His expression shifts then, just slightly, but enough for me to catch something more sinister behind it. There was a flicker of a darker impulse beneath his calm exterior.
“I could have you on your knees for your little attitude,” he says smoothly, and my stomach clenches at the implication. “You did spit vodka all over me, after all.”
I clench my jaw, ignoring the way my skin heats. “I’d say we’re even, considering you tried to murder me with it.”
He hums, considering. “Murder’s such a strong word.”
“So is kneeling.”
That earns me a full smirk, sharp and knowing.
“I see why Ford keeps such a tight leash on you.”
I bristle immediately. “I don’t have a leash.”
“Not yet.”
The way he says it, slow and deliberate, makes my fingers tighten around my wine glass.
Instead, I swallow, gathering my composure but finding it hard to keep my face from looking like I’ve sucked on a lemon. “I don’t appreciate such crudeness from a man whose name I don’t know, and I am not a woman who allows anyone to leash her.”
His eyes flicker with an emotion I can’t decipher. “That’s because no one’s done it properly.”
A tremor sparks in my chest.
He watches me for a moment longer, as if challenging me to break the tension first. When I don’t, he steps back, turning away.
“Go inside, Martine,” he says, using my name for the first time, rolling it over his tongue like a word he’s testing the weight of.
Then he’s gone, disappearing into the night as easily as he arrived, leaving me standing there with my heart hammering against my ribs and my wine glass trembling slightly in my grip.
Chapter two
Hayden Herron
Sophomore Year - 1996
The air is thick. Damp. Ancient. I taste the stone in the back of my throat, feeling the cold of it seeping through my skin where my knees press against the floor. The chamber around me is cavernous, carved from something older than time, the torches casting long, flickering shadows against the vaulted walls.
There's a pit in my stomach, and I’m clenching my muscles so tightly in an effort not to shake.
I am not alone.
To my left, Archibald Franklin and Hudson Taft kneel, both jaws set, their breathing controlled. To my right, Dexter and Fordham Huntington-Russell hold the same rigid posture. The five of us, stripped of our names, our lineage, our illusions of control.
I knew this night would come, and now that I’m here, I’m relishing it.
Laurence Whitmore, a current leader of the Bonesmen of the Brotherhood of Death, steps forward, firelight catching the edges of his sharp features. His presence commands the room with the quiet authority only the director of the CIA can wield.
He looks down at us, and when he speaks, his voice is absolute.
“You kneel not as heirs, not as men, but as initiates of our blood pact Society. Here, you kneel stripped of privilege, stripped of your past, and stripped of the impartial outlook your private schooling afforded you.”
A pause. The weight of the moment settles over me as heavy as stone.
“What is given to you tonight cannot be undone. You enter here with everything, and yet it’s nothing in comparison to the power you’ll now yield. What is asked of you in return cannot be refused. Once you bear the mark, you are ours. And in exchange…the world belongs to you.”
The words pulse through me, their meaning clear. This is not a choice. It never was. To beat men like this, you have to be a man like this.
