Elites of Eden (Children of Eden #2)(71)

“It’s not my fault.” His voice is wheedling, pathetic. I’ve never heard him sound like that before. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”

I wait, but there’s no answer. He’s alone, talking to himself.

“In here, quick,” I say to Lark as I pull the trick bookcase out on its silent and smooth pneumatic hinges. She steps into the secret alcove behind and I close the door over. Not all the way, though. Once closed, it can only be opened from the outside. If anything should go wrong, I don’t want Lark trapped in there. I creep out. I’m being foolish, I know, but I feel like I need to see my father. I haven’t decided yet if he needs to see me.

“I was supposed to be the good example, the man who puts Eden before family. The incorruptible leader who isn’t tainted by his family’s transgressions.” I hear a meaty thud, and another. When I poke my head carefully around the corner and look into the kitchen I see him striking the sides of his head with his hands.

“Oh, Ash, what have I done? They promised me!”

He slams his head down on the counter, and when he stands, swaying unsteadily, there’s a bloody gash in his forehead.

Good, I think. I’m getting used to blood now.

Another part hurts for him. Whatever else he is, he loved Mom. And Ash, I thought.

I step into the room. “What did they promise you?”

He whirls, and the stench of alcohol hits me hard. For a second he looks overjoyed to see me. He starts toward me, arms starting to open. At the same time I stiffen, and he seems to remember how he has felt about me all my life. He comes to an abrupt halt.

“You’re alive.”

“So are you,” I counter, my voice low and steady. Remarkably steady, given my inner turmoil. “But you shouldn’t be. You gave up Ash to save yourself.”

“N-no,” he stammers, swaying where he stands. “It wasn’t like that. The Center needs stability, or the circles will not hold. That’s what they told me. They said they need an example. I thought they meant me. A good example.”

He babbles on, slurring and incoherent at times, telling me how the chancellor told him removing him from the vice chancellorship would be disastrous at this point. Everyone knew that he’d been tapped to fill the position, and if they changed their minds now, if he was brought down by a terrible scandal, it would make the Center look weak. So they decided to make my father look like the hero of Eden, the self-sacrificing kind of leader who would turn in his own beloved family for the sake of right and law and the preservation of our precious sanctuary.

“They’ve painted your mom as some kind of activist.” He spits the word. “No one knows you’re our daughter. They think your mother was just part of an underground network of people helping second children. Your mom, and Ash. They’re telling everyone I turned her in. They . . .” He falls to his knees, overcome. Maybe begging for my forgiveness? “They’re calling me a hero,” he chokes out between sobs. “A real hero of Eden. A second Aaron Al-Baz.”

How ironic, how fitting, that Dad should be compared to that monster.

“And Ash?” I ask coldly.

“They said they needed an example. Oh, great Earth, I didn’t ask questions! I just signed whatever they put in front of me. I was so afraid. I could be executed for keeping you safe.”

“Instead, your own son is going to be killed, while you assume the second-highest position in Eden. Always protect yourself, right?” Almost as if it has a will of its own, my hand creeps toward my stomach, my fingers twitching at the hem of my shirt. I can feel the irregular bulk of the gun beneath my clothes. Dad can’t see it, though. Not yet.

“It wasn’t supposed to be that way!” he moans, rocking back and forth on his knees. “He was supposed to be kept in prison until everything died down, set free somewhere far from the Center.”

“Oh, so you just wanted to ruin his life, shuffle him away to the outer circles where he could starve?” A step above execution, barely. I shake my head slowly. “You’ve been a rotten father. Even to the child you actually love. You burned a hole in him while he was still in the womb, and now you’re finishing the job of killing him.”

He looks up at me, aghast. “You knew?”

“Recently. Mom told me, before the Greenshirts gunned her down.” I sound so hard and cold. My voice doesn’t seem like my own anymore. My father winces, cringes, seems to shrink inside himself.

“What can I do?” he asks, holding up his hands helplessly. But his hands are empty, powerless. There’s nothing he can do to make this right, except . . .

I pull the gun out from under my shirt and point it at his head.

I expect him to shout, to weep harder, to beg, to lunge at me. But he just kneels at my feet, looking sadly up at me, accepting.

If he had begged, I would have shot him. But this broken man waiting quietly for the end . . .

I’m so focused on my father that Lark, swooping in behind him, is a blur of movement. She has a heavy lamp in her hand, one my Mom never liked but which we kept because it had been her own mother’s. With a grunt of effort Lark hits my dad hard in the side of the head. He crumples to the tile floor, unconscious.

“Why didn’t you let me shoot him?” I ask Lark. She doesn’t know that I had already controlled myself.