Page 33 of Claimed
His frown didn’t ease, but that was okay. At least I felt better about gettingthat off my chest.
“It’s fine,” he said. “We can actually use this to our benefit. But there’s something else.”
“What is it?”
“Bryn and Katie escaped from the compound. They’re in Nashville with Dale and Zach.”
My jaw slackened. “Wow. You sent them to the same place?”
He sighed remorsefully. “Yes.”
“It must’ve been jarring for Katie to walk into a greatbig house and unexpectedly run into her twin sister.”
“I considered how painful it could be for both of them, but I concluded the impact would be the same whether or not we were there. I had to prioritize.” His frown intensified. “What I hadn’t properly taken into account was how capable my sister is of creating a shit storm on top of a shit storm.” Jasper fell back against the sofa, rubbinghis face. “Or maybe I’m just fucking tired of it all.”
He looked so miserable, so human. I stroked his strong thigh, hoping to bring him comfort. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’ve never met someone who had so many irons in the fire. You have so many that it’s hard to focus on one.”
Jasper studied me as if he’d been barely listening. “What if I give up?” he said, his expressionthe picture of pure misery.
I rubbed his leg more fervently in an effort to really try to relieve his despair. “Give up what?”
He shook his head. “I’ve been holding this shitty family together for as long as I can remember. All for some fucking secret that could destroy us.” His eyes narrowed even more as he tilted his head to the side. “And I’ve been asking myself why Arthur hasn’tcome out with it. I’m decimating him right now, yet he hasn’t struck back.”
I grunted thoughtfully. Jasper was watching me intently. Perhaps he could see me thinking. He’d just said something that made a hell of a lot of sense, and my professional instinct was putting the pieces together.
“Your father…” I said.
“What about him?”
“He strikes me as a man who never intendedto die. You said he was intent on teaching you the Roman way.” I tried not to roll my eyes at such ridiculousness. I had studied the Roman Empire in college, and I knew how they’d combined brutality with mind control. Jasper spoke of some of the abuses he had suffered, and I was positive there were more, probably a lot that he couldn’t remember. “You know what the Roman way is?”
He snappedto the upright position. “Yes… where are you going with this?”
“The Romans were masters at making the slave believe he deserved his station in life. They were the first fucking psychologists. They figured out humanity and used their knowledge to dominate.”
“I know this,” Jasper gruffly said.
“Then you know child soldiers are the most treacherous?”
His eyebrows drewtogether as he pondered what I’d said, then he closed his eyes gravely. “Yes.”
“You were a child soldier. You were—”
Jasper held his hand up. “Just stop.”
“Okay,” I whispered, believing I had gone too far down the wrong road. I wanted to back it up and drive down the right one. “How about I tell you what I think about the nature of your father and Arthur Valentine’s relationship?”
He opened his sad eyes and nodded once.
I was relieved that he wanted to hear it. “I think they both wanted ultimate power. Remember when Kat saw the photo of your father and called him Arthur? Well, first she vomited, and then she called him Arthur.” I didn’t want to forget to mention that part, because I thought the two had a lot to do with each other.
“I remember,” he saidimpatiently.
“I’m wondering if the two of them knew about what was going on in the house Kat was raised in. I’m also wondering if they were less at odds with each other than they needed you to believe. They were not enemies. They were allies.”
For a moment, Jasper looked at me as though I were speaking nonsense. “I think Randolph’s Benjamin Dow.”
I jutted my neck forward.“Why do you say that?”
