Page 89 of Redemption

Carys

SinceIcan’tseethe clock, I’m not sure how long I’ve been here. Jade came back to give my father another shot. She wouldn’t say what drug, but it’s knocked him out cold. A mercy or a punishment?

This time when the door swings open behind me, she’s wheeling a cart. On it is a device with a timer, similar to the confetti bomb from months ago. If only I could be sure this one would spew out harmless pieces of paper. A sweat breaks out under my armpits at the four hours counting down. How is Finn going to find me with so little on the clock?

“I suppose four hours and twenty-four hours are easy to confuse.” I raise my eyebrows.

She cackles and eases the bomb off the trolley. “Maybe this bomb won’t go off in four hours and then I’ll wheel in another one. Maybe I’ll drop off bombs at random intervals, and you’ll never be sure which will lead to your demise.” She rubs her chin. “An explosion of fear over and over again doesn’t sound so bad to me. How long would it take for you to become desensitized? Would you ever?”

“You’re sick,” I say.

“Please, Pearl.” My mother is out of tears, but her tone is pleading. “We’ll get you help. It’s not too late for you to have a different life. We can get to know each other. We can have the mother-daughter bond you always wanted.”

“I bet you wish you had a time machine.” She smiles at our mother. “Would you still have left him—left me—if you knew you’d end up dying with your lying, cheating husband and your weak daughter?” She crouches in front of her. “Was your life really so much better without me?”

“I regretted leaving you every day.”

She swivels to me. “Carys, did our mother seem sad every day of her life? Did she seem filled with regret over me, her lost daughter?”

No, but I’m not about to say that. How do we ever realize what goes on behind the faces people choose to show us? My father wanted her to pretend her first child and her first marriage didn’t exist, so that’s what she did. She survived, but I’m not sure she was ever free of her past. Do I agree with her choice? No. Do I think she should be murdered for it? No, again.

“My mother and I have never been that close,” I lie. There was a time when we were, but that was so many years ago I barely remember those days. “Once I learned about you, I understood why. She must have felt such enormous guilt and remorse over you. The daughter she left behind.”

Jade’s jaw clenches. “Lies,” she spits out. “You think I haven’t pored over your lives? Tried to insert myself? Figure out how a mother could abandon a child with a man like my father? A man who beat me and manipulated me and warped me into this.” She gestures to herself before rising to her full height. “But he didn’t break me. I can’t be broken.”

I’m afraid she’s far more broken than she realizes. The clock behind her keeps losing time, speeding us closer to some kind of ending. Is it a real bomb? Or has she planted another fake to enjoy our screams of frustration before it doesn’t detonate?

“You rose out of the ashes.” I try to mollify her. “There’s no point in burying us. You survived. You’re thriving. You’re leading the PLA, one of the biggest worldwide organizations. Where is Pierre-Jacques, anyway?”

“He’s out of the country on another errand.” She titters. “Or maybe several errands. We’ve been very busy planting our seeds. They’re ready to bloom.”

“You don’t need to take us down to prove your greatness.”

A hint of a smile touches her lips. “The point, dear sister, is that Icando it. I was left with a monster of a man, and I learned to adapt. Every day, a different version of myself. Whatever meant I didn’t get hurt. But there’s power in that, too, isn’t there? In being able to become the person someonewantsyou to be.”

“There’s a lot more happiness in being yourself,” I murmur. “You’re capable of redemption. We all are. You have to want it badly enough.” Recovering ourselves comes at a different cost and manifests in unique ways, but we can seek it, embrace it.

Her sinister smile slips a little. “Thisis what I need. Once you’re gone, I’ll be happy. There’ll be no more reminders about how much better my life could have been had my mother cared enough to take me. Had that man”—she points at my father—“not been a selfish bastard.”

“Fine,” she cries. “Fine. Punish me. Punish Charles. Just let Carys go. Don’t make her pay for our mistakes.”

“We all—” Jade is cut off by shouting somewhere outside the room. Her heels click on the floor as she goes to investigate.

Hope stirs in my chest, but it’s too much to believe Finn has already found us. It’s a skirmish among her men.

“Dissention in the ranks?” I ask. “Maybe you should go out and get them sorted.”

The door opens, and Jade calls out, “What’s going—” Bullets ping off metal, and she slams the door closed. Her heels click across the floor, and she slices through whatever is securing my ankles in one swift movement, nicking my skin in the process. She yanks me off my chair and hauls me into the far corner of the room with her, using me as a shield, facing the entrance. Her knife is pressed into my side.

Outside, the shooting and shouting goes on forever. Then I hear familiar voices—Lorcan and Kim. My ears strain for the voice I want to hear most, but if he’s out there, he’s not close enough yet.

“He came for me,” I whisper. Whether or not he’s spoken, they wouldn’t be here without him. He’s out there.

Jade chuckles in my ear. “And he’ll get to watch you stabbed over and over again. You can bleed out in his arms. My knife will hit the right spots to make that happen.”

“He’ll kill you.” I try to wriggle free, but the awkward angle of my arms makes it hard for me to move. She’s also a lot stronger than she looks when she tugs me tight against her.

“I’ve got the remote to the bomb in my pocket,” she croons. “None of us are walking out of here today.”

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