“Kia, look at me,” a soft, pleading voice says.
Sam gasps again, her hands going to her mouth. “That’s my mom’s voice.”
“Kia, let’s have a seat,” Miranda continues.
“Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.”
“She’s dead,” a deep baritone voice cuts through the chaos.
“Fuck. This isn’t good. How much did you give her?” another male voice asks.
“It doesn’t matter. We just need to make sure this is covered up.”
And then it just ends.
Kane tosses the computer onto the sofa and storms off toward his room, slamming the door so hard a painting falls off the wall. Sam is crying full force now, her body rocking as she continues to cover her mouth. I glance at Mountain, who reaches for her while signaling for me to go after my brother.
I take off at a sprint, not bothering to knock. The moment I open the door, Kane swipes his arm across his desk, knocking everything to the floor. I rush to him, wrapping my arms around him to calm him down. It’s a struggle, but I don’t let go.
“Get the fuck off me,” he barks, fighting to get free.
Still, I hold him, grounding him, letting him feel everything. After a moment, once he’s exhausted, his legs give way, but I manage to keep him upright long enough to get him to the bed.
“They did this to her.” The tears pour down his face. “Whatever they gave her, what they were doing, they’re the reason she snapped. And they covered it up, leaving her to suffer through this all alone.”
“They’ll pay. You hear me. We have all the evidence. We’ll make sure of it.” Tears prick my eyes, but somehow, I hold it together for him.
Kane looks at me and hugs me. All his pain, years of doing this alone, I can feel it. Here I am upset that he’s kept a secret when he’s had to endure so much hurt alone. Disposed of and hidden in plain sight.
“I’m sorry,” he says barely above a whisper. “I wanted to tell you. I found out two years ago. My mother had another episode that landed her back in Wyndmoor. She’s been in and out of there my whole life, but I never really understood why. But this time, her doctor decided she needed long-term care,which meant I was left paying the bills and for her treatment. That’s when I found all this documentation, my birth certificate, receipts of payments from your father dating back to the moment I was born. We only met because he put in a word to get me transferred to your school and has had a hand in making sure my education and our lives were funded. But only if she never tells me that he is my father. I confronted him about it and laid it all out. He spent the last two years holding it over my head, threatening to cancel my mom’s treatment. If I even dreamt of telling you the truth, he would take it all away. And I just—” His voice cracks.
“It’s okay. We’re good. We didn’t need his permission to be brothers. We’ve been that from the moment we met.”
My father has treated me like shit my entire life, but I can’t imagine what this has done to Kane. I don’t know how we’re going to handle this going forward, but I do know he’ll never be alone again.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
BRYDEN (MOUNTAIN)
I hate that she’s hurting. Hate that she had to see, read, and hear those things. She’s been searching for answers, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together since her mother passed, and I just made it worse. I want to tell her everything that I found in those clips was just the tip of the iceberg. But she can’t handle that right now.
So I just hold her close, giving her the space she needs to feel. We’re way past vault status, beyond burying the hard feelings in the depths of my phone’s deleted folder. This is too big, too heavy to just erase once it’s over. It’s going to live with them for years to come. Alex, Kane, Sam, Gracie… even Christina, Jackson, and so many of our other peers. They’re all unknowingly wrapped up in this. And given their ages in relation to when some of that footage was taken, it’s looking more and more to me like some breeding cult. Except Sam, having been born a year after the club shut down.
But what I don’t get the most is if that’s what they were doing, breeding these women, why raise some of the children themselves but not others? Clearly they’ve at the very least still provided for them, considering what we now know about Kane’s monthly payments.
Why do any of this at all?
Sam settles into me, her cries piercing me to the core. How do you comfort an invisible pain? Sure, I can hold her like I am, kiss her and prove that I’m here, but it won’t stop this from festering. She’ll move on, seem well for a while, and then something will trigger these memories, and she’ll hurt all over again.
So, no, right now, I won’t tell her about everything else I saw. Instead, I’ll share the one thing that I know will give her hope.
Sam sniffles and dries her eyes. When she pulls away, her face is puffy, eyes now beaming red. Each breath she takes is shallow, as if getting enough oxygen is the hardest thing for her to do. And maybe it is.
“Why would they do something like this?”
“I think we’ll never understand the minds of people who do bad things. And while these women willingly joined that club, there’s enough evidence that proves nonconsent. We can only hope they get their justice, and maybe then the world will be just a little safer.”
“I didn’t expect this.” She shakes her head. “I just wanted to know about my damn scholarship.”
