Chapter 5
“Go home?”I asked. “How can I do that? I can’t just pretend I didn’t try to murder my stepfather.”
“Yes, you can,” he said. “And you will, if you know what’s good for you.”
“My mom won’t want me back,” I said. “There’s no way she’s going to want me in the house. I tried to kill her husband.”
“She won’t know about it,” he said. “We’ve had the restoration team in there all day doing clean up and rebuilding the table you shattered along with the bullet holes in the walls behind him. We’ve caused a major delay on the route she was taking home, so even as we speak, your little sister and your mother are stuck in traffic, waiting for it to open up. They might even have to get a hotel room for the night and stay over again.”
“And what about Reg?” I asked with skepticism. “You can’t force his body to heal.”
“Reg had an accident while cleaning his gun, that’s all,” he said. “See? There really isn’t anything the Organization can’t handle. You’re a slight anomaly, but you aren’t exactly the kind of girl who is going to stop our annual game. There’s too much money and competition riding on it, and there are way too many powerful people invested in the thrill of it all.”
“We’re going to take her home with us,” Valen said. “We can stay at Archer’s place, or mine. Both our parents are gone.”
It was adorable how they thought they could tell this old man what to do. This man was clearly the head of some kind of shadowy criminal group that ruled powerful men and created dynasties. He wasn’t going to be intimidated by anything my guys threatened them with or claimed they’d do.
But to his credit, the old man at the head of the table simply waved his hand towards them and said, “Your parents will never accept that arrangement, and believe me, they will find out if you do. All I’m asking is that we go back to the start. You have your fun breaking her in, forcing her into humiliation to prepare her for being Tribute, and bring her to the fights to perform her duties for the Organization. If you aren’t able to handle this, then we’re going to have to assign her to another group of your classmates.”
The Kings shifted in their seats, and I could sense their confusion. These weren’t boys who were used to being told no to something they wanted.
“The only stipulation,” the man went on, “is that you maintain her virginal status. A Tribute must be pure and unsoiled for her masters after Dirty Kingdom.”
Now the three of them shifted even more, knowing what we all knew. I was far away from being pure or unspoiled, and they’d been the ones to see to it.
It was strange, though, the way these men’s minds worked. That they could watch others fondle and molest me while I was unconscious, but it wasn’t considered despoiling or ruining me for their passion. They could abuse me when I wasn’t aware, but if actual penetration occurred, then I was spoiled goods.
As if their old floppy dicks were the defining factors in a women’s life. As if they had that kind of power over another person. Sometimes I hated the way we had set up our world, and I hated the men like this who fought so hard to maintain it that way.
“Of course they’ll agree to that,” I told the old man. He was a funny looking man, if you stared too long. His ears and nose were too big for the rest of his head and I didn’t think he’d ever been considered an attractive person. It made his obsession with beautiful women even more pathetic, him trying to dominate and control the thing he was not. “They have been nothing but gentlemen to me so far and they’ll continue to behave in that manner.”
“Definitely,” Kingston said. “You know how much I want to protect her. I’d do anything for her.”
“Yes, we know this. The organization chose you for many reasons, but this was one of them. We needed this Tribute to be cared for. Your mother tried to intervene by preventing your continued contacts, but you were destined for this role from the start.”
“She was too,” another man said. He was sitting across from me and had thick black hair, tanned skin and dark brown eyes. He was much younger than the man at the head of the table, and he looked familiar to me. “That’s right, Everly. You’re a very special girl, did you know that? Your lineage stretches back far into time and you were chosen carefully to pay a very large debt. Did you know that?”
“Whose debt?” I asked and narrowed my eyes. He was somebody in politics or business. I’d seen him on TV or maybe on the cover of magazines.
“Your father’s,” he said. “He will still owe until your role as Tribute has been seen to completion. Then, he will be released of all his debts and obligations to the organization.”
“Who is my father?” I asked. I always heard he was a scumbag loser, so why was he affiliated with a group of people like this? How could some small time criminal owe so much to these powerful titans?
The man across from me opened his mouth as if to answer me, but the old man at the head of the table, the real power behind the organization from what I could see, cut him off before he started.
“If you haven’t been told so far, then there is no need for you to know,” he said. “If you were meant to meet him, you would have already.”
“Tell me who he is,” I demanded. “Tell me, or I’m going to quit being Tribute.”
“Quit being Tribute, and go to jail,” the old man said. “How many times do I have to remind you that we own you? If you don’t go to jail, you will have no hope of going to school. You will face a lifetime of hopelessness and despair. Is this the choice you want to make for yourself?”
“You can’t stop me from working hard and getting the life I deserve,” I replied with venom. “You aren’t that powerful, and you’ll be dead soon enough by the looks of it.”
“There are ten more in the wings waiting to replace me,” he laughed, that grating dry sound that irritated my very core. “And you still don’t know who’s behind the Organization. You can’t fathom how far our reach extends.”
“She isn’t your fucking puppet,” Kingston said with defiant anger.
“Amusing that our puppet is trying to tell us who is a puppet,” the old man said to the others at the table, and they all chuckled as if it was the funniest joke they’d ever heard. When he raised his hand and waved for them to stop, they obeyed in perfect unison, all ending their laughter at the same moment. “Now what isn’t amusing is how much of my time you are wasting. I suggest you go back to the Whitmore residence, gather your things, and return home at once. And if these young men can’t help you with this, they will be replaced by three who will follow orders.”