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His eyes light up, and he nods approvingly. “Very well said. With time, you may grow more comfortable with our traditions. Assuming you have time.” Interesting. He didn’t sound threatening when he said it. Just matter of fact. “Come. It’s time for you to learn of your glorious family history.”
He shoves his chair back and stands. He dumps a plate piled high with eggs on the floor. Then he dumps the leftover bacon on top of it. “The sinners may eat,” he says. As we leave, the two women scramble for the food, grabbing it with their hands and shoving it into their mouths. The redhead stirs, moaning, but they ignore her.
Artemis pauses at the doorway. “If this isn’t all cleaned up by the time we’re back, I’ll cut your fingers off and feed them to you,” he calls out in that pleasant, honeyed Southern gentleman tone. As if he were inviting to help themselves to more grits and have a nice day, y’all.
CHAPTER11
Bastien
We strollout into a glorious morning, the perfumed breezes caressing us as we head down a flagstone path. Solomon and Paxton trail behind us, but I don’t pay them any attention.
“So what was Maria’s offense?” I ask. “Did she try to steal the silverware or something?”
“No, no. Her grandmother did.” He smiles benignly. “Her name was Ruby, a pretty little thing from what I’ve been told. She was the maid at a little house my father kept in Philadelphia. When she was caught stealing, she was taken to the estate here to be broken and trained, and she served my father. He was a young man at the time. Once she was used up to the point where she was no longer desirable in the eyes of her master, he had her inseminated. One of his bodyguards did it. After she gave birth and suckled her daughter for a few months, Sinner Ruby was finished off in a hunt, and her daughter, Sinner Leah, sent off to an orphanage owned by my family, and then a finishing school. On her eighteenth birthday, they brought her back here to be broken and trained, just as her mother was.”
A hunt. Hunting humans.
The words click perfectly into place inside me. They fill an empty spot I wasn’t aware of until just now, settling in nicely.I need to hunt people.
Only… not for something as trivial as stealing. That’s hardly a crime punishable by torture that’s passed on by generations. This guy is crazier than I am, and that’s saying something.
He smiles in reminiscence. “It was quite a surprise to her. Leah was raised to be a sweet little virgin, and she thought she was coming back here for an arranged marriage. I got to have my fun with her after my father broke her in. My father’s passed on now, but we continued the tradition. We had Sinner Leah impregnated, and she gave birth to Sinner Maria, and we hunted Sinner Leah and shipped Sinner Maria off to be raised at the orphanage. I got her a year ago. She was a stubborn one, at first. She’s got scars from my branding iron to prove it.”
“The sins of the fathers,” I muse. “Or mother, in this case.” I’m following him down a path that’s walled in by glossy green hedges.
“Exactly.” He nods approvingly. “When we reach the fourth generation, we stop. The Bible says so.”
If this guy reads the same Bible as every other Christian, it’s a wonder there aren’t more psychopaths in the world.
“So when Sinner Maria has a daughter, she will serve one of my sons until she’s no longer useful, and we will dispose of her, and that will be the end of it.”
“What would happen if she had a son?”
“Certain members of our family will take on the task of punishing male sinners.” In other words, members of the family who were gay sadists, but he was prettying it up. “In the past, we would send the son to one of them, and then breed the female sinner again for as many times as necessary until she produced a daughter. These days, however, medical advances allow us to select the sex of the baby.”
“And let me guess. Ruby was very poor, in desperate financial straits, possibly caused by something that your grandfather did, and you left out something tempting for her to steal.”
He glances at me with surprise. “Yes, that’s right. Her mother was dying, and Ruby wanted money to take her to the doctor. And my grandfather had given Ruby her two weeks’ notice. We only punish those who transgress against us. And we may lay temptation in their path. But we never force anyone to sin against us. That’s on them.”
Such fucked-up logic.
“Do you breed all of your sinners?” I slip into his parlance to encourage him to speak openly. I can tell he'll shut down if he senses the slightest hint of disapproval.
“No, we hunt some, we breed some. We have half a dozen sinners who are ripe with fruit currently, so for now, we’re more in the hunting phase.”
“What about Paxton’s mother? Was she a sinner?”
“Oh, no.” He looks shocked. The veryidea. “When we take a bride, that’s a special process. She has to be from a good family, intelligent, attractive, and a virgin. Superior breeding stock, in other words. That’s a universal family rule.” He smiles. “When you see a news report of a young, beautiful college student who’s gone missing, there’s an excellent chance a Franklin has claimed her.” He says it with pride.
“But what about Judge Franklin? Senator Franklin?”
“A few prominent family members must compromise because they’re in the public eye. They are powerful men. They help protect our way of life and ensure our businesses get every advantage, so they make that sacrifice. They do, however, marry women raised in the Franklin orphanage, women trained to submit to their husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.”
“Are you married?” I try to imagine how a wife, even a kidnapped, beaten, shock-collared wife, would react to all the half-naked “sinners” serving meals. Or maybe the sinners were only trotted out to assess my reaction. Perhaps they’re usually tucked away in a basement.
“I’m a widower.”
“I’m sorry,” I say automatically, the etiquette lessons of my childhood still drilled into my head.
