Page 56 of Flawed Revenge

“To answer your question, I do not want to kill your Leo or the rest of his team. I do want to study them, but not in the same way that my son did. My son … well, he served his purpose, didn't he?”

Again, Kate had no idea what that meant. She’d never met Ridge Gardner, but from what she knew of the man, he was a sadistic psychopath, with delusions of grandeur, and an ego the size of all the oceans of the world put together. The man had kept a sex slave, tortured his sister from childhood, and had no qualms about dragging innocents into the mess that was his life. He’d hunted Leo and the others for the last seven years, intending to lock them up in a cage, and he’d been deliberately cruel to Indigo in how he studied her ability to not feel pain.

The man was no loss to society, and none of them were mourning him, but it didn't seem like his mother was either.

Who the hell was this woman, and what role had she played in her son’s machinations?

“You had people watching me for the last ten years. Somehow, you found out that I was connected to Leo.”

“From the moment they signed up for the program, every one of our test subjects was followed closely. It was reported to me what he said to you that day. That should have been the end of it, but I had a hunch.”

“A hunch?”

“That I might be looking at something I didn't think existed.”

“Which was what?”

“True love.” There was a slight wistfulness in the older woman’s voice, and Kate had trouble reconciling the woman who seemed to have been unhappy in her marriage and wanted a man who loved her with his entire soul, and the woman who had casually mentioned blowing up Leo and the others, and could watch dispassionately as armed men forced her and her daughter onto a helicopter.

Frustrated that the woman wouldn't give straight answers, and already feeling more out of the loop than any of the others would have because she’d only learned of this whole mess a mere five days earlier, Kate glared at the woman. Probably a stupid thing to do since River’s armed men were sitting in the helicopter with them and there was nothing stopping them from shooting her or her daughter, but she didn't care. In these last five days, her entire world had shifted. Everything she’d lost was within her grasp again, and some crazy old lady wasn't going to take it away from her.

“I won't let you hurt my daughter,” she warned, drawing her daughter further into her embrace. “She’s just a little girl, and she has nothing to do with this.”

“On the contrary, I think she has everything to do with this.”

“I don’t know what that means.” Kate huffed again, irritation washing away some of her fear. She was still afraid, but mama bear mode meant she could shove it all away and focus on being prepared to do anything she needed to protect her child.

“You will.”

“Playing games is annoying.”

Instead of getting angry at the insult, River merely chuckled. “I promise you that soon you will know everything. But not until everyone is gathered together. One thing I can assure you of is that your sweet little girl might be the answer to everything I've been working toward since I was just a young college student.”

“I thought you and your son wanted an army of super soldiers. What does my nine-year-old have to do with that?”

“Ridge wanted super soldiers,” River corrected. “I want something different. What I want, what I've always wanted, is immortality. I let my son have his fun, take the focus off me, and let him do his own thing while I worked behind the scenes creating my own versions of the drugs.”

Hope sparked in Kate’s chest.

That sounded like maybe River Gardner really might have drugs that increased Ariella’s chances of surviving the bone marrow transplant.

Maybe she wouldn't lose her sweet little girl.

But if River intended to keep the guys to study and run tests on them, and Ariella became part of those tests, then while her daughter might live, she’d be locked up, nothing more than a lab rat, her only purpose to be experimented on.

Was that the life she wanted for her daughter?

If freedom was never on the cards, maybe it would be better if Ariella didn't survive.

Chapter

Seventeen

March 18th

1:42 P.M.

His mind spun in a million different directions all at once, and not a single one of those directions was good.