Page 146 of The Cannibal

The blood of his daughter, sacrificed for a new Madonna.

“Wear it to trial if you accept the proposal,” he instructed.

“Say I do,” I suggested. “What will you do with the rest?”

“Everyone lives happily, of course!” He looked at me as if my insinuation was asinine. “You and your friends will be well taken care of.”

“What of Silas?”

His carefully adorned mask nearly cracked at the mention. It was like I’d physically hit him. His smile was more tense, so was the dimple in his jaw as he spoke. “That depends on his compliance, which, as you may know about my son . . . isn’t his strong suit.”

“If he complies?”

“Then there is no reason why he shouldn’t live.” He couldn’t hide his obvious distaste. “He won’t have the same privileges as you. I’ve learned my lesson there.”

“Privileges?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, getting excited again, “access to the world’s oldest wealth. You couldn’t possibly imagine it! It’s impossible to spend in ten lifetimes, never mind just one.”

He was right, I couldn’t imagine such a horde. Admittedly, a vision flashed before my eyes. It wasn’t glittering in gold, but it was wealth. A public library that was so well-padded that you could hold the world’s knowledge at the tips of your fingers, free of cost. I saw streets empty because no one had to go without a roof. I saw development, scholarships, medical advancement, technological leaps and bounds.

I saw my father hunched over papers while we shared a space with five other families. I saw how money could free people—all people—within a system that is dead set on bleeding them dry.

“I would have access to it all?” I asked, my eyes flicking to him.

“To mine as well as the others.” He grinned.

My face fell. “Others?”

He pointed to the tiny contract.

I flipped the page; it was the same thing in French. Then Spanish, Russian, German—it kept going.

“Per country,” he said.

“So you’ll bitch me out like a dog?” I scoffed.

“No, dear,” he laughed. “Like a whore.”

He said the former like some sort of joke before he became serious.

“You would be the most powerful woman in the world. The mother of beasts. You could give life to a new apex race of Vipera.”

Suddenly I was thankful my stomach was empty. Blood tingled as it left my limbs. The numbness wasn’t just cold, it punctured through the bone and solidified. The disgust was so rotten, so heinous, that my mind wasn’t able to process how everything led to this moment.

My choices were, in essence, to give my life one way or another.

“Think about it, you have a couple days, at least,” he said gently, then his energy perked up when he eyed the server, beckoning him forward. “I brought your favorite.”

The server presented a bottle with no label, then poured.

The blackness dribbled into the glass, the notes became stronger with the agitation.

Raw, day-old blood.

It smelled of peonies, bitter almond, and baked sugar.

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