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“They do, the heads of Dirty Kingdom. They’re known as the Organization. They’re the people in charge,” Archer said and took a deep breath. “This is going to either release you to our care, or it could wind up with you taken into custody.”
“There’s no in between?” I asked. “Can we go somewhere? Run away or something?”
“We could run, but they’d find us,” Kingston said. “You don’t have a passport, do you?”
“No, I don’t. I never needed one,” I replied.
“We’d have to leave the country to escape their reach,” he told me. “Their reach is long and involves so many levels of government and law enforcement that we’re basically fucked.”
“They own you, Ev,” Valen said. “The Tribute belongs to them, not us even.”
“Do they own you guys, too?” I asked. This entire Organization felt unreal. Like a storybook, or a bad teen TV drama. I couldn’t believe any of it was reality. I couldn’t believe any of it existed at all. Somehow I felt like I’d slipped into an alternate dimension, a crack in the timeline where I’d branched off somewhere else.
How could this be happening to me? How could I have gone from being the sad girl in the dark corners of her own life to this? Shooting Reg and becoming a literal possession of some old, connected Organization I’d never heard of before.
“No, not us,” Archer said. And then his eyes flicked over to Kingston. “Well, not us but maybe Kingston. A little bit.”
“Not outright like you, Evie,” Kingston said, obviously filled with discomfort over all of this. As much as I was, at least. “I owe them for my training and tuition. And for any future tuition they’ll cover. They’ll make sure I make it all the way through as far as I want to go, and then set me up in the business of my choice. I’ll pay them back as I earn the money.”
“Or with deeds,” Archer said. “The fighter can also pay back his debt by conducting business for the organization. Your father worked for many of them over the years.”
“Yeah, dear old dad. Reg, too, I suspect,” Kingston said. “That might have been the reason behind their assaults on you, Evie. They might have been recording them for the organization. They might have drugged you so members of the Organization could come enjoy the Tribute long before she even knew what was happening.”
I shivered and felt nauseous, then broke into a cold sweat as my skin prickled like pin points along the surface. The thought of a bunch of old men, especially strangers, seeing me like that. Vulnerable and exposed. It made me feel less than human, like I was nothing to them. Meaningless and worthless other than as a piece of meat, a commodity to be passed around and used as something for their pleasure and nothing more.
“Why do they do this to us?” I asked, my voice breaking. “Why do they use us like this?”
“Because they can,” Kingston said. “Because they fucking can.”
“We’re protected because of our family money,” Archer said with a bitter slant to his voice. “Our families are all tied up in this, it’s how the wealthy in this country maintain their fortunes.”
“I never knew,” I said and took a deep breath before I exhaled it with a deep sigh. “I had no idea this world was so fucked up. No idea at all.”
I felt so stupid because of it, like I’d been the butt of a huge, cosmic joke. Like everybody in town had known about this all along, and I’d stumbled into the role of Tribute with all of them laughing at me.
And it hurt like hell.
And made me so fucking angry.
