EIGHTY-EIGHT
KASHTON
The guys and I are all sitting at our desks in the office when the door opens and Devin enters.
Haidyn looks up and stops what he’s doing when he sees who it is. “I was about to come join you and Charlotte.” He frowns and asks, “How was she?”
“Good.” Devin nods. “She wasn’t as dehydrated today, so it took her longer to finish her IV.”
“Well, that’s good.” Haidyn nods to himself.
Charlotte has had one hell of a hard time, and she’s not far along. The three babies are going to take it out of her for sure, and they’re not even here yet.
“Here’s that file you asked for, Kashton.” He drops it onto my desk, and I stare at the folder. “It took a lot of digging, but it was there.”
“What’s in the file?” Haidyn asks.
I open it up and scan the document. Running a hand down my face, I sigh. “My father was a founder.”
“A founder?” Saint asks.
I shut the file and sit back in my seat. “I started taking the enhancement after I found out Everett was one. It took me until after Eve returned to realize I wasn’t having hallucinations.”
“Because you already had the enhancement,” Haidyn adds, and I nod.
“What about Eve?” he asks Devin. “Adam said she had a blood transfusion. Did that affect her founder gene?”
“No. She was given blood that was from a founder,” Devin answers. “But she already had it, so there shouldn’t have been any side effects.”
“Whose?” I growl, knowing she hasn’t hallucinated other than the one time the Lords forced it on her for her initiation.
Devin sighs and answers. “Adam’s.”
“Fuck.” I want to kill that motherfucker. He gave mywife blood? I know I’m supposed to be thankful, but it pisses me off. I could have given her mine. I hate any connection that my wife has to him. Which is crazy because there was a time I would have done anything for Adam. Times have changed.
“I would have killed him,” Haidyn says, reading my mind.
“Here’s this one as well.” He drops another file onto my desk, and I rip it open.
“What the fuck is this?” I ask, now pissy.
“These are Everett’s medical records from when she was seeing the fertility doctor.”
“What about the eggs?” I ask Devin, not understanding the words on the paper. I didn’t want to ask this in front of my wife, but it didn’t make much sense to me why Garrett had it done.
“From what I’ve read on her files, Eve was having a hard time getting pregnant.”
They raped me for years, she said to me. It was because they weren’t getting the results they wanted. Babies.
“So they placed her on fertility drugs thinking that would improve her odds. But when that wasn’t working either, they decided to try in vitro fertilization.”
“How does that work?” Saint asks.
“She was given hormones to stimulate the ovaries and produce the eggs. Once the eggs are matured, they are retrieved. They are then combined with whoever’s sperm. Last, the healthy embryos are transferred back into the uterus.” He frowns. “But from the records, they never made it far into the process. Eggs were retrieved, looks to be over two years’ time, and Garrett had them frozen for future use.”
“But why?” Saint asks. “They were raping her in hopes to get her pregnant while also retrieving the eggs? How many kids did they fucking want? I mean, if there were kids running around here, we would have eventually noticed. Our fathers barely raised us. How the fuck were they going to raise all these babies?”
“Sell the eggs is my best guess,” Devin answers.
