Page 132 of Kade

I went still, hearing that.

My daughter.

What did my daughter have to do with whatever dark plans my sister had concocted? Steele too. I sent him a scathing look, but he was watching his sister with confusion.

“They changed the recruiting rule. You remember how it worked the last time, right?”

I did, remembering when Park himself explained it all to me.

The families were legacies. My grandfather. My father. It made sense why they tapped Sabrina to join the new one. Park’s family started it all. They initiated my mother, except she was blacklisted. They tried to initiate me. They wanted Mason, Logan. They really wanted James Kade, though he was considered a special exception. The recruiting happened in college. They pulled people in through friendships and bonding, finding out their secrets and using that to keep them inside the society. It was a cult. If you left, all of your secrets were released and your life was ruined.

The power of The Network had been terrifying. If this new one was worse, that gave me chills.

My mouth was dry, feeling like I was scraping over bark as I asked, “How did they change it?”

“We can recruit in high school now.”

Oh, God.

She sent Steele here. He was in the same school as Maddy.

Steele was cool. Popular. That was obvious to see. His group of friends seemed to be friends with my daughter.

I shared a horrified look with Mason, both of us realizing what she was trying to do. I rasped out, “You’re trying to recruit my daughter?”

Her eyes were soulless. She tucked her hands behind her back and swung her shoulders from side to side. All demure-like and the devil incarnate. “That’s the thing. Right? The dangerous part of secret societies. Cults. Once you get in someone’s head, in their emotions, you can’t get out. I’m in Maddy’s head. The guys were nice enough to introduce us, to let us hang out at Beltraine’s house on the weekend. Your daughter is real nice. She looks up to me. She likes me.”

Axel’s nose was wrinkled. His top lip curled up in disgust.

Steele’s eyes were bulging out, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Beltraine shared the same, but there was an undercurrent with him. A darker feeling. He was plotting and the way he was staring at Sabrina, those thoughts were about her.

God.

Was it true? Did Sabrina already have a handle on Maddy? Was she so far in that we’d never be able to get Sabrina’s influence out of her? We were seeing the real life product of this recruitment in person. My sister was proof of how powerful, how dangerous that type of recruitment could be.

I had no idea what kind of person my sister might’ve been because she was all Park Sebastian personified. She was his puppet.

No.

I shook my head, eyes closing. It couldn’t be true, but I thought Maddy had been spending time with different friends. I met them. Thought they were great influences. I didn’t know ithad all been a lie, but Maddy had consistently been lying since James died.

James…

Oh—no, no,no.

No—I locked eyes with Mason, but…

He knew. He already knew.

He’d been waiting for me to get there.

The old secret society wanted James. Badly.

The new one… They were about revenge, apparently.

They hadn’t come after me because of my father, but there would’ve been nothing to keep them away from James.

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