Page 73 of Charlie
“Well, now you know.” Charles used a sing-song voice and took his plate to the kitchen while talking over his shoulder. “I have to be at Trinity in an hour and I’m taking Liv with me. She wants to see the buildings from the inside.”
“Will you be home for dinner tonight?” Ciara asked as if this were any regular morning.
“I’m not sure. We might go out for dinner downtown. I’ll call you when we know our plans.”
When Charles and I were outside and walking to the train station, I waited until we were out of earshot from the house before I stopped him and burst out, “You have to admit that was crazy.”
Charles let out a deep breath and looked back the way we’d come. “Yeah, that stunt surprised me. I don’t know what that was about. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Ciera and Sara were literally ready to die for him. What the fuck?”
Charles shook his head. “I know. But that’s the kind of people they are. It’s authentic and real. They live life to the fullest – they walk the walk and talk the talk.”
I stared at him. “Who in their right mind would ask someone to shoot themselves to prove their loyalty?”
“Conor knew the gun wasn’t loaded. It was a test. He wasn’t going to let us kill ourselves.”
The way he was defending Conor worried me. I had been so sure that after this stunt, Charles would see that Conor wasn’t a nice guy.
We began walking again. “What if I hadn’t been there? Would you have pulled the trigger to prove your loyalty to him?”
“Nah-uh. I’m a loyal person, but I don’t’ mess around with guns. Besides, that whole thing about dying for each other is illogical to me. What would my loyalty be worth if I was dead?”
I kept walking with his hand in mine. “Do you think he got mad when we asked Sara to put the gun down?”
“Maybe, but we had to. We couldn’t know that the gun wasn’t loaded.”
“At least the children weren’t there to see it. I was really scared.”
“Conor is super protective of the children. Of course, he wouldn’t do it in front of them. They wouldn’t understand that it was just a joke.”
I didn’t argue with him or point out that jokes were supposed to make people laugh and not almost pee themselves in fright. They could call it a prank all day long, but it had been a test of Conor’s control over not just Sara but the rest of them too. Not one of them had intervened or protested, except for Charles, but he’d only done it when I pushed him to. I was well aware of how cult leaders pushed people to accept irrational behavior as normal, and this morning, the Red Manor group had just been pushed further.
Sitting in the train, we were both quiet, until I asked, “When you say Conor is a genius, what do you mean? What makes him so special? What kind of work does he do?”
“He used to work for the government as a code breaker. Most of his work was classified so he can’t talk about it, but he was recruited because of his insanely high IQ.”
“Then why did he stop? Seems a bit young to be retired.”
“He’s not retired. He just didn’t like being used as a tool by the government. Conor managed to take the salary he made and invest it in a way that makes him a multi-millionaire today. He’s extremely gifted that way and keeps making a lot of money on investments. That’s why he now runs the Red Manor Foundation, which works on philanthropic projects to benefit children around the world. At the same time, he’s taken a lot of time to travel and study with gurus in East India where he learned to connect his energy to a higher vibrancy. Now, he’s careful of who he lets into his circle but those of us lucky enough to learn from him benefit tremendously. I’m telling you: if you can sit down and have a deep conversation with him, you’ll understand how rare he is. It’s like he can read your mind and look into your soul.”
I managed to change the subject and talk about something else, because if I had to listen to one more minute of Charles’ adoration for the psychopath who’d just challenged his followers to kill themselves, I would throw up in a public train.
CHAPTER 18
Brainwashing
Charles
For three days everything seemed to work fine.
Liv spent a lot of the time with the children and there were times when I’d almost get jealous because they took too much of her attention. Every morning Liv would make me feel like the happiest man in the world when she came to my room. We’d make passionate love and start our mornings discussing our future.
She no longer talked about her next destination, and I didn’t bring it up. I’d promised her that we would visit Paris together, and an idea was starting to take root in my mind. I could invite her to Paris over Christmas and if everything was still amazing between us, I would propose to her.
She had called Paris the most romantic city in the world and for that reason alone, it seemed like the perfect place for us to exchange engagement rings. My grandfather had only known my grandmother for a few months when he proposed to her, and my parents had been quick to get engaged too. It ran in my family; now that I’d found the perfect woman, I had no need to wait around for a few years to test the waters.
I was happy to see that Conor had taken a liking to Liv too. Last night, he’d talked to her for at least an hour about her past and her plans for the future. She told him about her dream to work as a forensic anthropologist to help police departments identify mysterious or unknown remains. It didn’t surprise me that with Conor’s vast network he knew someone who could help her achieve that dream.
