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“What’s wrong?” I asked, leaning towards her to hear her reply.
“Like you don’t know,” she said and shook her head. I realized she meant our conversation about Reg and the things he’d done to me. It had shaken her very core and she wasn’t processing it that well. She’d expected my forgiveness and was punishing me for not giving it.
I contemplated letting her down easy and soothing her worried. Telling her all was okay again, and she was off the hook. No longer blamed for the things she’d done to me, the neglect and erasure of my past.
Then again, it wasn’t my place to coddle her and take care of her feelings anymore. I fought the urge to apologize, and settled into my seat to watch the girls instead.
During one performance before Nat’s group, there were ten little girls with tiny fairy wings on their backs doing a ballet routine. I was really into it, they were so cute, but my eyes caught something in the corner.
I turned my head to look and found Thackeray in the second row to the left of the stage. He was watching them dance with interest, and I wondered if he was there as a doting grandfather or as an emissary of the Organization, seeking fresh meat for their disgusting desires.
I watched him instead of the girls, and soon I realized he was there with somebody. An older woman, a grandmother type who was leaning in to talk to him every once in a while.
Was it his wife? Was Thackeray married?
The thought of him having a regular family made me sick. How dare he have the comforts of love while the rest of the world suffered under his control.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off them. Just seeing him as a human being instead of a monster made me angrier than I would have expected. How dare he walk among regular people and enjoy his freedom while he oversaw all that violence and horror for the Organization.
Red rage surged in my chest and I dug my fingers so hard into the palms of my hands that they hurt. My nails pressed into my own flesh as I imagined the things I’d want to do to him.
He pulled out his phone and waved at one little blonde girl in a fairy costume, took several pictures, and turned to the woman to brag about her with all the love of a grandfather.
How could he care for that little girl while sending hundreds of young people to their deaths, sacrifices on the altar of the Organization’s predatory needs?
I didn’t want him to have a moment’s peace, much less a life of love and luxury.
I decided then that Thackeray would be the first one I went after in the Organization. We still had to figure out who else he was working for, and everybody connected with the trafficking of humans for their desires needed to be brought to justice.
But Thackeray had made it personal. I would talk to my father about it, but I wanted to unleash my inner fury onto Thackeray before it burned me alive from the inside out.
“Isn’t she cute?” Mom said, nudging me and shaking me out of my violent daydreaming.
I looked up to the stage where Nat’s dance troupe had replaced the little fairy girls. My sister looked radiant, like a miniature super model in her shimmering gold dance dress and her hair done up like a princess.
“She’s growing up,” I whispered back to her, forgetting for a moment that I wasn’t happy with her. “What happened to her dressing up as a reindeer or an elf?”
“She decided she was too old for that now,” Mom sighed and looked a little wistful as she watched Nat get into position.
“Too old,” I laughed. “Of course, don’t we all want to grow up too fast at that age?”
“Not that you’re some crone yourself,” Mom smiled.
“No, but it feels like it sometimes,” I replied and she got my meaning. She fell silent after that, her own guilt clinging to her like fog on a mountain slope.
I looked over at Thackeray again and he had his phone out. He was looking directly at Nat, I was sure of it. He snapped a couple of pictures and put it away in his coat pocket. Another surge of rage swept through me seeing him there, looking at my sister.
Was he planning on something with her? Did the Organization recruit this young? It sickened me to think of him showing anybody Nat’s picture so she could be added to the roster.
I tried to focus on her routine after that, but it was difficult with that much hatred in my heart.
I had to get it out of me before I poisoned myself with it. I had to release it before it consumed my very soul.
* * *
“Thackeray needsto get the shit kicked out of him,” Ryker said later that night when I told him about the incident at Nat’s recital.
I’d taken the SUV back to Archer’s mansion and found the four of them waiting for me. They were all adorable, as usual, but Ryker was the only other one who had a reason to hate Thackeray with my level of righteous fire.
