Chapter 4 - Subject Seventeen
“No.”
The word barely escaped my mouth.
My father stepped toward me.
“Evelyn.”
I backed away.
“No.”
Every guest in the ballroom had vanished from my awareness.
I saw only the photograph.
The little girl.
The bracelet.
The number.
17.
My father reached for me.
I pulled away.
“Do not touch me.”
His hand dropped.
Damian whispered,
“You’re adopted?”
I turned on him.
“Shut up.”
For once, he obeyed.
I looked at Jonathan.
“Tell me it’s fake.”
He said nothing.
“Dad.”
His eyes filled with something I had almost never seen.
Shame.
“It isn’t fake.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“My mother.”
“Elizabeth was your mother.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
He swallowed.
“She raised you.”
“My biological mother.”
Silence.
“Who was she?”
“I don’t know.”
I laughed.
It came out broken.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s the truth.”
Rebecca spoke from the screen.
“He knew more than he admitted.”
My father glared upward.
“Rebecca, stop.”
“You lost the right to tell anyone when to stop.”
I stared at the screen.
“How do you know this?”
Rebecca’s face softened.
“Because I was Subject Sixteen.”
The ballroom went silent again.
She raised her left wrist.
A faint circular scar surrounded it.
The same place where the bracelet appeared on my childhood photograph.
My father closed his eyes.
Rebecca continued.
“We were kept in the same building.”
My heart hammered.
“You remember me?”
“No.”
Her voice became quieter.
“We were children.”
She looked down.
“Most of us were too drugged to remember anything clearly.”
Arthur Cross suddenly walked toward the nearest wall.
Security blocked him.
He raised his hands.
“I’m not leaving.”
“Then stop moving.”
He looked at me.
“Evelyn.”
My eyes narrowed.
“You knew?”
His silence answered me.
“You knew who I was before tonight.”
“Yes.”
Damian stared at his father.
“You knew she was one of them?”
Arthur looked sick.
“I knew Jonathan adopted one of the children.”
“One of the children from what?”
Arthur looked around the ballroom.
Then at the cameras.
His voice dropped.
“Orpheus began as a private adoption network.”
Rebecca laughed bitterly.
“That is a generous description.”
Arthur continued.
“Rich families paid intermediaries.”
“For stolen children?”
“No.”
Rebecca interrupted.
“Some were stolen.”
Arthur looked toward the screen.
“Not at first.”
My father stepped forward.
“Enough.”
I turned.
“No.”
He froze.
“You don’t decide when this ends.”
My father looked at me for a long moment.
Then he nodded.
Arthur took a breath.
“Orpheus identified children whose parents were dead, imprisoned, undocumented, addicted, homeless, or otherwise vulnerable.”
My stomach turned.
“And sold them.”
Arthur did not answer.
Rebecca did.
“Yes.”
Damian slowly backed away from his father.
“You were involved in this?”
Arthur’s face collapsed.
“I was twenty-nine.”
“That is not an answer.”
“I handled properties.”
“Warehouses?”
Arthur looked at the floor.
“Temporary facilities.”
I felt nauseated.
Rebecca opened another document.
A list appeared.
Payments.
Names.
Dates.
Arthur Cross.
Jonathan Vale.
And one more name that stopped my father cold.
ELIZABETH VALE.
My mother.
The woman who raised me.
The woman whose funeral I had attended at sixteen.
I stared at my father.
He whispered,
“Evelyn, there are things about your mother you do not understand.”
Then Rebecca enlarged one final document.
DECEASED SUBJECTS.
My eyes scanned the names.
Sixteen.
Twenty-one.
Twenty-two.
Twenty-four.
I looked up sharply.
“Rebecca.”
“Yes?”
“You said you were Subject Sixteen.”
“I was.”
“Then why does this say Subject Sixteen died twenty-three years ago?”
Rebecca stared at me through the camera.
May you like
Then she smiled without warmth.
“Because Jonathan Vale watched them bury the wrong girl.”
