Perfect Ruin (Unyielding #2)(4)

“Another scientist can easily take over his work.”

“We could have used her,” I said. “Why do you think I f*cked her for a week instead of torturing her like you suggested? Why do you think I came to you and suggested we use her? You agreed. It was so simple and you f*cked it up both times.” I slammed my fist into her desk. “I needed her to finish school. I needed her sane. We needed her.” I lowered my voice, pushed off the desk and stepped close to her chair. “But you always need to destroy and break when there are times we need to f*ckin’ cultivate.”

“We will—”

I raised my voice. “I had her, Mother!” I took a deep breath and turned to look at the fireplace, feeling as if the flames were slowly eating away at my skin. “She trusted me. She would’ve done anything I asked of her and you completely destroyed that. And for what? Because you were afraid I was getting too close to her?”

“You were. And you did,” she replied, her voice quiet.

“I was f*cking her. She was an acquisition. Torture isn’t the only way to make people do what you want.”

She was silent as she considered everything I told her. Whether to believe me or call me out. Perhaps even have me beaten until I broke, but there was nothing to break of me anymore and she damn well knew it. They’d already done their damage to me.

It took everything I had to remain standing where I was when all I wanted was to take the wire out of my pocket and wrap it around her throat; to watch her eyes bulge out of her head while she thrashed around struggling for air. I couldn’t decide if it would give me more satisfaction though to plunge my knife up under her rib cage like she’d done to my father.

The farm made me numb to everything, including my sister, and the hate I had for my mother had lain dormant for years until I began to feel again. Until death suddenly mattered. Until a girl weaved her way into my heart and made it beat again.

I walked over to the fireplace where shimmering specks of light shone onto the white shag carpet laying before it. When I was a kid, before I was sent to the farm, before my father was killed, before Vault was on this path, I used to sleep beside the fire and listen to it crackle, and my father would read to me.

Now, I hated fire. I hated what it had almost killed.

I casually sat in the antique purple velvet chair, crossing my bent leg over the other and leaning back. I rested my hands on the padded armrests that had carved lions’ heads at the base. My father used to relax in a chair like this in the evenings, although it was in England where we grew up before my mother sat on Vault’s board.

His glasses would perch on the bridge of his nose, and he’d have to keep pushing them back while he read. He could be deadly, but he also had a lightness to him that made my childhood a little easier. He’d often sit me on his lap and talk to me about Vault and how it all started. A secret government that didn’t follow the laws, but had laws of its own. Its purpose had been to take out individuals that governments couldn’t due to laws, politics or resources.

But that had changed when Mother took over.

She would never admit to missing him, but I knew parts of her did. She had to because she made one fatal mistake the day she killed him—she killed him.

Instead of years of torture, she gave him mercy. He knew it, too. They were the last words whispered from his lips. I couldn’t hear him, but I knew what he said, ‘Thank you.’

But none of it mattered anymore. All of this was ending. I was taking out Vault’s foundation and that included Mother.

“I don’t like her.”

I sighed. “You don’t like anyone. And you’re making this personal.”

She turned and her heels clicked evenly on the stone as she walked over to the window. “It’s too late. I told Brice to get rid of her.”

Bile rose in my throat and my heart thudded against my rib cage. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Brice looked after Vault’s Toronto house and was a cold son of a bitch. “A shame.” I’m going to gut you. I stood and headed for the door like I didn’t give a shit. Like I wasn’t being torn apart inside by a dull, rusted blade.

“You really don’t care about her? You were using her for Vault?”

I closed my eyes briefly before I turned and faced her. “No, I don’t care. You taught me better than that. But like I’ve told you before, I would’ve utilized her brilliance.”

It was like something flashed in her eyes, a greedy bead of hope for using another person for her own benefit. “And you believe she can take over her father’s work? The girl was rather pitiful and didn’t finish her schooling.”

And whose fault was that? I had no idea if London could, but it didn’t matter, none of this did. I was here to get my sister, Chess, out of prison, convince my mother London was valuable again so she’d drop any security on London’s cell in Toronto, and to find out what I could on the farm as well as details about the anonymous board member. It didn’t look like I’d get much out of her on the farm, or the board member, but there were other ways.

“Yes, I do. She’s been working beside her father since she was able to hold a test tube. I wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble for *, no matter how good it was. That was a mere bonus.” It was my best lie yet and there wasn’t even a flicker of suspicion in my mother’s expression. “But you’ve had her imprisoned, and torture has a way of destroying the mind.”