Noah snorted, but he seemed hurt, like he thought maybe Adam didn’t really see him at all.
“The boy I met in that warehouse, the one with the stars on his cheeks, that’s the real you. The you who might have stayed soft and gentle if you’d had different parents. But circumstance has made you build a wall around yourself, made you push back against anybody who even slightly wronged you so that they didn’t see how vulnerable you were. You want affection, but you fear it. You want love but are afraid it will be taken from you if you let anybody get too close. You’ve numbed yourself to kill the pain of the life you’ve lived so far, but it’s made you so…impervious to touch that you need it rough just to get off.”
The color had drained from Noah’s face, and when he spoke, he sounded almost on the verge of tears. “Jesus. You could get a job as a carnival psychic.”
Adam pulled Noah close until they were almost nose to nose. “I like all your pieces. I like you soft and I like you tough. You see all my pieces, too, you know? You see things about me even my family doesn’t. Letting somebody see you isn’t a bad thing if you can trust them.”
Noah swallowed hard. “And you trust me?”
“Yes. Do you trust me?”
Noah nodded. “Yes,” he said, voice thick.
“Good. Then there’s nothing to worry about.”
“What did Calliope have to say?” Noah asked after a few minutes.
“She found the cabin. It’s forty-five minutes outside the city.”
“We need to go. Like now. We need to see what’s in there.”
“We’re going to go. But first, shower, then we’ll grab food on the way. Calliope already sent me the address.”
Noah just kept nodding, looking spooked. “Yeah, we need to go.”
Adam didn’t know what else to do so he just leaned forward and kissed his forehead. What did you say to somebody who was about to relive the worst time of their life?
*
“What’s Calliope look like?” Noah asked around his breakfast burrito once they were on their way out of the city.
Adam shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen her.”
Noah froze with food stuffed in his cheek, looking like a chipmunk. “Wuh?”
“Yeah. My father knows who she is, but we don’t. It’s safer that way. For her. She has a family, children, hell, maybe even grandchildren. I don’t even know how old she is or what she looks like or even her real name. I just know she loves romance novels and Pop Funko dolls.”
Noah frowned. “But you gave her the hard drive.”
“No, I left the hard drive at the drop point. She goes there to retrieve it later.”
“And you’ve never been curious enough to stake out the drop point? See what she looks like?”
Adam scoffed. “Uh, no. My dad made it very clear that we are never to break that confidentiality. Ever. He has a way of getting his point across.”
Noah munched his breakfast burrito thoughtfully for a few minutes. “But isn’t that dangerous? For you? Like, wouldn’t it be safer if you all knew what she looked like? Mutually assured destruction or something?”
Adam shrugged. “Like I said, she and my dad are friends. He knows who she is. She understands what my father is trying to do. His end game. I’m pretty sure she lost somebody a long time ago. She feels the need to be a part of this, to right the wrongs or whatever. My father is very…careful about who knows our secret.”
“And now, I know your secret,” Noah said, voice full of apprehension.
Adam gripped Noah’s hand. “I’ll never let anybody hurt you. Especially my family. If it came down to it, I know where all the bodies are buried…literally. If they hurt you, they have to take me out, too, and despite what my brothers think, I’m too valuable. My father would never eliminate a research subject.”
Noah crumpled up his wrapper and tossed it into the empty bag at his feet. “Is that what you are? A research subject?”
“My father would never say it that way. He looks at each of us as his…creations. He thinks he Frankensteined us into becoming useful members of society. While Dr. Shepherd wanted to study psychopaths to better understand her son and how to keep him from becoming a danger, my father wanted us to harness that danger, point it at the right target. But to do that, we have to be able to move seamlessly between who we are and who the world perceives us to be. His money makes it possible for us to operate as two people.”
“He adopted all of you to turn you into weapons?” Noah asked, sounding more curious than concerned.
“‘Look like the flower but be the serpent underneath,’” Adam quoted. When Noah frowned, Adam clarified. “Shakespeare. Macbeth, specifically. In order to right the wrongs of the justice system, we have to look innocent to the world as a whole.”
“Is that why you have a snake tattoo?”
“We all have them. Even my egghead brother Atticus. My father made each of us get one after our first kill, so we’d never forget our purpose.”
“Does it bother you? That your dad thinks of you like that?”
Adam shook his head. “No. My dad loves us. He’s proud of his creations. He calls us works of art. He sculpted each of us into the killers we are. He really believes we’re not a flaw in the genetic fabric of society but a necessary evil. We can do what others can’t. If anything, I sometimes wonder if it bothers him. That he found us, saved us, educated and trained us, loved us…and we can never love him back. Not like he loves us.”
“You don’t feel love at all?” Noah asked.
Adam glanced over at Noah’s taut expression. “Not in the way others can. I’m not wired that way. Sometimes, I wonder if I could still be me if I had the ability to empathize or feel guilt and remorse, but I think my father’s right. My brothers and I have our place in society.”
Noah fell quiet, folding his arms across his chest to stare out the window. Adam had said something wrong, done something wrong, but he didn’t know what. He’d made Noah sad. Maybe just Adam’s past had upset him or maybe the thought that Adam and his brothers didn’t have a normal upbringing. But neither did Noah.