happens during the program.”
Beckett nodded. “The anonymity of it has always concerned me,”
he agreed. “You can’t have an army without word about building it finally getting out. It’s bound to happen.”
I took a drink. “So, my thought was to let it out. Open up a kind of school. Private, rigorous screening. Malachi would be the headmaster, we can hire older Initiates, those who aren’t in the game anymore to teach the classes. Four years, each year is progressively harder. You’re a recruit until you graduate into Initiate and then,”
I shrugged, “maybe another year or so of training, if they qualify, and they can try to become a Shadow.”
I had it all written down on paper. A way to make it successful. The idea came to me during a meeting a few years ago when Malachi mentioned six other families who were going to be in charge of different sectors. Why not take it a step further? Create a private college that people can apply to in order to become like us.
It would completely irradicate the invisibility of it all, but why not? The world should know that there were people like us out there, watching them, hunting them, breaking every law there was. We already had the police under our belts, some members of the FBI, Homeland Security. Everyone knew who we were, just not what we looked like.
Doing this seemed like the next logical step, especially with the fact that eventually, they would figure out what we looked like, and then what? Malachi never talked about what came next, and it was something we needed to start considering.
“Would we allow civilians to enter?”
“That’s why it’s four years. If they want to see if they have what it takes, they can, if they decide to back out, whatever year they are in will tell us what their consequences are.”
Beckett looked over. “The higher the year, the more information they know?”
I nodded. We would have to kill them. Maybe enact some brainwashing, or just tell them that they have the chance to go back to their normal lives, but that we were always watching. If they fucked up, they died.
Contracts would be involved. Blood contracts. A promise to the institution that their souls were no longer theirs, whether or not they made it through. Maybe some kind of branding perhaps.
He considered this. “What about the girls?”
“Two separate training programs like we have now. Malachi’s and yours. If they think they can make it through Malachi’s like Rae did,”
I shrugged. “Good on them. If they don’t, they can take yours like Greyson and our sisters did.”
I didn’t think any less of them knowing they did that. Most women who went through Malachi’s program died a gruesome death. Evelyn, Poppy, and Zo were amazing at what they did, and the years of experience they now had under their belts made them lethal, just like it had Greyson. It wasn’t always about the training, but what came after graduation too.
They were picked to be put with us for a reason, and I didn’t doubt them, just like I didn’t doubt Greyson, not for one second.
“It seems to me you have it all planned out,”
Becket hummed. He was quiet a moment. “I think it’s a solid idea for a few simple reasons,”
he went on, turning to me. “I think you’re right. Eventually, the world will know who you boys are. The world already knows about the program, the Initiates, the only thing they don’t know at this point is what happens during the program, but the more people that go through it, the harder it is to keep it that way.”
“Which is why I think this is our next step. The hierarchy only remains if we keep things new and unpredictable. These last few years, the ropes around our necks have been tightening, and I can’t figure out why, so maybe this should be what we do next. Build a campus, buy one, whatever, create the rules to live by, find the professors, and go from there.”
Beckett glanced towards the street, searching for something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
After a few seconds, he turned back to me. “I think you’ve got something here. Where would the campus be set up?”
“Clear the space around the training building, build off of it. We can build a house for us, the main house where we will stay when we’re in Washington, and the campus can be down the road. Fit with classrooms and a building where the recruits will stay while they’re taking classes before they graduate. Then they will get their assignments and move on.”
“What degrees will they earn outside of ours?”
I shrugged. “We’ve got the money to buy whatever we want. If they want to be doctors, lawyers, whatever, we’d be better for it. Then they would give us a stipend every year so our funding remains strong, even during our tougher years.”
He rose a brow. “But they won’t actually be those people?”
I took a drink. “We can give them a courseload, buy their way into the position, go from there. Money does a lot in this world. If they’re smart and strong enough to get through our training, getting enough information to pass as a good doctor while they complete their courseloads shouldn’t be hard.”
His eyes held doubt. “Let’s say I wanted to be a doctor, I just got accepted into the school, it’s my first year. What now?”
I thought carefully about it. “You take our classes and fill the rest with med classes.”
“You fill in the blanks?”
I nodded.
“Hmm,”
he pondered. “Okay, there may be a few holes to fill in, but the overall idea is good. Powerful people in powerful positions, working for us. It’s good.”
I took another long drink of my coffee. “Come on,”
I told Beckett, “we’ve got a few customers coming in this afternoon.”
Beckett was intrigued, but it was just an idea on paper right now. We’d see how it panned out. He wasn’t the supportive type, not really. He was quiet, harder on us than Malachi was, despite the fact that his training was less than his brother’s. I was actually shocked he liked the idea. He usually turned down anything that required a massive change in the dynamic of our Family. Which was why he hated the idea of the Claim. Why he refused to introduce himself to Emily or speak to Rae unless it was life and death.
“When is Malachi coming back?”
Beckett asked as we continued down the sidewalk.
I shook my head. “No idea.”
Azrael’s been on the run since Greyson was shot, and other than that phone call between he and Rae, nobody had heard from him since. Malachi, after coming back to The Springs to meet with Olivia, or Rose as she introduced herself as, left again to go search for him, but I had a hunch he would return shortly. He wasn’t one to be too far off when we slipped into a long assignment like the Kingsmen’s, not to mention that Mary Lemont had set it up where Malachi would meet with Olivia every two weeks, and according to the date, that had yet to happen.
She hadn’t even questioned it, her mother cancelling on her on behalf of Malachi. I suppose she may have expected it, I couldn’t quite be sure on that one.
“And Azrael is still AWOL?”
I nodded. “There hasn’t been a word since he and Rae called me.”
“Eventually, he’ll have to stop doing that. Unless you’re going to allow it when you take over.”
It wasn’t for certain, me taking over, but it seemed the most likely after these last few years. “I think it would be irresponsible of me to assume I would have any more control over him than Malachi does.”
But I would do my best if that’s how it worked out. Especially if there was any real substance to my plan coming to fruition.
Afterall, they didn’t call me the heir for nothing.
Beckett sighed. “Alright, let’s get back to work then.”