ch anyway.”
I backed up farther. If I bolted for a weapon, would he be able to grab me? Would he grab me?
“No women, no communication with the world,” he went on. “No drugs, liquor, or smokes, either.”
“What is Blackchurch?” I asked.
“A prison.”
I looked around, noticing the expensive marble floors, the fixtures and carpets, and the fancy, gold accents and statues.
“Nice prison,” I mumbled.
Whatever it was now, it clearly used to be someone’s home. A mansion or…a castle or something.
“It’s off the grid,” he sighed. “Where do you think CEOs and senators send their problem children when they need to get rid of them?”
“Senators…” I trailed off, something sparking in my memory.
“Some important people can’t have their sons—their heirs—making news by going to jail or rehab or being caught doing their dirty deeds,” he explained. “When we become liabilities, we’re sent here to cool off. Sometimes for months.” And then he sighed. “And some of us for years.”
Sons. Heirs.
And then it hit me.
Blackchurch.
No.
No, he had to be lying. This place was an urban legend wealthy men told their kids to keep them in line. A secluded residence somewhere where sons were sent as punishment but given free rein to be at each other’s mercy. It was like Lord of the Flies but with dinner jackets.
But it didn’t exist. Not really. Did it?
“There are more?” I asked. “More of you here?”
A wicked smile spread across his lips, curdling my stomach.
“Oh, several,” he crooned. “Grayson will be back with the hunting party tonight.”
I stopped dead in my tracks, lightheaded.
No, no, no…
Senators, he’d said.
Grayson.
Shit.
“Grayson?” I muttered, more to myself. “Will Grayson?”
He was here?
But Taylor Dinescu, son of Dinescu Petroleum Corporation I now gathered, ignored my question. “We have everything we need to survive, but if we want meat, we have to hunt for it,” he explained.
That’s what Will—and the others—were out doing. Getting meat.
And I didn’t know if it was the look on my face or something else, but Taylor started laughing. A vile cackling that curled my fists tight.