Page 68 of Gorgeous Misery

Merc gets impatient. “Who? Tell me now.”

“Well, this answer is gonna complicate things a bit.”

“Why’s that?” Harrison asks.

“Because.” I look straight at Merc. “That guy—Donovan? Rather, his dominant personality, Carter?”

“Oh, fuck this.” Merc’s not dumb. He doesn’t need this shit spelled out for him. “Fuck this. I’m not doing it.” He grabs Harrison’s arm and tugs him towards the door. “Let’s go home.”

“Listen,” I say loudly. Merc and Harrison both pause in front of the door. But neither of them looks back at me. “You can walk out. That’s fine. But Donovan is worth saving. He is, Merc.”

Merc looks over his shoulder at me. “Why’s that?”

“Because he’s…” I pause, having trouble forcing the words out.

“He’s what?” Merc does turn now. “Spit it out, Nick. Or I’m leaving.”

I put up my hand in surrender. “OK. But do not kill the messenger.”

He sucks in a breath and his eyes narrow down. “Tell me.”

“Carter Couture, he’s the father.”

“The father of who?”

“Come on, Merc. Who do you think?” He knows what I’m saying, he just doesn’t want to believe it. Cognitive dissonance, man. It fucks with you hard. “Daphne,” I say. “Avery. Lily.”

I expect an outburst from Merc, but he goes pale and silent. Then, a couple seconds later, his one-word response is a whisper. “What?”

“You heard me. Turns out Carter Couture kind of… kinda made himself… I mean, what’s the right word for it? Patriarch? He bred them, Merc. All those upper-class Company women. He took that whole ‘spread your seed’ thing literally. He’s got about…” I pause to mentally calculate how many kids are in his bloodline now. “Maybe… fifty or sixty little Zero kids running around out there right now. And by Zero kids, I don’t mean girls. He never culled the boys, either, Merc. They’re out there too.”

“This is who Adam’s cleaning up?”

“Yeah… no. Me, actually. I’m the one cleaning up that fucking mess. Adam doesn’t even know about it yet. He’s still mucking about with the small-town bankers. This is what I’ve been doing since Sasha killed Santos. This is what I’ve been up to, friend. Sasha gets to live, Lauren gets to live, and I get to clean up the fucking mess. That was the deal. So you can hate me all you want, I’m just doing the best I can.”

“OK. Hold on.” Harrison is back in action. I knew he would be. “Who cares?” He looks up at Merc, grabs him by the shirt, tugs. “Who gives a fuck? Let that asshole die, right?”

“Just let him die,” I agree. “That’s an option.” Merc drags his gaze away from Harrison and looks at me, real fear in his eyes now, because he knows I’m holding something back. I wouldn’t be telling him this if there wasn’t a catch. And there is. There is always a catch. Always a worser-case scenario peeking around the corner in the life of a Company man. “You can let him die, but your girls were part of the program, Merc. You know that.”

He shakes his head. “They’re just fine.” And these words come out confident and with authority. “They’re better than fine. They’re great. Well-adjusted girls. There has been—”

“Hey.” I cut him off. “I’m not here to evaluate your girls. That’s your problem. They’re not on my list. What I’m here to tell you is—and you already know this—they’re not fine, Merc. They’re not fine because they are part Untouchable. They are me, Merc. They are Harper, they are James, they are Vincent, they are Santos, they are Adam. They are us. Well, half us. Who knows who the mothers were. The point is, Donovan—I mean, Carter. Fuck. Even I get confused about that shit. Carter, he’s got a crew, Merc. He’s been breeding little girls for his own personal Zero program for fifteen years now. They’re everywhere. But that’s not the point, either. The point is… the point is, Merc… girls like them, they don’t live long lives.”

Merc goes silent but Harrison is still with me. “But Sasha,” he says. “And Lauren.”

“And Harper.” Merc is nothing but predictable right now. I got him off his game because he falls right into the trap.

“Sasha isn’t from the Zero bloodline. Lauren isn’t either, because I’m not actually from the Zero bloodline either.” I point to my eyes. “Brown. They’re brown, not blue. My father wasn’t my father.” Merc looks completely confused. “I’m not the Admiral’s real son. None of us are the Admiral’s real children. He did this on purpose. Everyone knew this.”

“Not everyone,” Harrison says.

“He doesn’t count,” I tell Harrison, nodding my head to Merc. “What Merc knows never mattered. He was hired help. You think you know things, Merc, because you’ve got three little Company girls living in your house and tamed a Company girl once upon a time? But you don’t know shit about how my world works.”

Now he’s back. Pissed. “So fill me in. You’re what? Some kind of lesser evil because you’ve got brown eyes instead of blue?”

The laugh comes out of my mouth before I can stop it. “Not exactly.”

“Not exactly what? Spell it out for me, Nick. I’m tired of this game you’re playing. And what does eye color have to do with anything, anyway?”