He eyes my phone and the contact screen that saysDAD. His gaze lifts to mine. “You’re a doctor. Can’t you just prescribe the meds yourself?”
“I never did my year internship, so I’m not medically licensed.” I may have an MD beside my name, but it’s practically useless without finishing my internship and taking a board.
“Now you tell me.”
I roll my eyes again. “I know everything that a doctor does, I just can’t do shit without being sued.”
Luna mumbles, “I’m gonna go lie down.”
Maximoff concentrates on his sister. “Stay with Janie just in case you need anything.”
Luna nods and puts the soaked cotton ball back on her tongue. Right when she leaves, Maximoff jumps to the floor and then takes my phone out of my hand.
“It’ll be faster if I call your dad,” he says.
It reminds me that everyone—the entire security teamandall of the families—know that I’m on the worst terms with my father. He accepted every single tattoo, every piercing, every means of self-expression, but the day that I quit medicine, he looked right at me in front of these famous families, in front of the giant security team on a hot Labor Day vacation, and he said loudly and clearly, “You’re a disappointment.”
If I call him right now about medicine, there’s a chance he may hang up on me.
I nod to Maximoff and let him talk to my father. I stay during the conversation, but it lasts maybe three minutes, prescription ordered, and he hands back my phone.
“You’re in for the night?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” My ticket out of his townhouse has always been the information Price wanted. About the Camp-Away event. I feel like my time is up, and I have to board a train to an undesirable destination. I’d rather stay here, but duty calls. “I just need to know your plans for December’s Charity Camp-Away.”
Maximoff crosses his arms over his bare chest. “You can tell the security team that the plans are the same except for the entry process.”
I shift my weight. “What do you mean?”
“There won’t be hellishly expensive tickets to purchase in October. Instead, there’ll be a raffle.”
“A raffle,” I repeat flatly.
“My team projected we’d earn fifty million with the Camp-Away with either entry process—and I recognize the higher security risk with a raffle—but I want to give people who can’t afford the tickets an opportunity to experience the event.” He explains, “So for every one dollar donated, a person enters their name to the raffle. One week before the event in December, we’ll randomly pick the attendees out of the pool.”
I cement in place. “Basically, you’re opening your three-day camping trip to anyone who has a dollar.”The public.I raise a hand, my pulse pounding against my throat. “How many attendees will be chosen through the raffle?”
“All of them. So three-hundred.”
Three-hundred.Security is going to have to background checkthree-hundredpeople in seven days. And if anyonewith mal-intent slips through the cracks, Maximoff will be put directly in harm’s way.
10
FARROW KEENE
Sweat dripping down my temples,I jab a red punching bag and finish my combination with a right hook and hard left kick. 4:23 a.m.
Not even five hours after I radioed security about the raffle, Akara called a mandatory and “emergency” Omega meeting at the Studio 9 gym.
See, I recognize the danger of the raffle, but if I can’t even convince Maximoff to let me drive his Audi, then I highly doubtanyonecan convince him to alter a charity event that he’s poured months and months of work and thought into.
And I warned Maximoff that the entire security team would overreact about his Camp-Away changes. He just said, “I’ll speak to the Tri-Force and comply wherever necessary, but the raffle is staying.”
Not many people ever volunteer to speak to all three lead bodyguards at once. Price Kepler of Alpha, Akara Kitsuwon of Omega, and the bane of my career, Thatcher Moretti of Epsilon, are all at the peak of the security hierarchy.
The Tri-Force.
