My chair squeaks as I spin a little too enthusiastically. Pen and paper in hand, I leave my phone. I don’t want to be interrupted by my grandfather or EV business. Not now. Not with this. So, I shut it in my office and wade out into the water.
Shouts jostle me from my conversation with the Illinois Department of Education mid-meeting.
“I need to speak with him!” a man barks, his words echoing off the marble walls.
I continue my conversation. “So, you see I think it would in the best interest of our youth?—”
“Slade! Slade!” The man’s voice becomes clearer, and I recognize it. Edmond. His fist slams against the conference room door as the radios from security declare a disturbance on floor thirty-two. They attempt to drag him from the door. “Get your hands off me! I need to speak to him! Slade!”
I jump to my feet, rounding the conference table, and fling the door open.
Edmond struggles between two security guards.
“That’s my butler. He’s fine,” I say, glaring at them.
Edmond huffs, tugging down his suit jacket, wasting no time running up to me. Face flushed, jaw tight, his eyes wild with something that bounces between urgency and fury.
What the hell is going on?
“They took her,” he spits.
“Took who?” As soon as the question is out of my mouth, my eyes widen. “What? When?” I take off toward the elevator asElliot bounds out of the conference room after me. I push the button several times, and nothing happens.
Screw it.
I bolt to the stairs, climbing them two at a time as Edmond struggles to keep up. “What happened?” I yell down, still several flights away from my office floor.
“Guard security came. Yanked her straight out of the kitchen during our lunch. I’ve been calling and calling.”
“I don’t have my phone.” I clamber up the final flight of steps and burst through the door, heading straight to my office. When I reach my desk, my phone glows with ten missed calls from Edmond and a couple from Kenji and Knox.
No.
Edmond plows through the door, keeling over and panting. “What are you going to do?”
I stare at my phone, wondering the same thing.
Was I ready for this? No, but I should’ve been. Graves warned me. He all but spelled it out the night of the Culling, and I still let myself pretend I had more time. I built a plan around the idea I had a later with her, as if it were guaranteed.
I can picture her, clear as the last time they dragged her away. The panic in her eyes, the way her body went rigid while she tried not to show it. Thea, yanked out of the kitchen with no one there to stop it. No choice. Again.
She’s going to think I let this happen. That all my talk about keeping her safe was another DuPont lie. My fingers tighten around my phone until it creaks under the pressure. I didn’t stop them. That’s what she’ll remember. Not the nights on the couch, nor the moments we shared our pasts.
Back in their hands—the idea of it rocks me. There are a thousand ways this ends badly, and all of them start with her in the hands of other men. My mind runs through every scenarioI’ve seen, every girl who came back broken or who didn’t come back at all.
I chuckle, out loud, and the sound angers me. This was always the cost, wasn’t it? Keeping her close bought her time, not immunity. I knew that. She knew that. She made me …
I suck in a breath, collecting myself. They won’t want me near her; they’ve probably locked her away already. Graves said when the time came, he’d use her. So, I’ll have to bid for her, even though she made me promise not to.
Then, I need to break the vows I promised to uphold and bring EV to its knees.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THEA
My knees hit the concrete with a startling smack, and I let out a whine. They tossed me back in here like I was some sort of escapee. I shiver, the cold from the floor seeping into my stripped body. I’ve been left in my bra and underwear, but the light blue bubble dress I’d put on in hopes Slade might make it home for lunch was taken from me.
A bunch of fabric smacks me in the face before I can stand, and the guard who threw it chuckles. “Put these on. Back to real life, darlin’.”
