Page 31 of Pride
“It’s a simple question. You either do or you don’t.”
“Unless you’re talking about my nightclub, no, I don’t.”
“But you’ve been created to sense deadly sin. How can you not?”
“Pride is just a human emotion. Sin is a human invention used to implement fear in order to control.”
“But if people don’t believe they sin, there would be chaos.”
“There is chaos anyway, and people can still believe in doing wrong—I’m sorry, but why are we philosophizing about sin?”
Alice pulled his plate toward her and cut his steak into manageable pieces. “But whether or not Hell exists, as the Bible tells us, there is something. We at the Sisterhood—and the Vatican—firmly believe that.”
“I never thought you were a believer, Alice. You’ve always been too practical and…” He sat back, loosened his tie, and put it on the table beside him. “I would have thought it behooves someone like you to disbelieve Bible tales.”
“Someone like me? As in, if I don’t believe in Hell, then I won’t go there, is that it?” She pushed his plate back to him. “I’m suddenly forgiven for all my crimes?”
He nodded, picked up his fork, and stabbed the steak. Resisting a smile of triumph, Alice returned to her own meal but found her appetite had left her.
“You think all I do is kill, don’t you?”
Not skipping a beat, he replied, “Mary told us all about the kinds of missions she went on. Sleeping with dangerous diplomats, assassinating the ones who posed a threat to the advancement of women, even going so far as infiltrating organizations, gaining their trust, and then when the time was ripe, ruthlessly squashing their targets like a bug. It takes a special kind of cold, hard detachment to go undercover for two years.”
“You think I’m evil.”
“I never said that.”
“Sorry, cold, hard and detached.”
“I was talking about Mary.”
“So you think that of your mother?”
“I love my mother,” he said, chewing and then swallowing. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for her. Nothing. But it took her a long time to reprogram herself from the damage the Sisterhood did to her. Even now I doubt she’s fully recovered.”
“And what about me? Do you think I’m redeemable?”
His lack of response was his answer, and it stabbed Alice right in the center of the chest. She was more than a killer. She was someone who tried to make the world a better place, like him. If Parker couldn’t see that, a killer himself, then what was she doing? Maybe Parker would never understand where she came from.
“The thing is,” she said, staring blankly at her plate. “We believe replicates left in their natural state move south because there is something there.”
He raised a brow, curious.
“Most replicates can sense sin,” she continued. “So it’s safe to say when in their uncontrolled state, they would revert to pure instinct.”
His chewing slowed, and he lowered his fork. “You’re not about to say what I think you are, are you?”
“We believe they are trying to get to a place with the strongest concentration of sin—Hell.”
He scoffed and spoke to her like she was a toddler. “They’re just moving south, Alice. Probably programmed to head back to a base, that’s all. And besides, I sense sin. Wouldn’t I feel the urge to head south?”
“You think the Syndicate would be so stupid as to program their replicates to lead their enemies to their base?”
He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable.
Alice continued, “You and your siblings have intelligent, independent thought. Replicates are beings of instinct at the most basic level and they’re programmed to hunt down sin.”
“Sara was a replicate. Some would argue she was intelligent.”
