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“Yes. Tatum.”
He said he cared about her. Which meant she was okay. She had to be. Caspian wasn’t like his father. I refused to believe it.
I saw the way he watched Tatum, how possessive he always was from the first day I met them both. I used to tease her about it, and she would get so mad, but I could tell she liked it. She needed his protection as much as he needed to protect her.
“So, you had me drugged, then sold and carted off to a foreign country because youcare?” I huffed. “That’s fucking rich.”
Grey chuckled.
I shot him a glare. “Something funny?”
“No. It’s just that it’s good to see you again.” He finished off his drink, then leaned over to set the glass on an end table. “I knew the girl who stood in front of me in The Sanctuary was still in there somewhere.”The Sanctuary.So, that was what the large circle room was called. “The girl I found in the bathroom isn’t you.”
I stepped farther into the library. My pulse was racing. How dare he judge me? “You know nothing about me or what kind of girl I am.”Or what I’ve been through.
“Try again, darling. I know everything about you. Knowing things is my job. It’s how I keep myself alive. It’s why those men who call themselves Obsidian stand outside my door with their palms up, waiting for me to drop my dick in their hands. Because I know things, and knowledge is power. Don’t ever forget that.” He looked over to Caspian, dismissing me. “Continue.” His voice was almost regal, but his delivery was cold, like talking aboutthemhad somehow made him distant.
Caspian shrugged one shoulder. “He’s right. You belong to the most brutal man in the Brotherhood. Grey is the one guy no one dares to fuck with. My father won’t even touch him. That’s how we knew you’d be safe here.”
I didn’tbelongto anyone.
Who waswe? Was Caspian in on this?
He nodded toward the leather couches. “You should sit.”
I stared at the two sofas, weighing my options. Did I sit on the one by Grey? Or the one farthest away from him? Would he be offended? Or would sitting near him give him the idea that I’d surrendered? Finally, I took a seat on the one by Grey, only at the end opposite from where he stood.
Caspian smirked, then continued. “Every year ten men are chosen to meet at The Sanctuary for what they call Judgment Day. This is when the men in the Brotherhood choose their wives. We don’t get to marry for love, so this is their way of making us believe we actually have a choice.” He scoffed. “As if the Brotherhood ever actually gave anyone achoice.”
He kept calling itThe Brotherhood.Was that who those men were? Caspian’s dad and Grey were part of some kind of rich guy fraternity?
“The truth is that the women are hand-selected, too. No one is there by accident. No one.” Caspian sat on the other sofa, draping one arm along the back and propping his ankle on a knee. “Everyone there benefits everyone else in one way or another, no matter who the men choose. There are no losers. The fathers make sure of that.”
How many marriages had they arranged? How many people were out there living a lie for the world to see?
“So your mom…” I thought of the woman who greeted me at the door that day.
His jaw tensed. “A chosen.”
My heart broke for his mother—a woman I didn’t even know—for all the women who had been forced into marriages they might not have wanted. It broke for the girls I’d seen in The Sanctuary who acted as if this were some kind of blessing bestowed upon them. It broke for me because I was different. I wasn’t one of them. I never had been.
“I’m a seventeen-year-old girl with nothing to offer but a famous last name. How do Ibenefitanyone?”
“That’s the one part I haven’t figured out. But I will.” He pulled at the cuff of his jeans as he stared at his shoe. His brow furrowed like he was lost in thought or trying to figure it out right now. Then he looked over at me. “The minute the news article about your death popped up on my phone I knew something wasn’t right. You don’t do drugs, Lyric. You never have. It didn’t take a genius to know that. And thanks to that asshole Lincoln Huntington, I knew you’d been at my house.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat at the mention of Lincoln’s name. Guilt and shame flooded through me at the thought of Lincoln knowing I had been at Caspian’s but not knowing why. I never had a chance to tell him, and now I never would.
Caspian narrowed his eyes at me. “I just didn’t knowwhyyou were at my house.” A pause.I was there to confront your father.“Not then, anyway.” The look in his eye told me he’d managed to figure it out. He rested his hand on his leg. “I’ve also been around long enough to know what happens when the Brotherhood wants a woman todisappear. My father needed you gone. It was a closed-casket funeral. Judgment Day was right around the corner. Put three and three together. Do some simple math, and it was easy for me to figure out what he had done. All I needed was to figure out how toundoit.” He glanced at Grey. “That’s where Chandler came in.”
“Chandler? Carmichael?” I remembered him taking my arm and dragging me out of The Chamber. He’d dropped me off at my apartment a little while before Lincoln showed up.
“Yeah. As you can guess, Grey doesn’t do favors. He doesn’t like to owe anyone anything. But he owed Chandler.”
I didn’t even want to know what kind of hold Chandler Carmichael could have over a man like Grey—who had now made his way over to a cabinet and poured himself another drink.
“Wait,Chandlertook me?”
Caspian swallowed, then turned his attention back to me. “No. Chandler made sure you ended uphere.Somehow, Grey has managed to avoid Judgment Day for the past two years.” He glanced at Grey as if willing him to share his secret. Then he looked back at me. “Chandler convinced him to finally put his name in the hat. Since Grey is the only pure bloodline member of the Brotherhood who isn’t married yet, that makes him the society’s most eligible bachelor. And because he’s brushed off being chosen for two years, the founding fathers took the bait like a bunch of hungry lions fighting over a steak. All we had to do was make sure he chose you before anyone else did.”
