“You don’t get to choose.” Garrett, Haidyn’s dad, speaks as if I was talking to him. The thing about the Spade brothers is that they all think they’re your dad.
My father looks up at me from his computer and sits back in his chair. “Name,” he asks, picking up his pen.
“Eve,” I answer.
His pen pauses on the piece of paper, and he looks up at me. “Eve what?”
“That’s all I know,” I say honestly.
He drops his pen. “Does she go to Barrington?”
“Not that I know of.” I’ve never seen her there before. I would have remembered her, but it’s a huge college. So it’s always a possibility.
He sighs, and I hear the others laugh. “Well…how the fuck do you know her?” my father demands.
I think about that for a second and decide I can’t lie to him. Not about this. I want her more than anything for my senior year. “During my initiation. On the Isabella.” That was last month, and I can’t get her out of my head. Where the fuck did she go? We were on a yacht. Did she jump off it after she left me? I searched everywhere for her, only to come up empty. The only thing she was wearing was my suit jacket. She didn’t even take her heels. No purse. No phone. Nothing. Did she get killed for what I did to the Lord she was with? She probably had a pimp and was punished for not doing her job.
My father frowns.
Garrett’s laugh gets my attention. “Son, if she was on theIsabella, then she’s a prostitute…”
“Meaning she’s not a virgin,” my father adds.
My teeth grind. I already knew this. All Lords get a chosen their senior year at Barrington University. After we’re initiated into the Lords. But only the Spade brothers are required to take a virgin. “I want her.” I don’t give a shit who she’s fucked.
“If she was on that yacht, then we’ve probably all fucked her.” My father shakes his head, and I fist my hands at the thought of them raping her like that Lord was going to do. “The answer is no.”
“Dad—”
“No, Kashton,” he snaps. “You will not take a whore. She will be a virgin, and I will pick her out.” He places his attention on his computer. Conversation over.
I lie in my bed back at Carnage, staring at the TV, but I don’t hear it. Eve is heavy on my mind.
She doesn’t have the barcode. Could that mean she was telling the truth? I don’t know. Just because Adam’s chosen had one doesn’t mean they all get one. What if that barcode was a breadcrumb for Adam and not Dollhouse itself, and we’re just wrong?
A conversation that night on Bill’s jet comes to mind.“What’s on her inner thigh? What does it say?” Saint asks, looking at the photo of Adam’s chosen tied to the chair.
“It’s a barcode. All slaves at Dollhouse have them,” Bill answers.
Haidyn and I were both forced to kill our chosens. I say forced because it was either that or a life of rape and torture. Sometimes death is all you have.
I made the decision to end her life. Was I wrong? I’ll never know. I remember begging my father for Eve to be my chosen. I’ve never been more thankful that he said no. I don’t know if I would have been able to kill her when Isabella took us in for training.
It’s easy for me to say yes. That I want to think I would save her from such a horrific life, but she wasn’t the bleeding woman who was tied up and naked, begging me to help her.
I’ve been looking for Eve for years, and now here she is. Dropped in my lap like an answered prayer. The only thing is, a Lord doesn’t pray.
I want to question it, but I want her more.
Everett Sinclair will not get away from me this time. If I have to drag her to the basement and leave her chained there like a dog, she will not slip through my fingers. She’ll wear my ring and have my last name.
My father raised me to be a Spade brother, and I will treat her as a prisoner if I have to.
TWELVE
EVERETT
Do you ever feel like you’re supposed to be someone else? I was meant to be a boy. Even the doctors said I’d be a boy. So my father named me Everett.
