Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 83040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83040 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 415(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 277(@300wpm)
My grandfather is about eighty-five, I think. I stopped keeping track when I was ten. He doesn’t like birthdays, or holidays, or anything, really. Except work. I might take after him, now that I think about it. But he’s not feeble. Not at all feeble. He looks… sixty, maybe younger? He’s not the stereotypical grandfather, that’s for sure. He’s still tall. His shoulders still fill out his uniform, which he still wears even though he’s been retired since before I was born.
And, I guess that means, obviously, he never retired.
At any rate, he hasn’t aged at all in my mind over the course of my life. He’s always been like this. And while he’s feared by most, if not all, people in our department—including me—he’s nice to have on your side. I certainly wouldn’t want him as an enemy.
“How are you liking Blackberry Hill, Ambrose?”
I grimace, not just at my formal name, but at the question itself, but only because we’re walking side by side and he can’t see me do this. “It’s… um… fine.”
Which makes my grandfather laugh. It’s a rare enough emotion that I actually turn to look at him. “It’s a shithole,” he says. “Everybody thinks it’s a shithole. Especially you, after growing up in my house.”
His house. He says it like it’s some four-bedroom bungalow on Main Street. It’s not. It’s not a house at all, it’s a forty-thousand-square-foot estate. Something more akin to a museum, actually.
It’s not what people might think. You don’t just live in a place like that. You’re assigned spaces. You may go here, but not there. You may use this bathroom, but not that one. This is where you’re allowed to have food. This is where you’re allowed to play indoors. This is where you’re allowed to sleep.
And those were the good old days before I was conscripted into the Department of Personal Operations at age eight. A department my great-great-grandfather started way back in his day.
All the men in my family have been Personal Operations Directors. Meaning they all ran assets like Olive. Assets that became my great-great grandmother, my great-grandmother, my grandmother, and my mother.
Which is why I’m having a hard time understanding how, exactly, any of this is fair.
Olive didn’t fuck up that bad. She made a couple of mistakes. It’s our first real job together. Did they really expect perfection?
“Ambrose?”
“Hmm?”
“Did you hear me?”
“I didn’t, I’m sorry. I was preoccupied with my own thoughts.”
“Of course you were. I’m sure you’re wondering how this situation might affect your future.”
“I was, actually.” We’ve reached the closest dining hall in this section of the city, so we stop outside it and face each other. “Is that why you’re here? To tell me how it ends?”
He smiles and waves a hand at the dining room. “We’ll get there. But let’s have a drink and a bite to eat.”
Over the course of the next hour we have a drink, we eat food, and my grandfather talks about anything and everything except me. None of which I find even remotely interesting, even if I knew who or what the fuck he was talking about. It’s a whole lot of General Farlow this and Admiral Leary that, and I’m actually making these titles up in my head because he lists off so many fucking ‘old friends’ of his, they become nothing more than a jumbled mess of names to me.
Finally, the waiters clear our table of dishes, brush all the crumbs off with a sweeper, and we’re left with a white tablecloth and a small flickering candle between us.
He puts his hands on the table and folds them together.
“Just… say it.” I sigh. “Whatever it is, just tell me.”
“You’re going to have to… start over.”
Start over. A wave of hope fills me. Start over with Olive, he means. “Right.” I smile. “Of course. She’s not ready. I get it. We’ll go back, all the way to the beginning if you want, and—”
“No, Ambrose.” He cuts me off. “That’s not what I meant.”
The sudden wave of hope turns into anger. “Surely you are not telling me that she’s not mine anymore. You can’t be saying that. Because this is how it works, Grandfather. I chose her. You and everyone else in the DPO approved it. There’s no going back. There’s no—”
He puts up a hand, remains completely silent as if he’s giving me an opportunity to collect myself, and then lets out a breath. “She’s dead, Ambrose. Collin Creed killed her this morning. When she woke up yesterday morning and realized the operation was cut short, she ran to him.”
“No. She would never.”
“But she did, Ambrose. And then Ean Shephard told him everything. And do you know why Ean Shephard told him everything, Ambrose?”
I just stare at him.
“Do you?” He smiles at me. “You do. Ean Shephard told Collin Creed everything because Olive Creed told Ean Shephard everything. You know better than most what kind of man Collin is. He’s ruthless. Olive was nothing to him. You know this. And you had to see it coming. You knew her history, it wasn’t perfect. She was…” He pauses, almost as if he’s wondering if he should say the next part. But of course he does. “She was damaged, Ambrose. This was all in her file. You knew. You understood the risk and, I’m sorry to say, you gambled and you lost. She’s gone.”