Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
She already had too many ghosts chasing her.
“I wouldn’t do that to you.” Pax slipped his hands into the pockets of his black cargo pants. His black boots were scuffed and his simple sweater of dark green wool hugged a well-muscled body devoid of any ounce of fat.
Some would call the latter a result of discipline. Theo knew Pax had plenty of that. She also knew that Pax had never been permitted to fail, not even by the minutest fraction. He’d never been given any room to grow out of the brutally defined box into which their grandfather had put him.
Her twin didn’t know how to be anything but unflinchingly perfect.
As it was, the world rarely even saw her brother dressed as casually as he was today; Pax was known for his bespoke suits and razor-sharp elegance, his “utter precision of form”—words she’d actually seen in a magazine article.
Why had she been reading an article about her brother?
Because he was the only person in the entire world who mattered to Theo, and—even though he’d never expect it—it was her turn to protect him. Even from outwardly harmless journalists who seemed to be paying a little too much attention to a Psy who kept his focus on the business world. It could be a hapless individual caught by his magnetic charisma—or it could be a stalker.
“What I’ve done,” he said now, “is set aside a hidden trust. The details on how to access it are in our PsyNet vault.”
“Our” meant the vault that Theo and Pax alone could access. Created of building blocks of pure psychic energy and embedded in the vast psychic network that connected all Psy on the planet but for the rare rebels, the vault was locked to their mental signatures. To the psychic echo that ran through both their brains. Because those brains had developed together in the womb and never fully lost their entwined nature.
Their invisible bond was the only thing that had saved her all those years when her grandfather would’ve rather disposed of this “defective” member of the extolled Marshall family. Too bad for him that to erase Theo would’ve been to fatally damage Pax.
Some Psy twins were like that.
“You’ve already given me enough money to last me multiple lifetimes. And I earn an income from my work.” Theo didn’t need much, didn’t deserve much after what she’d done. “I have no use for more. Especially after you gave me a position at your side, with the commensurate pay.”
Theo would’ve preferred to remain occluded, hidden by the shield of their grandfather’s machinations and her and Pax’s apparent personal estrangement. It had been far easier to help Pax as a lowly tech no one was watching, but her twin needed someone he could trust without question at his right hand—so here she was, a monster walking out in the open.
Poor Pax. Tied to a twin with no power, and death her only gift.
“We need to prepare you to go under if I die.” Flat, hard words, a reminder that her outwardly healthy brother’s life hung in precarious balance.
Theo looked away, her stomach clenching so hard it hurt.
“Theo.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Not yet. Not when they’d had but a heartbeat of time together after the cold and lonely desert of their childhoods. “I don’t like this place. Let’s get out.”
“Wait, I did have another reason to bring you here. I wanted to talk where we had no chance of being overheard—and no one ever comes out into the grounds.” Halting on the far end of the path, where the land merged into a small stand of trees and other foliage that blunted the impact of the high walls beyond, he pulled a slimline organizer about the size of a phone out of his pocket.
“I’ve been researching Grandfather’s interest in the Centers.” His eyes were ice chips now. “We own significantly more of them than I realized.”
A chill deep inside Theo’s chest, a shiver of awareness over her spine. “I’m not surprised. That’s exactly the type of business Grandfather would’ve considered a good investment.” The truly sickening thing was that until recently, Marshall Hyde would’ve been correct.
Psy families had paid good money to have their “malfunctioning” members “rehabilitated.” Such a clean word for the destruction of all a person was and all that they might’ve become, nothing but shuffling blanks left in the aftermath.
“The records are complex and I’m still digging my way through them,” Pax said, “but I found a fragmented file with your name on it.”
“What?” Theo blinked, frowned. “Why would my name be on anything to do with the Centers?”
“I don’t know.” Pax brought up a document on the organizer. “This is all I could pull up—looks like the file was deleted but the system glitched and so it was only partially erased.”