Page 8 of Heartless Legacy

“The drugs are out of your system now. Or the zombie inducing ones are, anyway.”

“Well then, you better top me up so I can get through the little party you’re planning to throw for me.”

“Drug you?” He scoffs. “Where’s the fun in that? Whatever plans Malcolm had for you required you to be drugged out of your mind. While there are clients who want their merchandise submissive, I have a special batch that finds your brand ofdisobedience very alluring. They’ll want you lucid every time they visit, whether it be to test your tolerance for pain, or tear through your tight little ass.”

He grabs a handful of my hair and yanks, forcing my head back. “They’re offering obscene amounts of money to have the first crack at you. The top bidder wants to know just how much of a beating you can take.” He arches a brow and says, “I’ve heard about your exploits in the underground fight ring in Red Cliff. I’ve seen footage of you fighting the staff in the prison wing of Rockridge, and yet I don’t have an answer for that question. I’m all about having answers about my merchandise.”

He pulls out his phone and swings it towards me, showing me the asking price for letting someone beat the shit out of me. It’s a lot of zeros. I watch as he accepts the bid and says, “Let’s give it a test run, shall we?”

Chapter 1

Holden

Ienter another command prompt and press the return button, waiting for the computer to execute the function. The cursor blinks, the screen flicks, but nothing comes up. This doesn’t make sense. I’ve been hacking into traffic cameras since I was eleven andnever, not even when I was just learning my way around a computer, have Ievergotten a blank screen.

No matter what city or state I type into the search bar, it’s all dead space. As if the entire infrastructure is off line or… as if they’ve upgraded their security, switched servers, and kicked me out of the system.

I push away from my keyboard with a huff. Looks like I’ll be spending the afternoon searching for a tiny town with crappy firewalls to their Department of Transportation network. I make a trip to the kitchen to grab a drink. When I get back to my room, the cursor is still blinking, but the data lines are populating, and my system access is restored.

The blank space from earlier must’ve been from some type of denial of service attack. I enter the command string for the Canyon Falls network and sit back as I watch my screen fill up with the feed from the cameras in town and the annex, as well as the roads leading here and out to Palisade Shores.

The camera over by River Rock Road is the last to come online. I exhale a sigh of relief now that I’m back up and running. I flip through a few frames of the major intersections and shut down the ones I don’t need. My eyes flick to the feed of River Rock in the upper right corner of the screen. My finger pauses over the mouse as I watch the feed for a few seconds, trying to figure out what caught my eye. It glitches again, letting me know I’m not imagining an anomaly. The camera feed is on a loop. It’s easy to miss, but the date stamp on the camera is a dead giveaway. It was unusually rainy the week of the 15th, and yet there wasn’t a drop of precipitation on the cars driving through the frame. I find four other cameras in that area and they have the same issue.

River Rock Road isn’t close to any residential or commercial neighborhoods. There’s a lot of undeveloped land out that way. Whatever is happening out there, someone’s trying to keep it quiet. Quiet means leverage and there’s nothing I like more than having leverage over people. I jot down a note to look deeper into this.

My phone buzzes with a message from my dad, letting me know dinner is ready. I reply that I’ll eat later, and dive back into my search for Thea.

I’ve been at it for an hour when a chat message pops up. I click it open, expecting to see something from SMVM0St33l, but the sender’s name is a bunch of numbers and characters. Someone who hasn’t bothered to create a username is always a red flag, and so is the cryptic message.

226$38!9*5

Reality is an illusion. That keeps us in chains. How far will you go? What are you willing to risk? For freedom and truth?

Whoever it is, is probably trying to recruit hackers. I delete it and go back to what I’m doing.

Chapter 2

Pax

Summer lunch parties should be called summer nightmare parties. It’s too damn hot and sticky to be outside and yet the hosts for today’s event couldn’t be bothered to hold it indoors. There are too many of us to fit inside the tents, so I’m standing in the middle of the backyard- sweating my ass off- even though I’m wearing linen shorts and shirt.

I stand by the hedges, looking out over the water, watching as the tides ripple in the sand before dragging some of it away. My mind wanders to the night I took Thea to the beach and how happy she looked digging her fingers into the sand, while the waves tickled her feet. I rub my chest, trying to ease the ache I feel there. Fuck, I miss her.

I tense as a body comes to stand next to me. Shoving my feelings down deep where nobody can see them, I smooth my face into a mask, waiting for Finley Jefferson Rhodes, Jr. or J.R. as he’s called, to say something. It’s been three months since the announcement of my petition to marry Eloise. Finn might be happy to be out of his contract, but I’m not so sure his father shares in his joy.

“Beautiful, yet dangerous.” He says, pointing to the ocean. “The waves. The sea. It’s beautiful. Calming, yet dangerous, toanyone who doesn’t know how to navigate the swirl of the water. Riptides appear out of nowhere. One minute you’re swimming straight on a direct path to your destination, and the next, you realize the waves have pushed you way off course.”

He pauses, taking a sip of his drink before continuing. “That’s why they tell you to swim diagonal to the shore if you’re caught in a riptide. If you stay in the current, or fight to keep moving forward, it’ll pull you out to sea, further from your goal.”

He clasps my shoulder before walking away. I turn, watching his departure, and take it all in. What’s the point of any of this? If Thea were here, she’d be irritating the guests, or complaining about the heat and trying to sneak out early. Watching her be a brat would be a welcome break from the monotony of it all.

Finn and Holden are across the lawn. I miss my girl, and I miss my brothers. I take a step towards them, but Eloise’s approach cuts me off. “Pax, there you are!”

Her voice grates. The too syrupy smile nauseates me, and her touch makes me want to slice off my flesh. I look back over to where Finn and Holden are standing. Their backs are now to me.“What do you want, Eloise?”

“There are people who want to congratulate me on my upcoming engagement.”

“Then go get congratulated.”

---