“What does that mean?”
“When I was younger and we had to go to the dinners and bring the bombs I built, I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to engage with the other children at the parties. Czar spent most of the time trying to cover for me so Sorbacov wouldn’t punish me after. He was afraid Sorbacov would kill me himself, or worse, give me to the kinds of men who enjoyed killing a kid for the pleasure of it.”
His blue eyes had gone from heat to ice. “Babe, this was supposed to be a good night. We’re not talking about this kind of shit. Let’s talk about your grandmother and how great she did today. She’s sick of being cooped up. I told her about the Floating Hat and said you and I could take her there for tea one afternoon and we’d go to Crow 287 for her birthday dinner. She really needs to get out of the house. We could invite some of her friends. Alena has a back room big enough, I think. If not, we can hold it at the clubhouse. She’d like that.”
Zyah burst out laughing, because her grandmother would lord it over everyone that she’d had her birthday party at a biker clubhouse or in the back room of Alena’s restaurant.
FIFTEEN
Gedeon loved the silence in his mind when he built things, especially bombs. Everyone left him alone. He could sit quietly outside in a little corner of the garden where it was mostly overgrown with tall heather grasses surrounding the bench and table where Sorbacov would place all the pieces for him to put together. Next to the equipment would be a cold cup of water. The water was always clean, from the spring. It tasted good, and he’d learned to sip at it and make it last. He’d tried to save it and bring it back with him for the others, but Sorbacov never allowed that, so he didn’t waste it.
On the other side of the table, lying across it, was the dreaded flogger. He hated that instrument. Sometimes, when he worked, Sorbacov would brush the leather strands over his back, up and down, almost as if he wanted to distract him. Gedeon would go deeper into his mind, hide himself there with the complicated calculations, with the way things clicked into place for him, the trajectories and patterns that made sense to his brain.
Nothing about Sorbacov made sense. There was no logic to him and his depravities. As a child, Gedeon had tried to find ways to please him, but there was no real way to do so. Pleasing Sorbacov didn’t earn rewards. Sorbacov liked to cause pain. He rewarded himself. Gedeon learned to read his moods, but that didn’t always mean anything either. It was better to just disappear into his own mind and build as fast as he could, making each object more and more complex. Building each faster than the one he had before.
The air felt fresh and clean on his naked body. Sorbacov didn’t give him clothes because he said he didn’t have use for clothes unless he wanted him to have them. He didn’t even notice he was shivering. He never minded the cold outside. The fresh air felt too much like freedom. He looked over the parts strewn on the table. The parts were completely different. He straightened, his heartbeat quickening. Something new. Something for his mind to work on.
Gedeon sat down on the cold slab, not even wincing. He didn’t look around to see if Sorbacov or anyone else was in the gardens as he normally would have done. At seven, he knew better. Czar would have given him a lecture for that, and if Reaper was watching him, that would be reported back, but he doubted if any of the others could have gotten out in time to watch his back. It was rare. Sorbacov kept a pretty tight watch on them all now, especially Player. He didn’t want to lose his prize bomb builder.
Gedeon surveyed the parts, automatically sorting through them in his mind. He laid them out swiftly, moving them almost without touching them, his hands a blur, fingers directing them where he needed them to go. There was satisfaction in watching them do his bidding, watching them come together.
A shadow fell across him, and he felt the brush of leather on his back, drawing him out of the tunnel, the place so deep no one could usually reach him. He wanted to scream at Sorbacov, and he turned quickly, a scowl of pure annoyance on his face. He needed to build the bomb. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t real; he had to figure it out. Why couldn’t Sorbacov understand that?
Sorbacov yanked him off the bench, his face that mask of sheer brutal glee, the one all the children feared the most. That was the one he wore when he wanted to show his friends his absolute rule over everyone. He flung Player into the grass on his hands and knees and began to whip him mercilessly with the flogger, hard, brutal strokes, driving him forward, all the while laughing as Gedeon crawled like a wounded animal until he bumped into legs. A fist caught his hair and yanked his head up. He found himself staring into mean, ugly eyes.