AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So you run a baby farm,” I said, jaw clenching. “You force pregnancy on women like they’re livestock and traffic their babies so you can line your pockets with extra money. Money you don’t even need because you already have all this generational wealth.”
“Oh, honey, no. You’ve got it all wrong,” Zara said. “The money is just a bonus. Like you said, none of us really need any more of it, unless we’re feeling extra greedy. So most of the money we receive for the babies goes to the maintenance of the Playground. Food, medical costs, and so on. For our girls.”
“What’s in it for you, then? If not money.”
She smiled thinly. “We trade in favors and access. The couples we sell to are desperate for babies, and they’re also very-well connected. In return for a newborn, they give us high-level access to all sorts of things we may need. Police, government, education, stock market… you name it, we have privileged access to it. Or a colossal favor waiting to be repaid.”
“For example,” Ali cut in. “Around fifteen years ago, we gave a child to a judge whose wife couldn’t carry a baby. That judge is now in our pocket. Forever. Any legal troubles that we have in this state are practically waved away with a magic wand.”
Zara nodded. “Another one of our clients is a high-ranking member of the police in Vanderwild County. You can imagine the benefits of having someone like that in your pocket.”
Ali chimed in again. “Other clients are able to influence admissions at the country’s top universities. That ensures our children always get in, even if their grades or extracurriculars aren’t quite up to snuff,” he said smugly, as if cheating was something to be proud of. “We have people at every T20 college. Not just the Ivies.”
“You didn’t answer my question earlier,” I said, eyes narrowing. “How do the girls end up with you in the first place?”
Zara’s nose wrinkled with disdain. “We were getting to that,” she said. “Most of the girls are brought to us by their families to pay off a tremendous debt they’ve incurred. Some women even sell themselves to our organization after hearing about us.”
“But in very rare cases, the girl can’t be brought to us willingly for some reason,” Ali cut in. “That happened in your case. Your father signed a contract with Michael, but he didn’t take it seriously.”
“That’s right,” Zara said, nodding sagely. “He moved out west, probably assuming we wouldn’t chase you down once you were due to be handed over to us. Then there was the whole mess of him dying and forcing you into the foster system over in Washington. As awful as the system can be, they do have a few zealous caseworkers. Like Madeline Arthurs, for example.”
“We knew someone like her would probably keep an eye on you for a while, even after you turned eighteen and aged out of the system, just to make sure you were doing okay,” Ali said with a grimace. “She’d notice if you vanished the second you turned eighteen, so we had to come up with a way to get you to the Playground without any suspicion falling on us.”
Zara clapped her hands together. “And thus, our plan was born.”
“Our plan—which I’m sure is slowly dawning on you as we speak—was to bring you into our family as our long-lost daughter,” Ali said. “That way Ms. Arthurs would deliver you right into the lion’s den without suspecting a thing.”
Zara nodded and cut in again. “We knew your mother left you at an early age,” she said, raising her brows. “So it wasn’t hard for me to pretend to be her with a few forged documents. You didn’t know any better, and the real Skye Munroe never came forward to claim you. So the case for us to obtain custody ran surprisingly smoothly.”
“What then?” I said in a low voice.
Ali’s forehead creased. “The plan was to make you—and everyone around you—question your mental state. We’d also make you look like a terrible person and let all of your peers see it unfolding.”
Zara chimed in. “That way, when you eventually went missing, it would be presumed that you ran away somewhere after winding up on a bad path. Drugs, mental instability, and so on. Very sad. But no one would question it because there’s so many witnesses here in town.”
“Exactly.” Ali nodded fervently. “As it stands right now, you have quite the reputation at Vanderwild Bay Prep. For example, everyone knows you as the girl who was frog-marched out of school for supposedly planning a school shooting.”
I lifted my hand. “You didn’t do that. That was—”
“Jensen Lockhart,” Zara cut in scornfully. “Yes, he carried out the prank. But who do you think gave him the idea in the first place?”
A terrible emptiness bloomed inside me. Jensen knew about all of this?
“Oh, don’t look so brokenhearted,” Zara said, correctly reading my wounded expression. “Jensen doesn’t know anything about this scheme. He’s just a second-degree society member at the moment, and he hasn’t been sent out on a mission yet. So he’s practically a clueless toddler.”
“We got Clive Bedford to tell his son Ash to suggest the idea to Jensen,” Ali added. “Clive is a third-degree member like us.”
“Of course, there’s more,” Zara said, leaning forward. “Not just the school shooting scheme. Piper and all of her friends have seen and heard you behaving in a bizarre fashion. Hearing noises that no one else can. Seeing things. You’re in therapy too, with a real psychiatrist who isn’t one of ours. So she wouldn’t even be lying if she was ever questioned about you. After all the symptoms you’ve shown, she’d be readily able to confirm that you were displaying serious signs of mental illness. Of course, she has no idea that all of those so-called symptoms were faked. By us.”
“So the night terrors were real,” I said in a hollow voice. “It was all you.”
Zara nodded. “Yes. That old house of ours has a lot of secret rooms and hidden doors,” she said. “There’s actually a trapdoor right under the Persian rug on your bedroom floor, leading down into the library below. It was easy for us to get a ladder and climb up in the middle of the night to frighten you when you were half-asleep.”
Ali chuckled. “It was actually quite fun. We’d open the trapdoor and whisper your name until you woke up, looked around, and realized nothing was there. Like the voices were all in your head.”
“Or we’d go all the way up to your floor and crouch in the shadows until you noticed us,” Zara added. “Then we’d slip back down as soon as you started screaming. You really started to think your room was haunted after a while. Hilarious.”
“And the video in my locker?” I said, furious heat rising in my neck. “On that flash drive?”
