Page 4

"Mario." Ian Donegal extends his hand, the shake intense and tight, just like his smile. "Welcome back. Quite an entrance."

"Thanks. Good to see you, Ian."

"Is it?" His harsh laugh puts me in my place. "Seems you have something I want."

Need , I nearly correct him. It would be a mistake, and piss him off, so I keep my mouth shut.

"You could have outbid me."

"I don't waste money on over-inflated items."

Those words make Mother drop her conversation with Sandor and turn sharply toward us.

"Over-inflated?" she says with a high laugh. "Jealousy wears poorly on you, Ian. So does jaundice. You really should lay off the scotch. Your liver might not make it long enough for any baby to save you."

"Fuck you too, Angelina."

My turn to smile.

"Fortunately," she says, eyebrows lifting with a joy I have never seen in her before, a joy she certainly never showed for her own children, "I don't have to fuck you, Ian." She bats her long, thick, fake eyelashes. "My son's rescued me with his purchase."

In some ways, Paigelynn's actual heart isn't what my mother wants most.

It's this. This moment. This interaction.

The ability to dominate.

No – to humiliate .

"Your frigidity is sad, Angie," he says, Mother bristling with the nickname she hates. Ian gives me a look designed to feel me out. "It's me, Declan, or Cormac. One of us gets to have all the fun with the virgin. I love it when we get new toys to play with."

Any man who can talk about his own child so cavalierly – a child he and his family will literally use for parts – is a man without a soul.

I should know.

I've spent more than enough time with him.

Any baby who is a product of Ian or his brothers violating Paigelynn will be allowed to thrive. Nannies will care for the child, giving it an emotionally loving upbringing. No adrenaline or cortisol rushes will ruin its fine limbic system. Stress hormones tax organs.

Can't ruin the merchandise.

A scream pierces the air from somewhere deep in the bowels of the backstage area, but I steel myself and don't react. For some reason, I know it's not Paigelynn, which makes it marginally easier not to react.

Ian ignores the sound and taps my shoulder with an index finger.

"Father wants to see you."

Old Niall Donegal is on his last legs. If Ian's liver is failing, Niall's down to one good square inch left of his. The man is so jaundiced he could double as a jar of Dijon mustard.

"Does he want to make a deal?" Mother snaps, her tone so nasty I realize she's scared.

"No," Ian says simply. "Just wants to talk to Mario."

Sandor has been listening the whole time, a silent stain on the wall at the edge of the group. He's good at that. The silent part. The man lurks without being creepy, watches without being noticed, and acts like he's not listening.

I know better.

"Talk is cheap," Mother replies. I let her. If everyone thinks I'm her lap dog, so be it. Using that to my advantage can only help in the long run.

"FUUUUUCK," someone bellows from behind the stage, the sounds of heavy items scraping on the floor, scuffles and rustling turning frantic.

Instinct makes me leap on stage and run, Sandor and Ian on my heels, the younger of the two passing me as we reach the curtain.

I follow Ian and hope I was right and that wasn't actually Paigelynn screaming earlier.

For a staff member to create a scene like this means the incident is major.

Gagging sounds and a putrid odor fill the air as I realize two guards are throwing up to my right. Skidding to a halt, my right sole of my shoe strikes something wet on the floor, forcing me to grab a small chair nearby.

Then I smell it.

Blood.

People are looking up, then quickly down, flinching.

Something drops on my head.

Mother comes along behind us, slowly. Glancing up briefly, she closes her eyes and shakes her head.

"Fools," she calls out. "You had one job and could not do it properly!"

As I dodge drops of what I now realize are blood, the picture fills in clearly, my own blood pounding through me, reminding me I'm alive.

Because the Viking Virgin hanging above no longer is.

One bare foot, one with a high heel dangling from the big toe, comes toward us as someone cuts the rope she's used.

I'm guessing she knows how stages work, for the loop around her neck required some skill to put on with hands cuffed in front of her.

She needed to know which control button to push to pull herself up and snap her neck.

Perhaps she was part of musical theater when she was younger. Maybe a child actress. Whatever happened, she drew on her pre-cult knowledge.

Which shows how desperate she was to avoid her fate.

Death by hanging – especially like this – would have been excruciatingly painful.

"PULSE!" someone shouts as they check her neck.

Mother lets out an excited sigh.

"Get Dr. Roche! Now!" she calls out in the closest voice to a scream I've ever heard. "We need to harvest immediately."

The woman's face is puffy, her hanging long enough to do damage, the blood coming from a long line along her leg where something very sharp must have scratched her as she ascended into the rafters. Desperation makes people act in unspeakable ways, even against themselves.

That could have been Paigelynn.

My heart hammers away in my chest like an old-fashioned player piano.

"Damn it," Sandor says, his hand on my elbow, fingers loose. It's a gesture of connection, of camaraderie.

And of warning.

"Such a fucking shame," Ian says with a click of his tongue, like someone dropped an ice cream on the floor. "That's a waste. She wasn't a good breeding match, but now she's just wasted flesh."

"I heard she was only trained for nine years. Came in older," someone in the crowd behind us murmurs.

"That could have been Paigelynn," Mother calls out. "Who let this happen? He needs to be punished."

Three guys in suits, wearing earpieces, all freeze for a split second, then continue their work, shoulders hunching, jaws tight. Mother won't let it go, I know. Whoever let this virgin kill herself is dead, too.

He just doesn't know it yet.

Or maybe he does.

"Immediate lockdown on her. Bound to the bed. 24/7 surveillance. We absolutely cannot let this happen. What a breach, Mario," Mother says, her voice going hoarse, the hiss of her oxygen machine a disturbing metronome.

"Paigelynn would – " Damn it. She did it. Got me to break, even a tiny bit, wobbling out of balance.

"Paigelynn would...? Would what, Mario? You know her that well?"

"You know her better than I do, Mother. You trained her."

"I did. Weak and pliable. So obedient."

"Use that, then," I bark at her, bearing down, leveraging my height and larger size to intimidate.

"Excuse me?"

"Your lack of imagination surprises me," I say in a mocking tone, loud on purpose. I'm using the panic in the crowd. Heightened states of arousal can be weaponized, especially in groups.

Sandor moves closer to us, orbiting like an undeclared moon.

"My lack ?" Mother spits out, furious, eyes darting around to see who is listening.

"Yes. Yours . You spent more than a decade bonding with her, Training her, Keeping up the cult mythology so that this moment – today – would come.

And all you can do is lock her down? That ruins muscles and deposits more stress hormones in her tissues.

You really want an inferior kidney? A stressed heart?

You always told us you trained the virgins the way elephants are trained.

By the time they're fully broken, you can tie them to a tomato stake and they don't know the difference between that and a big steel pole. "

"I – "

"Does that mean you've failed, Mother?" My use of that title makes everyone turn and watch, even the staff, who know their lack of discretion could harm them.

"This is not the place nor the time," she says in a low tone, the kind that used to make a chill run through me when I was younger and scared of her.

It doesn't now, though there's an echo of it inside me.

Just an echo.

"One of our virgins just committed suicide in custody, Mother. And you want to take the most valuable of all and poison her organs and skin with stress hormones by tying her down? When is the time? When is the place?"

Her thin ribcage begins to rise and fall faster, the moon face from medications turning her cheeks into jowls as she frowns.

"I trained her very, very well."

"Well enough that I convinced her to run away with me." I point to the dead body. "You trained her very, very well, too, Mother?" I clear my throat and grin. "Your work leaves much to be desired. No well-trained Viking Virgin who believes she's a Princess would ever kill herself like that."

"It's not my fault they come in as damaged goods."

"Why would billionaires want anyone who is pre-damaged?" Of all the moments for Makiah Rooney to appear at the edges of the group.

Perfect.

I point to him. "Did Makiah's megachurch filter bring in damaged girls? Is that what you're saying, Mother? These bodies were broken before we ever started with them?"

"I did not say that and you know it. Their minds are damaged. The bodies are exquisite."

"You, of all people, would dare to say that?

I'm amused. Troubled, but amused. All these years, since I was a small child, you told me a clear mind makes for a clear body and a clear life, which makes for a clear world.

" Repeating the words used in Gaia makes my stomach twist, but I cut off my body from my mind and go on instinct.

Well-trained instinct, but instinct.

Her eyes bore into me, the bags under them heavier by the second. I'm winning. Word by word, second by second as workers bustle and get the body out of the way, Sandor and Makiah and the others watching, I'm chipping away at her authority, and doing it openly.

Without penalty.

Because everything I say is something they worry about.

If Mother has taught me nothing else, it's this: use other people's weakness to your advantage.

In that sense, I am my mother's child.

"You know damn well no one person can fix what outside society damages. The masses ruin themselves with their petty ways."

"Paigelynn came from 'the masses,' Mother. Is she damaged? Did I pay $1 billion for damaged goods?"

"We cannot hold out for absolute perfection, Mario. There lies madness."

"Then you're batshit insane," I call out. Titters, distant and at the edge of the crowd, filter forward. Sandor snickers and Mother's face goes slack.

"You're being a child, Mario. I won't talk about this any further." She turns to leave.

"Who does she trust more, Mother? Perhaps we should have a wager about it."

"A wager?"

"You always did love a good bet."

"Only when I've studied the odds."

"You mean to say you don't know your own son well enough to calculate your chances?"

Someone slides a stretcher past us, a wheel catching a patch of blood, the line forming a sick, broken pattern on the stage floor.

"Someone grab Celeste's shoulders," a staff member yells, and soon the woman is whisked away, Dr. Roche prepping for her.

"Call Vinnie Luisi. Get him prepped for the kidney.

Damn it, this leaves us no time at all to prepare his immune system," Mother murmurs to a staff member, a pale dark-haired woman who can't be more than twenty.

She wears a miniskirt and an oversized linen jacket, bangs no more than a half inch long, her eyes dark and striking.

A flurry of activity, discussions, allocations of organs and dollar amounts fly through the air as I walk away, leaving Mother to sort it all out.

Dodging the blood on the floor, I wind my way through the back of the stage and down a long corridor, moving along a staircase that takes me one floor down to the tunnels that connect all the buildings here at the Donegal estate.

Paigelynn is in the Red Wing, room 234. As the one who purchased her, I have the right to know everything about her.

And I have to, or she could face the same fate as that woman.

Celeste. She had a name. A family. An identity before these butchers stripped her of it.

Debbie was so close.

Now we're down one.

The ripple effects of the suicide are going to cause serious deviations from existing plans. Mother may demand Paigelynn's heart and kidney now. Breeding her is an optimal solution for these pigs if it's expedient.

Any complication makes them abandon the plan that's best for them so they can just run with whatever gives them instant gratification.

They are so weak.

But that weakness will kill Paigelynn sooner.

Which means I need to buy the one thing money can't purchase:

Time .