Page 228 of Toxic Temptation
“Come now, Dr. Fairfax. You’re a smart woman. I’m sure you can piece it together.” His pale eyes gleam with amusement. “You’ve already found our patient lists. You’ve begun to guess what happened to poor little Leo. What do you think the machine does?”
The answer trickles from between my numb, horrified lips. “Organ harvesting.”
“Very good.” He claps slowly, mockingly. “Though ‘harvesting’ makes it sound so agricultural. We prefer to think of it as ‘redistribution of resources.’”
Bile rises in my throat. “You’ve been stealing organs from hospital patients.”
“Again with the deplorable vocabulary! ‘Stealing’ is such an ugly word, don’t you agree? We provide a service. Skip the waiting lists; bypass all that tedious bureaucracy. As long as you can pay our prices, you get what you need when you need it.”
“Fromchildren?” I croak. “Leo is eight years old.”
“Oh, yes. Children have the best organs. Young, healthy, undamaged by years of poor lifestyle choices.” He says it so casually. Merely another man of capitalism, offering up another hot consumer good. “A pediatric kidney can sell for half a million dollars to the right buyer! It’s made our organization quite wealthy, of course.”
I’m going to be sick. Actually, physically sick all over Jeremy’s expensive carpet.
“The Keres,” I say. “That’s you.”
He nods. “That’s what we call ourselves. Appropriate, don’t you think? In Greek mythology, the Keres were spirits of violent death. They fed on human blood and delighted in the slaughter of war.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“I’m practical.” He takes a step closer, and I grind myself back against the file cabinet like I can teleport through it if I try hard enough. “The world is full of two kinds of people: those who need organs and those who have them. We simply facilitate the exchange.”
“Does Kovan know?”
Ihor’s smile widens, revealing teeth that are too white, too sharp. “Now, that’s the interesting question, isn’t it?” He slouches against Jeremy’s desk, calm as could be. “What do you think, Vesper? Does the man with whom you’ve been sharing a bed know that his organization profits from the suffering of children?”
“No.”
“No? Are you sure about that?” Ihor pulls out his phone and scrolls through something. “Because according to our financial records, the Krayev Bratva has been taking a percentage of our profits since the very beginning. Fifteen percent of everything we make goes directly into accounts controlled by… your boyfriend.”
Everything goes quiet except for the sound of my own heartbeat thundering in my ears.
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?” He turns the phone screen toward me.
I don’t want to look at it, though. “He would never. He would?—”
Ihor cuts me off with a laugh. “Vesper, sweetheart, where do you think all his money comes from? The organ trade isn’t some side business we run without Kovan’s knowledge. It’s our most lucrative operation. And your precious boyfriend has been reaping his cut from day one.”
I can’t breathe. The air in this room has become too thick, too heavy. My lungs aren’t working properly.
“He wouldn’t,” I whisper. “He loves Luka. He would never put children at risk.”
“Luka is family. These other children, though?” Ihor shrugs. “Simply collateral damage.”
“Other children” is such a cruel and callous way to put it. They aren’t “other children”—they’re innocent souls with faces and laughs and stories. They’re Leos and Mias and Harpers and dozens of other children whose parents brought them here believing they’d be safe.
They’re mypatients.They’re my responsibility.
“I’ll report you,” I say. “I’ll go to the police, the FBI, whoever will listen.”
Again, Ihor simply laughs. “With what evidence? And even if you could prove something, who do you think they’ll believe? A respected surgeon with decades of experience, or a discredited, repeatedly disciplined malcontent who’s been sleeping with a known criminal?”
He’s right. I have no proof, only these cryptic files—assuming he even lets me walk out of here with those in hand—and my credibility has already been compromised by my relationship with Kovan.
Still, the last thing I’m going to do is let this creepy bastard intimidate me into silence.
