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“Your uncle has some things he needs to confess.”
“What? What’s he talking about, Uncle Syd?”
“It’s complicated, Aubrey,” her uncle began.
“Let’s go back into the room and uncomplicate it, shall we?” Pushing Aubrey gently forward, he sent Green a hard look of warning.
Green followed them into the room, and Liam shut the door. “All right, Green. Talk.”
“Liam, wait. What’s this about?”
Taking her hand, he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her down beside him. “Your uncle knows who did this.”
Her eyes wide, she jerked her gaze up to her uncle. “What? How do you know? What’s going on?”
“It’s…” Green shoved his fingers through his already wild hair. “I’ll have to start from the beginning.”
He stared at the wall for several seconds. Liam couldn’t tell if he was working on a convincing lie or just gearing himself up to unload what he had been living with.
With a loud, shaky sigh, Green began, “When I was seven, my parents’ lives changed drastically. We’d never had a lot of money, but one day it was like Christmas morning. We moved to a nicer house, we had better food and clothing…everything was better. It wasn’t until I began second grade that I realized how different things really were. I was sent to a private school, which wasn’t anything like where I went for first grade. And while I learned normal things, I also learned about obedience to the cause.”
“And what cause was that?” Liam asked.
“I d
on’t know.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit.”
“It’s the truth. That’s the beauty of the whole thing. Don’t you get it? The right hand doesn’t know who’s controlling the left hand. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of us out there. We live our lives, but we know at some point we’ll be called on to do certain things.”
“You don’t obey a cause without knowing who or why.”
“Maybe you don’t, but I did. I was just a kid. It wasn’t until later that I saw their power, what they were capable of. I learned that I could have a successful career and a normal life, but when I was asked to do something, I had to obey or else.”
“What things were you asked to do?”
“Mostly innocuous things, harming no one. I steered people toward certain projects and away from others. I hired certain people. I added scenes to movies to soften the stance on various issues or removed them if they were deemed too negative.
“None of those things was difficult. I became famous. I had a good life, with a wonderful family. I was content. Too content. I became complacent, believing that nothing more would be asked of me.”
“And then something changed?”
“Yes. They asked me to do something I didn’t want to do, and I refused.”
“What did they ask?”
“They wanted my daughter.”
“What did they want with Becca?”
It was the first time Aubrey had spoken since Green had begun his story. Liam winced at her hoarse, ravaged voice. She sounded so much like the lost young woman he’d met twelve years ago.
“They wanted to bring her into the organization so they could control her the way they controlled me. They asked me to recruit her. I said no.”
“What happened?”
Green’s gaze met Aubrey’s. “It was twelve years ago.”
