If Huisman wanted to continue his experiments on her sister, she would know what made her twin—her tough-as-nails twin—scream and cry and wish for death. What had damaged her heart.
It felt oddly right to potentially go out this way, taking pain that was meant for her twin sister. They’d shared everything else. Clothes and secrets. A face and a life. For so long they’d shared their scars.
Kenzie’s breath caught as the cell door opened and that fucker strode in like this was an ordinary meeting.
He actually smiled at her.
Asshole.
“I want to see Lou.” She didn’t move from her seat. She kept up the casual anger that often seemed to be her sister’s trademark.
“Such a rude girl. Well, I couldn’t hope that you would come for me.” Huisman was dressed in a suit and flanked by two burly guards loaded with weapons.
Weapons she could get off them if she had a chance. She saw the scene play out in her head. Attack the first guard, take the semiautomatic off his right hip while she kicked out and caught the second guard in the solar plexus, pushing back against the wall. She would shoot Huisman first and then take the guards out if she had to. The door was on a key card system with no biometrics, but that didn’t mean the rest of the building didn’t have them. She would have to keep his body close in case she needed a fingerprint or retinal scan. She was absolutely certain this was when her twin would gleefully take the body parts she would need and leave the rest behind, but one thing she did not share with her sister was a love of blood. Nope. She preferred cleanliness, thank you very much.
The problem was she hadn’t seen Lou yet. Kenzie wasn’t even sure she was here. If Lou wasn’t here… Well, if she wasn’t here, then it was all for nothing.
“I want to see Lou.”
Huisman’s eyes narrowed on her. “I’d like to talk first. Did your sister find Benjamin?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care.” She frowned. “And I suspect you already know. You’re a pervert who likes to watch.” She gestured to the camera. “I doubt you didn’t have them on your boyfriend.”
He chuckled, a low, oddly charming sound, but then the devil likely needed to be charming from time to time. “Oh, I assure you there’s never been anything sexual between me and Benjamin. I am far more evolved than that. I find sexual relations distasteful, though it is obviously necessary to continue my line. A man’s name living on afterhis death is imperative. A fact I’ve been considering lately.”
She intended to end his cursed line. “Is that why you run a brothel? To continue your line? It’s pretty wild.”
“Ah, which one talked?” Huisman asked, though there was no shock in his tone. “Well, I knew one of them would. I suspect it’s Sosa. Troubled girl. Always causing problems, but she was a risk I was willing to take.”
“Why? Why not simply assassinate my father? Having thought about it, it’s obvious Sosa’s real job was to infiltrate my family. Were they strictly there to cause the problems you needed to kidnap Lou?”
He paced like a professor in front of a crowd of eager students. “That was the main plan. You see the key to life is knowing the weaknesses of the people around you. Your mother, like all women, has many weaknesses. Your father only has one, but it’s a large one.”
“My mother.”
“Proof that the great Ian Taggart is a pathetic male bowing to women’s weaknesses. I knew your mother’s childhood would make her sympathetic to a young woman raised in similar circumstances,” Huisman continued. “I offered my problem up to the board at the chateau and they suggested a psy-op on your family. We sent Sosa in first.”
Now she was catching on. “She was the most expendable. The one you trust the least. But she was also the one you thought my mother would connect with since she’s a Russian girl abused and forced into a life she didn’t want. Yes, my mother would risk a lot to help a girl like that.”
“It didn’t hurt that the girls would drop hints and get your parents curious. They were willing to risk a lot for intel. I’m sure your father thinks it’s smarter to keep your enemies close. I knew Sosa would turn the first time she had the opportunity. She was weak. So I ensured that Gabby and Claire—good soldiers who know their place—had everything they would need to take care of the situation when the time came. Sosa was a problem child. Always asking questions and getting the rest of the girls riled up. We won’t miss her.”
She hadn’t expected empathy from him. She wondered if he thought Sosa was dead. Tris had gone in and cleared all the hospital records for her and Tim. She certainly wasn’t going to tell him, and Gabby and Claire believed they’d succeeded on all levels with theexception of getting away. “Well, you did have her taken from her home and tortured so she would kill people for you.”
One slim shoulder shrugged. “Young girls make the best spies and thieves and assassins. It’s because the world rightly ignores them except for their obvious uses.”
“And when they’re no longer young women?”
“Then their usefulness is over and they are no longer needed at the chateau. Naturally there’s no way to leave the group once you’re in. It’s how they’ve stayed a secret for so many years.”
She was sure they didn’t get to retire to the country. The longer she kept him talking the more time Tris had to find her. And the longer she put off the eventual pain she would go through this evening. She was curious at how the group had adapted over the years. “Do you have any hackers?”
“Oh, of course. More than you would imagine. The world right now is nothing but technology, so yes, hackers are trained at the chateau as well. Their clients require money and information, and that is best acquired these days online. Personally, I think they should get out of the sex business, but they cling to their traditions. I’m told the threat of being moved to the other side keeps the girls in line.”
She would take as much information as she could. If there was something she’d learned about this man, it was that he didn’t mind talking when he thought he had the upper hand. He believed she would never leave here so he was willing to discuss all of his fabulous plans. “I would bet a lot that you also have some incredibly powerful artificial intelligence. Or did you really kidnap Ben’s fiancée right off the surgical table and keep her hidden for years?”
“I wondered if you would suspect. I thought I would try it out. It’s brand new, and I think you’ll be surprised at who coded the base. My people have perfected it. An AI that so perfectly creates the way this one does could change our perception of reality. It could simply change reality altogether. What does anything mean if we can’t agree on something so basic as what is real and what is not real? So my question is are you real?” He moved closer but still kept some distance. Like she was a dangerous animal. “How can I be sure you’re Kala Taggart?”
She rolled her eyes. “Because I’m not crying and begging you to save my friend. My sister is overly dramatic. She wouldn’t even listen to me when I said that sex tape was probably AI garbage. I couldn’tbreak it because you have the one person on my team who could likely figure it out. So, despite the fact that Lou is worth ten Ben Parkers, she only cared about rescuing him. So she could try to kill him. She only thinks about her own damn feelings. It was easy to get out of The Garden because everyone was paying attention to Kenzie. It was a whole scene, but I suspect you anticipated that.”
