by Charlie Hart
I do.
I’ve been working with him long before I married his daughter. Before I knew who she was. Long before I understood what exactly he was involved with. I had no family money to rely on. No education to help me through. No idyllic island where people knew one another's names.
I had nothing.
Only her.
I know some people think I inherited my business from my father. But all that man left me was debt and a motivation to discover every corrupt underground activity from Alaska all the way down to southern California and across to the East Coast.
Everything I have now is because I was determined to make something for myself, knowing no one else would help me get it. And when I lost her, it only made me fight harder.
“You fucked it all up, Hux,” Sal says. “And for what? To make some more money? When will it be enough? When you have millions in the bank, but blood on your fucking hands?”
I already have millions in the bank. More money than any of them know. But I’d give it all up in a heartbeat to save the people I love. And I will.
“It’s not what you think,” I mutter, my resolve shaking. “I didn’t have a choice. I had to... I have to fix my wrongs.”
“What wrongs?” Fallon asks.
I inhale slowly. I know my next words are going to upset people, rattle them. But maybe once they hear me out they will understand.
They need to understand.
This is bigger than Tia.
I can’t trust them with my whole plan, but I need them to understand why I did this. Maybe when I’m rotting in a prison cell, they’ll understand why I had to do it.
Why I have to kill Warren Thorne.
“I’ve been working with Warren Thorne for years,” I admit.
“Doing what?” Fallon’s fists clench and unclench.
The weight of everything I’ve done pushes down on my shoulders, and I have to sit down. “I located women for him and sent them to his lab. I got him the patients he needed.”
Inhaled breaths and muttered curses.
“You were selling women to Warren Thorne?” Salinger asks, his voice so cold I feel the ice sliding across my skin.
“Yes.” I press my hands to my temples. “Kill me if you want. Fucking end it if you must. But know this, I thought I was helping. He’s a world-renowned scientist helping to find a cure. All this time, I thought I was doing a noble goddamn thing.” I run my hands over face, the memories of the labs, the ones I saw with Emerson, blurring my vision. The way they tormented me every day since we’ve returned from Seattle. “I thought I was a part of the fucking cure.”
The women had wanted to go. Every one of them had volunteered. Even... even my sister.
“Shit,” Fallon says his word hanging in the air.
“I never knew Tia was patient C65. When he started requesting information on her, I had no fucking clue. I would usually just get an order and locate the female. Then I’d send out mercenaries to find them, bring them back, explain how Warren Fucking Thorne was going to save their lives.” I close my eyes, my thoughts tormented. “I thought he was.”
“But now you know, “Banks says. “You know what he did, what he does.”
“Yes.”
“And yet, you still betray Tia?” Salinger is looking at me like he’s never seen me before.
No, I want to scream. I’d never give her over to him.
Just tell them the damn truth, my head demands.
But I know it won’t redeem me. Nothing will.
“Could you live with yourself?” I ask them, placing my head in my hands. “Knowing what you’ve helped them do? When I realized Tia was patient C65, I tried to back out of the contract. But I already signed my allegiance. I promised I would deliver.”
“And so you just gave her name up? Emerson asks.
“I still didn’t believe he was the bad guy you all said he was.” That’s only partially true. How could I admit it to myself? It would mean I was an accomplice to murder. I’d heard the rumors, but it wasn’t until I looked deeper that I realized the truth.
So, when Emerson planned to sneak down to the dormitory, I knew I needed to go. I needed to see for myself where I’d sent all those women. Where I’d sent my own sister.
“But then...” I drop my head, the visions of the labs blocking all my reason.
“You saw the lab. The pregnant women strapped down, begging,” Emerson says, his voice filling with the horrors we’d seen that day. “The children.”
The children.
My head pounds with images. My throat squeezes with guilt, sucking all the air from my lungs. I deserve what’s coming to me.
“Huxley?” Giles' voice cracks through my memories. “Tell us what the hell is going on, or I’m going to allow Salinger to take you in.”
I frown between the men.
“Take me in?”
“You think I’m letting you walk after this?” Sal hisses. “You’re going down unless you start talking.”
He means to incarcerate me. Fuck. And while I didn’t do anything illegal by contacting Thorne, there are a million and one things he can bring me up on charges for.
And if I’m in jail, I won’t be able to go through with my plan.
Shit.
“Start talking,” Fallon says. “Now.”
I finally choke out, “My sister was the first woman I sent to Thorne.”
A few inhaled breaths, a couple of curses, then silence.
“I didn’t know you had a sister.” Sal looks at me as if he’s not sure to believe what I’m telling him.
“Beth,” I say her name softly, affection and grief mixing with the word. “She was eight years older than me. My half-sister from my father’s first marriage. She was...” I squeeze my eyes closed, remembering her face, the one my father would always say that only a mother could love.
And yet I loved her. So damn much.
“She was disfigured. Some rare birth defect. She believed she’d never find a husband here. Someone who would accept her, so when she heard about Thorne’s research, that he was seeking women to help find a cure, she went willingly. I didn’t know...”
Giles sits down on the chair across from me. “Have you been in touch with her?”
“I knew sending her there meant that she’d have to sign a nondisclosure agreement. So, other than a few short letters throughout the years, no... but the letters stopped a couple of years ago. I’d assumed she’d died. We both knew the risks of pregnancy. But I’d never received any confirmation.”
“I knew her,” Tia says from the top of the stairs. Her face is ashen and her eyes are red from crying. “Beth. She helped out in the library.”
A small smile tugs at my lips. “She always loved to read.”
“I remember.”
I hold Tia’s gaze.
“Is that what this is about?” She asks. “Her life for mine?”
No. God no. My life for yours, I want to say. Instead, I shake my head. “I knew my sister was gone. At least in my heart. But it wasn’t until I came across her death certificate in the files I’d been able to hack at Saint Augustine's that I knew for certain.”
“I’m truly sorry,” Tia says, and I see in her eyes the compassion I don’t deserve, even beneath the betrayal I know she feels. “Beth was a good person. Quiet and always willing to lend a hand.”
I nod, something breaking loose in my chest knowing Tia had known her.
“So, what then?” Fallon asks, shaking his head. “What did Thorne offer you that could make you trade our wife for?”
“When I was digging through the files, I came across two birth certificates with the same file number as my sister’s. Two little girls.” Anger burns like hot coals inside me. “My nieces. Shit, they’re only four and two. Still babies. Both locked up in that prison of tortures.” I hold Tia’s gaze. “You know what he plans for them.”
She nods then starts down the stairs.
There’s a short moment of silence, before
Fallon loses his shit again, “Look, I’m sorry about your nieces, but if you think their lives are more valuable than Tia’s, than our children, that handing her over--”
“I wasn’t going to hand her over,” I shout in frustration, regained resolve fueling my words. “That had never been my intention.”
“Then what the hell were you planning?” Salinger says.
I lean back, knowing there’s no way to keep it from them and still go through with it.
“Huxley?” Tia says my name, eyes begging me for an explanation.
But I know she isn’t going to like what I have to say.
I steeple my hands and clench my teeth, before finally admitting, “I’m going to kill Warren Thorne and there’s nothing any of you can say or do to stop me.”
Chapter 3
Tia
Huxley's words press hard against my chest.
Kill Warren Thorne.
My father.
A man I once admired. A man I thought I loved. A man reckless with his logic and twisted with his science.
Huxley’s nieces are locked away. Becoming patients, not people, and still so young. A four-year-old little girl locked in a laboratory for her entire life? Her body being tested before it even has a chance to grow? I feel ill, bile rising in my throat at the thought.
I sit down, pressing my hands to my temples, ignoring my husbands as they offer to help. My mind spins, I don't want to think about the institutional state anyone in the laboratory must succumb to. Women becoming shells of what they once were, babies never having a chance to grow healthy and whole.
I close my eyes, unable to imagine the horror of what Emerson and Huxley saw when they went to Seattle. And I’m the one who asked them to go. Begged. Lied and stole away in the night. For what? So that the men I love could be tormented even more?
I look around me, trying to keep the room from spinning, concern in every man’s eyes.
I'm grateful I don't have to get through this on my own.
But those little girls. Huxley’s nieces.
Who is there to watch over them?
Who is there to protect them?
Only Huxley.
He’s choosing to be their savior, even knowing the cost. I never would have guessed Huxley was capable of the sacrifice he’s willing to make.
I steady my shallow breathing, trying to collect myself as the room around me erupts with opinions and arguments.
"It’s a suicide mission," Salinger says. "You want to kill the most influential scientist in the United States of America? They will put you in the goddamn electric chair."
"I don't care,” Huxley says, his eyes wild and bloodshot. He looks exhausted, but I’ve never seen him so resolute. “What is one life if it can save so many others?"
His surety catches me off guard.
I was challenged with the exact same question when Banks explained the things my father did to my body. My embryonic fluid and spinal fluid carry the cure. My babies would die, but with my sacrifice, others would survive.
An impossible decision.
I can’t, won’t sacrifice my children. Their lives matter and my heart already beats for each one of them.
But maybe that makes me the monster here. Unwilling to choose the greater good.
Because when it was presented to me, my first thought wasn't everyone else, it wasn’t about all the other mothers and their babies, the lives that would be lost if I do nothing. I was thinking about me. About the little ones growing in my womb.
Huxley though, he was acting selflessly.
If he killed my father, he would pay the ultimate price. With his life.
There’s a fire in his eyes, a fury beating in his heart. He won’t rest until he does this.
This much I know: he's not an easy man or a simple one. He’s complicated, and the risks he takes on a regular basis have shaped him into the man he is.
Determined.
Focused.
Clear-headed.
Willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.
I'm not saying the other men I love aren’t capable of taking enormous risks, they are, and they have. Giles, Fallon, and Emerson risk their lives for the greater good everytime they go on a mission.
Banks spends countless hours working on a cure, risking his job and mental health to save lives. Even Salinger has taken risks, going against his parents to protect me and the other men in this compound.
But Huxley is different. I hadn’t really realized it before. Or maybe I’d been so focused on myself and the others that I never looked deeper than the surface. Every day he goes to his shop and takes life-altering risks with each deal he makes. He works with crooks and hardened criminals.
He just admitted to us all he has been in alliance with my father. Who else has he worked for?
I’m not sure I want to know.
His acts are criminal, and yet his motivation is good.
"You would be putting a target on all our backs," Fallon says, dark blond hair sticking up from pulling at it. "If you kill Warren Thorne, you’ll be put in prison but you know what will happen next? They’ll want to know who your accomplices were. And fingers will be directed at us."
"I agree," Banks says. "How the hell can we take care of Tia if we’re all behind bars?"
Of course, my husbands disagree. Six men, all with strong opinions and different views, I’m the one bridge to all their hearts. The one thing they truly have in common is a deep desire for my safety. For our children's safety.
Even Huxley. I should never have doubted him. He wants to secure my safety as much as any of my husbands.
But the babies I carry are not our only family.
"We would do this if it was Mason," I say softly to Emerson, remembering the boy’s sweet smile as he told us about caring for the sheep on the farm. His face was lit with innocence. His heart still so light. I ask the others, "If Mason was in trouble, locked up somewhere, you would drop what you’re doing and fight for his freedom. But you won’t do the same for the girls?"
"It's not that simple, Tia," Salinger says, pleading with me. He drops to his knees and takes my hands in his.
"Nothing in this world is simple,” I say, squeezing his hand before turning to Huxley. “But I do know this, I'm with Huxley on this. And I’m proud of you."
"Proud of me?" Huxley asks, his eyebrows raised in disbelief. And he’s not the only one. There are murmurs around the room. "After the things I’ve done?” He glances down at the floor. “After the women I've sent to the very place you ran away from? That’s nothing to be proud of."
I hate the way his eyes have turned dark. The storm is brewing so deeply inside of him, I wonder how I hadn't seen it before. Or maybe Huxley has gotten good at keeping it at bay, hiding it from the world.
And maybe I've been naïve enough to believe that our pasts are in our past.
Of course, they’re not. They’re catching up to us every day, in every way. Helene coming here, to our doorstep threatening Emerson. Lawson arriving, making me a bargaining chip. Salinger's father, demanding the truth. And now my father coming to Alaska to take me away from the only real family I’ve known.
All around us, the past is inching closer and closer.
And in two days time, it will suffocate us all.
My father is not a lionheart like Emerson. He's not a protector like Giles or a leader like Fallon. He’s not self-deprecating like Salinger or cocky like Huxley. And he's certainly not smart like Banks.
My father is a fool who can’t see the forest for the trees. He doesn't care about flesh and blood. He cares about his legacy.
And he'll stop at nothing to get it.
So, yes, I’m proud of Huxley, because he made the choice to finally end the torment caused by a monster of a man, even if it meant risking his own life in the process.
Huxley is looking for redemption from his past mistakes. How can any of us argue with his motivation? The only thing we can do now is come up with a better plan that doe
sn’t end with my husbands behind bars.
Chapter 4
Huxley
The men are all arguing around me, unaware that Tia has drifted away into the study, alone.
I want to follow her, talk to her, now that my truth is out. I want her to know everything. That I never intended for anyone to hurt her. Even now, I‘ll make sure her father never sets eyes on her again.
“This is my fight,” I yell, when Fallon gets in my face again, clearly not as easy to forgive me as Tia. “It has nothing to do with any of you. I’ve taken care of--”
“You’re wrong,” he growls out, trying to pull his alpha shit on me. “We all have a part in this fight, but you just brought the enemy to our shores.”
“I have a plan,” I rub the back of my neck, knowing they won’t listen, at least not Fallon. He’s run by too many damn emotions.
Maybe I am too. At least when it comes to Tia, to my sister, and those innocent girls who Thorne is planning to do God knows what with. A shiver races down my spine. Maybe I should have just gone to the labs in the dead of night, rescued the girls, and slit the bastard's throat in his sleep.
But there were already rumors circulating that patient C65 had been located in Alaska. Thorne’s hounds were already on her scent. And I saw only one way to throw them off, by giving them the damn bone they were searching for.
And it worked. I still have Thorne’s trust. And in two days time, I’ll also have his life.
“Well your plan is shut down,” Fallon says, finger pointed at my chest. “You’re not leaving this fucking house until we figure out what we’re going to do.”
“You can’t tell me--”
“He’s right,” Giles says, his voice calmer than the others, but still strong with resolve. “I’m not sure if you’ve been hearing us lately, Hux, but we’re a family. We’re in this together. What one person does, affects us all.”
“Well, maybe that’s the problem.” I glare at them all. “You keep thinking that I’m part of this damn family. And I’m not.” My stomach twists at my words, because I know they’re a lie. But I can’t let them talk me out of what I have to do.