We Are the Crisis (The Convergence Saga 2) by Cadwell Turnbull

Author:Cadwell Turnbull [Cadwell Turnbull]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Pub

NINETEEN

A week after her father died, Alex moved in with Mister in a large house in Watertown. It was barely furnished when she arrived. He’d gotten a whole new place to put her. Or at least, that’s what Alex thought back then. She had a retinue of house staff to look after her. Tutors in every subject. Dozens of them. Her whole day, weekday or weekend, was scheduled for her. Piano, then English, then math, then art, then tennis on a newly made court out back. Lunch, then physics, then history and sociology, then fucking archery. On Tuesday and Thursday nights, she had strategy.

With the house and the schooling and the new life came a new name: Alexandra.

Yes, it all seemed strange. But Alex had never spent time with someone as rich as Mister. She just thought this was how rich people parented children. Alex made up a story she liked. She still can’t tell if it was magic or spun up out of convenience.

Alex had come to learn that Mister belonged to an organization that did this all the time—paid attention to schools all over the country, tried to pick out who had the right combination of family connection and innate brilliance to become someone formidable in their various spheres of endeavor. Extra attention was placed on politics, but intelligence dynasties also got their due. The sort of people who could slip into different shadows and do the sort of covert work the organization needed done. Alex’s father was intelligence, and—she hadn’t known this when her father was alive—so was his father before him. Alex was her father’s only child, and she was already showing the sort of sharpness needed for that kind of work. It didn’t matter that her father was dead, and her grandfather long dead, before she was born. Mister knew all the same people her father had known and could grease the wheels of power for her.

So no, she didn’t know she was being groomed until much later. Most of that she pieced together herself. And then she pieced together memories from her childhood to figure out the rest. Those parties he held where he would cart Alex around from group to group. The other children there, forming their own strange networks of wealth, power, and privilege. The other children, who had never glimpsed this world before, sitting in their corners, trying to take it all in before some old man—shit, when isn’t it an old man?—came over to chat them up.

As a teenager, Alex thought it was some creepy sex thing, and then she tried to avoid the parties if she could. Sometimes people looked at her as though she was something they could use, and she didn’t like how that made her feel. Worse than that, she didn’t like that she didn’t know how they planned to use her.

During that time, Alex met a girl who would become her only friend her age until she went to college. She met Shaya at one of those parties, of course, and then Mister would arrange these weekend getaways to the mountains.

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