Page 2 of Redstone
“Prison, then?”
“Redstone,” Demarcos confirmed. “Our injunctions were denied by the new judge, who incidentally was brought on just this week after Judge Carter succumbed to some very startling and unexpected allegations of misconduct.” He shook his head helplessly. “There’s nothing I can do to stop the move, Kyle. All I can do is push for a faster trial, which is going to make gathering the witnesses we need difficult. I’m sorry.”
Redstone. Not Caravan, which would have been bad but was at least in the Central System, which followed guidelines and had oversight for their prisons. Redstone was a maximum-security detention center in the middle of nowhere, and it held some of the worst offenders the Alliance had ever taken alive.
“Also … your brother is here. He wants to meet with you.”
Fuck.And Kyle had thought that this day couldn’t get any worse.
Chapter two
Kyle had never had a pet, growing up. Not a real one, not the kind that followed you and fawned over you, the kind that begged for attention, for any scraps of affection that you would give it. He’d resented it some as a child because a lot of his peers—the elite, the richest of the rich—not only had designer pets, they were even allowed to bring them to boarding school.
Kyle remembered looking at fluffy epaulet snakes and catterpets and even an actual dog once and yearning for something of his own, something that would love him without reservation. As he got older, though, he started to recognize that feeling and the kinship it sought out within him. Heknewthat feeling, he did. And he both loved it and loathed it so violently that just thinking about it made him retch.
That was how Kyle felt about Raymond. And the worst part was, he had no ideawhy.
Kyle spent one and a half standard years of his life with Raymond Alexander, who was already the president ofthe Alliance, already a phenomenally successful politician and businessman. Ray had never been married, never had children. He’d never tied himself down to his biological family; the animosity between him and Foster had been evident even to Kyle. Ray didn’t seem to love anything, and Kyle couldn’t rememberwhyhe felt the way he did about the man.
He heard the outer door chime and stood up off his bed. He wasn’t about to face his brother from a position of weakness. They were the same height in bare feet, and it was the closest to equal that Kyle could make them under his current circumstances. The inner door opened, and Raymond Alexander, the president of the Alliance, walked in. He was tall and frosty in pale shades of purple and silver, golden-brown hair gleaming, his sharp-jawed expression of sternness familiar.
An aide followed him in, a mousy-haired woman whose head barely came to the middle of Raymond’s chest. He handed her his tab, then waved her away. She cast one wide-eyed look at Kyle before scampering back into the outer chamber. The door closed behind her, and the president was replaced by Ray.
“Damn it, Kyle,” Ray said, his unflappable mien giving way to something that looked vaguely tired and disappointed. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t give me that,” Ray snapped. “There’s no monitoring in here, it’s against regulations. You don’t have to pretend to be mind-controlled when it’s just the two of us. Now tell me the truth.”
Yeah, right.For all that his brother bothered with regulations, which was not at all when they didn’t suit his purposes. Kyle wasn’t about to victimize his own case by breaking protocol. “I don’t know what you mean,” he repeated. “I would hate to do anything that made you unhappy with me.”
Ray’s lips thinned as he frowned irritably. “Have it your way, then.” He sighed heavily and shook his head. “I have to say, I’ve been over and over this in my head, and Istilldon’t understand why you’re doing this. What happened, huh? What happened to you, to turn you against me like this? We’re family, Kyle. We’re almost all that’s left of the Alexander line. We should be allies, not enemies.”
“I agree,” Kyle said as blandly as he could manage while his mind raged.You killed them, you were behind it, all of it, youkilledthem, you didn’t care that they were family then!“I am your ally, brother. You wanted Cody Helms dead. I only tried to do what you wanted.”
“I never wanted anyone dead.”
Kyle couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled up out of him. “Right,” he agreed, trying to sound less sarcastic, less hateful. It was hard. “Of course not.”
“Shut your disrespectful mouth and listen to me,” Ray snapped. “Listen to what I’m telling you. I don’t need to kill children to get what I want, do you understand? It serves no purpose and would endanger me unnecessarily. I’m not responsible for the independent actions of all of my people or those who’dliketo be in my inner circle, but I can guarantee you that I never spoke or wrote out an order to have anyone at the Academy killed.”
You never needed to say a word when your assassin was a psychic.“I know,” was all Kyle said.
“You don’t believe me, though.”
“I believe everything you say,” Kyle said in a singsong tone. “I love you the best, remember?”
Ray stepped in close all of a sudden, and Kyle’s breath caught in his throat. He was frozen, caught in the sights of a gun and unable to move away. Bright blue eyes stared into his, and Kyle felt his heart jackknife in his chest when Ray reached up andcupped his face in both of his hands. Ray had large hands, broad palmed and long fingered, and they covered the sides of Kyle’s face from the edges of his jaws to the soft, thin skin of his temples. Ray cradled Kyle, keeping him utterly transfixed.
“That’s the greatest shame of all of this,” Ray said, and there was genuine sadness in his voice. “You do, don’t you? You lost so much that I never intended for you to lose, but you always kept that. I knew it, even when there was no good way for me to use it. She wrested you away from me again, and I lost my chance to perfect you, but that stuck. The love stuck.”
It did. It had. The love Kyle felt for his brother was like a river, running rapid through his body, filling him and scouring him all at once, rough and tumbling and cold. He loved Ray—he felt it like a wound he couldn’t heal, like a fate he couldn’t escape. Kyle loved him, and he didn’t knowwhy, or why it hurt so badly to do so. He just stood there and trembled with the force of it, the confusion of such an overwhelming adoration.I do, he wanted to say.I do, I love you, and I hate it, I hate it, I hate you.
“Kyle.” Ray shut his eyes for a moment, fine lines of stress radiating out from the edges of them before he leaned in, tilted Kyle’s head down, and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “I wish I’d done better by you. I wish I’d managed to keep you with me.”
Then he let go of Kyle and stepped back, and Kyle felt like he’d suddenly been saved from drowning. Ray straightened the violet collar on his suit, then his long cuffs, before speaking.
“You’re being sent to Redstone as I’m sure you know by now. The length of your stay is undetermined, but the sooner the trial, the sooner you’ll be out of there.”
