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CHAPTER

ONE

Cam

Chaos is my friend.

My best friend. For most of my life, my only real friend.

The average person does everything possible to avoid chaos. They are afraid of it. People like predictability. Stability. The known.

The certain.

Which means people like me have an enormous, unearned advantage when things fall apart.

Like now.

Did I bring Paigelynn halfway across the world to this remote, private island in the Mediterranean for a billionaire’s auction because I want to?

No.

Did I buy her and hand her off to my mother because I want to?

Also, no.

Did I do it all to save Paigelynn from an even worse fate?

That remains to be seen.

Because that’s the problem with chaos. When the worm turns, everything you carefully built, using strategy and tactics with backup plans galore, relying on redundant systems that may or may not be resilient enough to withstand collapse, either works or it doesn’t.

And in this case, if it doesn’t, we’re both dead.

“I am so touched,” my mother says, smiling at me with those strange distant eyes as the auction crowd murmurs among themselves, the sound closer to a hiss than a hum.

Her eyes have always been like that. Like she’s half here and half somewhere unspeakable, where dark creatures swim in filthy, sulfurous waters, ready to drag you into the deep. “You’ve given me such a gift.”

“The gift of life!” Barbara Luisi gushes, at Mother’s side, smiling at me. Curious eyes probe my face. “I’d heard you left us, Mario. So good to have you back.”

“I never left, Barbara. Just… on assignment.”

Bullseye. Her eyes flare. I’ve given her gossip to feed the silly geese for a week. She’ll go back to her little passel of wealthy friends and spread the word.

Mario Santinos may have killed The Basher, but there must have been a good reason, right? After all, he brought the girl to the island.

Then bought her.

And gave her to Angelina.

Here’s the part they don’t understand. That Debbie doesn’t understand. That my own adoptive father and his cronies don’t understand: I am loyal to no one but me.

Me and my dead sister, Mira.

“Wonderful!” Barbara gasps, eyes bouncing between me and Mother. “Your kidney! Your heart! Soon you’ll be healthy again. We’ll have to go skiing in Courchevel this winter.”

“My knees ache with anticipation,” Mother jokes, making Barbara laugh a bit too hard, eyes darting to watch my face.

My little stunt bought me time. Nothing more. I’m not out of the woods yet. If anything, I’m on probation.

No.

More like parole.

Just a different kind this time.

“Isn’t she lovely?” Mother murmurs. Calling her Mom, even in my mind, doesn’t work. Too casual, too reminiscent of the normal years, before she and Dad found the Gaia cult they made me and my sister grow up in. I can’t let myself think of her as Mom.

Paigelynn and others in the cult call her The Mother.

Mother it is, then.

“She is.”

“You spent significant time alone with her, I hear. Hopefully not too much,” she adds, the implication clear.

“You know the exam concluded she remains a virgin,” Barbara says before I have to come up with a response. Once I delivered an unconscious Paigelynn to the handlers, I turned off all my emotions. Had no choice. If I let my protective instincts remain in that moment, we'd both die.

Some sacrifices are dual-edged. I'm playing a very long game. Letting those fuckers touch her for the sake of their sick charade is better than letting them do what they plan to do in the end.

There will be no "end" with Paigelynn.

Which means I had to let them do the virgin exam, even if it kills me.

Except it doesn't.

That's the beauty of compartmentalization.

“Good,” Mother purrs. “Not that I care about that part of her. Not the way a man like you would, Mario. It’s the heart and kidney that concern me.”

“They are intact,” I assure her. A scuffle on the stage, followed by whimpering sounds, makes my eyes jump to Paigelynn, who has tears streaming down her face, mouth downturned at the corners around the ball gag.

Her hands are bound in front of her, and she's bent slightly at the waist. Instinct makes her curl in like that. We turn small when we're defenseless.

And make no mistake – she is.

On the surface, at least.

Our eyes lock, hers widening, begging, pleading with me to save her. She makes whimpering sounds, the ahh, ahh, ahh sound like she's saying Cam. Cam.

Cam.

Save me, Cam. Help me. Help.

Help.

Oh, my dear, you have no idea, I think but can't say.

Mother's eyes roam over my face, watching for the tiniest tell. If I let one square millimeter of skin twitch in the wrong way, Paigelynn and I are doomed.

Leering is easy. I just imagine I'm a Donegal, unbuckling my thick leather belt, drooling over a terrified kidnapping victim as if she were a willing pick-up at a nightclub, snapping the strap with eager hands, dick hard in my pants and getting harder by the second as her terror rises.

I whimper back at Paigelynn, a mocking sound deep in my throat, slipping into the upper register of my palate, coming out through my nose.

"They're even cuter when they beg for their lives, aren't they?

" I say, crossing the room and climbing easily on stage, catching her jaw in my hand.

The second my fingers touch her cheek electricity shoots through me, muscles tensing, the impulse to throw her over my shoulder and run so great I have to bite the inside of my cheek and draw blood to stop myself.

Acrid, bitter copper brings me to my senses.

Trying to escape is guaranteed death. They'll kill me first, preserve her, and then Mother gets everything she's worked so hard for.

Angelina Santinos gets a new heart, a new kidney, and the triumph of defeating the son who betrayed her.

I cannot let that happen.

I will not let that happen.

"Oh, little Princess," I say, my face so close I can smell the fear on her breath, her eyes turning down, throat spasming as she retches. "Don't be afraid. Everyone here has your best interests at heart."

Her eyebrows collide, eyelashes fluttering.

Paigelynn trembles in my arms, gooseflesh covering every inch of her skin.

She curls in tighter. Blood likely pools in her arms and legs, the sedative they gave her still coursing through her veins, just enough to make her easy to manipulate, but not too much to tax the kidneys and liver.

Her breath changes, nose sounds hitching as she begins to sob. The ball gag will make it hard for her to breathe, her nose filling as tears descend unbidden. To my surprise, she lifts her eyes to meet mine again, and her throat manages to make a sound I recognize.

"Uck oo," she says, eyes going dead.

I smile. It's genuine and real.

No one around us heard her.

Slowly, she rolls her shoulders up and back, the light shining on her throat. A steady, but fast, pulse makes the thin, delicate skin along her collarbone tremor slightly. The crying has stopped, and she sniffs once, casting her eyes toward Mother.

They are dead as coal.

Attagirl.

When you are at the mercy of sick fucks who treat you like old gum on the bottom of their shoe, the only sure-fire defense you have is to go cold inside. Dead. Calm.

Fearless.

What good is fear when they're going to kill you anyhow? You know your fate. You cannot fight that fate. All you can do is find whatever you can, deep inside, to rob them of incremental bits of pleasure.

Yes – pleasure . They love what they’re doing. It’s not just about longevity. They get off on getting away with turning humans into commodities.

Because no one is stopping them.

"Stop looking at me like that," Mother says to Paigelynn, her eyes narrowing, mouth pursing a bit before she takes a sip of her drink. "You have no right."

Paigelynn does not break the gaze as I relinquish her jaw, stepping aside so she's facing Mother dead on. It's as if Mother isn't there, the way Paigelynn stares at her.

Through her.

Soullessly.

"Mario," Mother snaps. "Make her stop before I do."

"How can I make her not look at something? Remove her eyeballs?"

Barbara lets out a nervous laugh. "That'll come eventually. Don't waste them, though. I heard Xio Ng has Fuch's Dystrophy and needs endothelial cells for a special transplant."

Mother marches straight up to Paigelynn and shoves her in the hips, hard. The height disparity is about eighteen inches, as Paigelynn's still on stage, hands bound, mouth gagged. She stumbles and falls on her ass, and not for one second does her gaze break.

Mother's nostrils widen, her rage a scent I can smell, a vibration that comes out of her pores in waves I feel.

Feel back through history, decades ago, into my childhood.

But I am not a boy now.

I am a grown man on a mission. A mission so many layers deep, my mother cannot possibly know about all of them.

That's by design.

She cast me aside like I was nothing. Less than nothing. An obstacle, a pawn, a toy she amused herself with when useful for her and ignored otherwise. In no way, shape, or form is my mother – The Mother – a maternal figure.

She is evil incarnate.

And while the battle of good vs. evil is one that never ends, and no one knows how it all turns out in the end, I know one thing for certain:

She will not win.

I'll die making sure of it.

Not today, though.

And not right now.

Making a snap decision, I grab Paigelynn's arm hard enough to bruise.

"Mario! Don't injure that skin," Mother begins to protest, but I can hear the smile in her voice.

The sadistic satisfaction.

Two birds with one stone, right? Getting her estranged son to smack the disobedient spare parts machine ups her social credibility in this crowd.

SMACK!

Someone was going to do it. A bodyguard. A medical professional. A pervert in the ranks.

Or Mother herself.

Slapping Paigelynn takes skill. I need to make it look convincing but not hit her hard enough to make it hurt. The angry red splotch forming on her cheek and the deadly contempt in her eyes tells me I succeeded.

We both breathe hard, her chest rising and falling with obvious effort, mine more controlled under my tuxedo.

I choose my words carefully.

"Your fate is sealed." My eyes bore into hers as I get my face as close as possible.

Every person in the room watches us now, the audience bigger, Mother's pleasure broadening.

Her chest swells with the longest, deepest breath I've ever seen.

It's as if she's inhaling everything, everywhere, all of it so she can explode and disintegrate.

Except that's not how biology works.

Red in the face, ribs wide and strong, Paigelynn slowly deflates.

Defiance remains.

Her teeth click against the ball in the gag, red chafing at the corners of her mouth. Unspeakable horrors await her if I don't get this right.

And if I do?

She'll still suffer.

I can't stop that. Can't mitigate for everything. All I can do is reduce the harm she experiences.

Getting her the hell out of here and taking down this network of beastly corrupt cruelty means constant recalculation and compromise.

"She's pretty when she hates you, Mario," Mother says, jolting me from my thoughts. She’s panting, her thin chest rising and falling with effort. It’s only now that I see how frail she is, how her skin pulls against her bones, her pallor nearly gray. She shouldn’t be breathing so hard from that shove, but she is.

Ah. Weakness. Mother is sicker than I thought.

Which makes her needy.

"Yes."

I turn to find her smiling at me, the closest thing to love in her eyes I've ever seen.

"Then let's find more ways to make her hate you."