Page 85 of Body Tox

I glared at the old man. The beastly rapist who tortured Evangeline and made her take her life was here, holding my Little Wraith hostage.

“I am your father, Asher Ballard. Evangeline is not just my prized breeder but yoursister.”

I faltered, my mouth opening and closing, looking to Echo, who…stayed silent.

Angie was…my sister?

This monster is my father?

“You were never the brightest, were you boy? A shame, though. You were the best retrieval method of getting twice the profit for my breeders.”

I tried to get my brain to catch up to his fucked up words.

“I…what?”

The headmaster shook his head with disappointment in his eyes.

“I own you, Asher Ballard. You work for me. I contracted you to go find my breeders for my program, give you the heroic notion that you saved them, only to collect the money from their happy fathers and reclaim the girls once more.”

I…

“I suppose you can still refer to me as the Debt collector if you like.”

All those women I’d saved…were used as breeders?

“What the fuck do your riddles mean, old man?”

He laughed. Gripping the arm of the figure beside him and pushing them to the floor.

“Ask her yourself.”

I reached forward to the fallen person. Their cloak fell off their head and revealed bright blonde hair.

She looked up, meeting my eyes, and the big swirling pools of blue stared back at me.

“Evangeline…” I said silently. The woman before me, the friend I buried all those years ago.

“I don’t…I don’t understand.”

Evangeline’s tears dripped free of her blue eyes. “I am so sorry, Asher. I truly am.”

I didn’t see it until it was too late. Echo screamed and jolted forward, her arms wrenched back like a rope hooked to a tether.

A gun was pulled out from the folds of black robing, shaking in Evangeline’s pale grip, and then…

Boom.

The shot rang off the walls, and I fell, hearing Echo’s scream pierce the air as I hit the ground.

My ears were ringing, a line of blood welling underneath me. It covered her name, blurred it, and hid it in a sea of red.

“No!” Echo screamed, and I watched her fight with everything she had.

She kicked, bit, and wrestled in the arms of the robed figures. She took down a good number of them, but there were just too many.

She was fighting to get to me. Tried to save me from drowning in my own blood.

She…wasn’t fast…enough.

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