Jeb held an unconscious Karr in his arms, a bloody knife in his fist.
But Cade had his father’s pistol, so he’d first shot the man with Jeb, and then he’d forced Jeb into a sparring match.
In the end, Jeb won the match, besting Cade because he was twice his age and twice his size. But looking back, Cade knew that he’d bound himself to trouble that day, that it would someday come to find him again.
And find him, it had.
“You work for Geisinger,”Cade had said, when Jeb pressed him to his knees and held his father’s gun to his head.“You’re here to finish us all off, because my parents tried to run from him. They didn’t honor the deal they’d made. The payment.”
Jeb’s hand was trembling on the gun.
Like he was bold enough to use a blade on a fully grown man, but too much of a coward to use a bullet on a kid.
“We’ll pay their (debt,”Cade said.“My brother and I. We’ll work it off. We’ll spend the rest of our lives doing his bidding. We’ll go anywhere, steal anything. I’ve seen my parents work, I know how to run this ship.”
Jeb called Geisinger up, and gave him the counteroffer.
And just like that, the Kingston brothers sealed a lifetime of indenture to Friedrich Geisinger. But the man didn’t want to deal with them.Space trash,he’d said, so Jeb himself became a bastard father of two. Geisinger would call upon them if he ever had need.
Karr couldn’t know about the deal.
So Cade had spun a lie.
A lifetime of lies for a lifetime of trouble.
He wasn’t entirely surprised, when, ten years later, Friedrich Geisinger himself forced him into the Dohrsaran deal.
Cade had done it. Not because he’d wanted to—the weight of the sins he’d have to carry, doing the man’s bidding… what he’d have to do to the people there…
It was hideous work.
Unforgiveable.
But Cade had already committed a lifetime of unforgiveable sins.
So he’d taken the deal, in part because Geisinger swore it would be the final job to pay off his parents’ debt. But also because Cade wondered, if perhaps, by giving Karr this gift—true freedom—he’d be able to save his little brother from burning in some locked cell in hell for his sins.
Sins by association.
Sins Karr didn’t even know he’d had a part in committing.
“How can I trust that you won’t run, like your parents once did?”Geisinger had asked.“How can I trust that the sins of the father won’t pass down to the son, and repeat themselves over again?”
Cade had bet his life on this job. Because he’d needed it. God, he’d needed it, to set Karr free.
It was a stupid bet. Downright foolish, but not on Cade’s part. It was foolish on Geisinger, because Cade never intended to leave this jobalive.Fate was too fickle, a guiding force that he had decided, years ago, would not let him live to grow old.
He’d never forget the pain of that night, after he’d signed on the dotted line for this job.
When Rohtt came to his hospital room and wheeled him into surgery.
When the pretty nurse with a robotic eye had ripped Cade’s chest open… and a queen mite was attached to his very heart. As long as the queen mite lived, the other mites lived, too. A complete failsafe, so that Cade would have no other option but to complete the job.
Do what Geisinger asked, return the Antheon, and the mite would be removed.
But if he failed…
All Geisigner had to do was hitstopon the queen mite that held Cade’s life in balance.
