Page 102 of Bound By Blood and Lies

“What?” she whispers.

Longstaff exhales slowly. He drags a hand down his face like the weight of it is something he’s been carrying alone for far too long.

“Three sons I had to put in the ground whilst you stood there and broke a little more each time,” Longstaff hisses and Fiona’s face tightens.

“I couldn’t watch it again,” he continues, shaking his head slightly. “I couldn’t stand there and lose another one. I couldn’t lose you. I couldn’t keep losing my children. So I went to someone who could actually do something about it.”

“Fisher,” I say quietly.

“You went to him and not the other way around?” Fiona’s lip curls back as she sneers at him.

“I went to a friend,” Longstaff snaps. “I went to someone who understood what this family is built on. What it’s supposed to be.” Fiona scoffs. “I might have buried my sons, Fi, but it was losing you that hurt the most. Do you have any idea what that does to a man? To watch the woman you love fall apart time and time again yet still not be able to do a damn thing about it? I had all the money in the bank and all the power in the world, but I couldn’t stop?—”

“So you hurt other women?” I cut in, and his face drips in contempt as he looks at me.

“I didn’t hurt other women.”

“Maybe not physically, no, but you let other people hurt them in your name, Longstaff,” I spit as heat flushes through my body. “You let your men rape me, rape Robyn, rape countless other people and that…” I let out a humourless laugh as my lip curls, “…that is you hurting us.”

Something flashes across his face. It almost looks like guilt, but I shake it off. The silence that follows is deafening and my mind whirls with too many questions to ask. Fiona is crying silently and I grit my teeth again against the wave of emotion trying to break through me.

“Why?” I whisper again, keeping my glare firmly locked on him.

Longstaff’s eyes flash to the men around the church before looking back at me.

“Kick the gun over and I will tell you everything.” His gaze locks onto mine as his voice sharpens and carries across the church. He must see my disbelief because he barks, “Guns down.”

In an instant I hear safeties click off and metal shift. Around me, Longstaff’s lackeys lower their guns, and I gulp. My handgun lies on the floor just in front of me and hope flares in my chest. Two steps, that’s all it would take. Two steps and it will be over.

“Kick it over, Fae. I’ll give you your answers.”

My nostrils flare as I look back at him and our eyes lock. I step forward carefully, closing the distance to the gun. My tongue runs over my dry lips as my pulse thuds harder with each step. It would be so easy. One quick bend, one clean movement, and I’d have the advantage again. I could shoot him dead and hide behind the nearest pillar but then my eyes flick to Fiona. She’s standing front and centre with nowhere to go.

God damn it.

With my mind made up I take another quick step and kick the gun toward Longstaff, the metal scrapes loudly across the floor as it slides to his feet. I spare another glance at Fiona, and I swear she almost looks disappointed in me. The gun settles just in front of Longstaff, and he bends to pick it up.

“Everybody, leave,” Longstaff demands.

My head snaps to him as we wait in silence and his guards file out of the church. Their footsteps echo against the stone until the doors close and the sound dies with them. The space feels colder without them as the chill settles deep into my bones; I wrap my arms around myself, holding still whilst I wait for him to speak. I feel Fiona moving closer to me again until we are almost shoulder to shoulder.

“Fisher said he could fix it,” Longstaff finally says as the church door slams closed. “What we go through isn’t normal, it’s not natural, it’s a genetic mutation that was forced upon us. I wanted to change that. I wanted to do good.”

“At what cost?” Fiona bites out and Longstaff sighs.

“At the start, Swallows were offering themselves up. They were just as eager as we were. I guess they thought if more men were born to The Company, the less they’d need to be in the compound. They believed in us and saw the vision.”

“But it didn’t work…” I guess as my stomach turns over.

“It didn’t work.” Longstaff’s expression tightens. “We started trying to change the variables with men that weren’t just councillors or founders, but the Swallows weren’t happy. They didn’t want just anyone’s babies. They wanted children from the elite.”

“What happened to these kids?” Fiona asks with wide eyes.

“They died or went into care,” he shrugs and Fiona finds my hand, gently squeezing it as Longstaff takes a step toward us.

“At the start they were matched with higher bloodlines. When that went wrong, we went with Swallows and lower bloodlines. After that we tried to find women outside of The Company to see if it was just our genetic mark-ups together and that still didn’t work. We did have one more experiment though. One we hadn’t been able to do in decades.”

Longstaff’s blue eyes collide with mine as he looks at me. I know what he’s going to say before he even speaks. Fiona covers her mouth as she follows his line of sight.