Page 40 of Remnants
“Fine, fine.” He shifts one last time and clears his throat. “A long time ago, a beautiful young girl—”
“—skip the details for now,” Aiden cuts in, and Harvey frowns.
“But those tragic details are what you need to really feel for me and what I’m going through.”
“I can listen to them later, Harvey,” Cibrina offers reassuringly. “Just the cliff notes version for now.”
He nods, accepting it and hopefully keeping his story short this time. “Mother was one of the first kids kidnapped and brainwashed by Dad back when he first started the company. Time jump until she’s older, and he takes a liking to her gift of turning objects invisible. So, what does the pervert do? He buys an island just for her, filled with everything she could ever ask for and servants to attend to her, and he convinces her to have his kids. And not just a couple. But as many as she could.”
My gut clenches, my stomach churning uneasily.
Was this what he tried with my mom?
No, she was still training to fight with GE.
“Anyway, about eight kids later, I was born. We were all raised on that island and isolated from the rest of the company. All fourteenof us were gifted, but only twelve had the ability to turn ourselves invisible. We were trained from childhood to become his personal spies. When not on that island, we were to be invisible unless specifically told not to be for an assignment.”
“What sort of assignments were you given?” Aiden questions.
Harvey chuckles. “Mostly, spying on his allies.” He rests an elbow on one knee and leans into his fist. “We would be assigned to monitor his Board. Or Board-elect members. Make sure there were no…ideas…floating about that he wouldn’t approve of.” He sighs. “Anyway, back to keeping this short. Somehow, he heard about the Guild when Thorne first created it. He sent me to infiltrate it and report back to him on it—more of a wait-and-see assignment. Thorne almost found me out near the end, but you guys actually saved me on that when you killed him. Something else must have happened around that time with Gifted Enterprise because Dad stopped contacting me after that.”
He continues, “I didn’t know what to do when he stopped reaching out, but I was too scared to remind him I was here. And, surprise, surprise, I actually liked what you did with the Guild. I think he forgot all about it for a couple years. That is until you messed it up by getting involved with the Board-elect Congressman.”
“Joe?” I confirm, disgust coating my tone.
Harvey nods. “That’s the one. Whatever interaction you had with him, I can guarantee one of my siblings was there. And that’s how he found out about who you were and where to find you. Which brought him, and therefore my Dad, back to looking at the Guild.”
Fuck. So, the night he’d been feeling me up and then Kellan andAiden showed up, someone else had been there?
“He reached out to me again, but we’d moved to the bunker, and I tried to play it off that service was bad, and we were being kept down there. I accidentally mentioned you were looking for him. That was when he came up with his great plan of luring you to an island full of agents in disguise so he could come to see it for himself. I just had to slip in the tip of where to find him.”
“Why couldn’t he teleport here if you told him where it was?” Dane asks.
“He can’t teleport somewhere he hasn’t been before, or he can’t see from where he’s standing. That’s why I had to open the doors for them to get out to the rest of the bunker. But I swear…that’sallI did.”
“Tell that to the six kidnapped Guild members and Claudia,” Kellan growls.
I rub my hand over my face. This is just…so much information to take in. “Why did you call me ‘the one that got away’?”
Harvey smiles. “Because, dear sister. Of all my half-siblings, you’re the only one I know about. Why? Because you got away from him. Somehow, your mother escaped with you, and after that, you were gone. Poof! And he wasfurious. I think he’d planned to try again with your mom, but then she…you know.”
I nod, not needing him to say it.
“I was amazed to hear that one of his kids actually escaped him. And not once, but twice. I think it burned his pride a bit, but you were a hero to the rest of us.”
“So then…all those times you offered to help me disappear…?”
His smile falls. “I meant it. Dad had his eye on the Guild again, so I knew you wouldn’t be safe here.”
Silence stretches through the room as I let that sink in.
Dane shoves his fingers through his hair, rubbing his hand back and forth. “So, you need us to save thirteen people?”
“Ten,” Harvey corrects. “Dad killed Erik and Desmond for failure and Wyra because he suspected she was going to betray him.”
Psycho bastard deserves the worst of deaths.
“And they’re most likely spying on Board members?” Aiden confirms slowly.
