Brothers by Helena Newbury

Author:Helena Newbury [Newbury, Helena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Foster & Black
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

34

Bradan

The blue light came on but it wasn’t morning. The alarm was ringing with a different tone, the urgent beeping that meant See Me: Now.

I scrambled into my clothes and raced downstairs to his office. Dad always kept it cold, said it helped him stay awake through the long nights. I wasn’t sure when he slept or if he ever did.

Two women were just leaving, hurriedly pulling their clothes on as if they’d been interrupted. There were usually women. Dad would select one or sometimes two to be with him for a night. Their partners were Insiders too, so they didn’t mind.

Dad was standing on his office’s balcony, back ramrod straight as he stared out at the world. When I opened the door, he turned to me and I saw the anger in his eyes. He crossed to his desk in three big strides and nodded down at the photos that were strewn across it.

“There was an attack,” Dad told me. “Someone broke into a Group house. Kidnapped one of the Recruits. Beat up some Guides.”

I drew in my breath as I looked at the photos. Blood poured from broken noses, bruises stood out dark and ugly on a man’s neck. There were action shots, too, taken with the hidden camera. All of the Group houses have them, for security. I could see four men invade the sanctity of an Initiation and begin assaulting people. One man was up against the wall, pinned by his throat. Anger rose and uncoiled like a waking serpent. How dare they?! “Did we catch them?” I asked, my voice choked with fury.

“No,” said Dad. “We’ve tracked them down, now. It took us a few days but we found them. But that’s not the point. Look at them.” He pushed five photos across the desk to me.

The first was of a young woman sitting at a dining table. She was a slender, frail-looking thing, with dark hair tied back in a ponytail. She’d been caught off guard and was looking up at the camera with a big, natural smile. I recognized that she was pretty but only in the same way I’d recognize if the two halves of a picture were symmetrical, or that a puzzle had all its pieces. Beauty, love...I’d learned, when I was chosen to be a Prime, that all those things were weaknesses. The only person I should love was Dad. And I did. And he loved me.

Even if he’d never said it. He’d praised me, thanked me...but he’d never once said he loved me. I was self-conscious about how much I wanted to hear him say it.

The other four photos were a little blurry: they were freeze-frames from the video the hidden camera had shot. Four men, all with black hair. One was in a suit, one was in a biker’s leather cut, one was in a hooded top and one was in a tank top. I could see tattoos on one of their backs. That would make him easier to identify: it’s exactly why we Primes don’t have them.

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