Series: Cobalt Empire Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 234
Estimated words: 226965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1135(@200wpm)___ 908(@250wpm)___ 757(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 226965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1135(@200wpm)___ 908(@250wpm)___ 757(@300wpm)
Charlie tilts his head. “Of course he sent me. Get the fuck in.” When I don’t move, he lets out an exasperated sigh. “It’s my birthday, Ben.”
Swiping the birthday card should not have this much power, but our mom treats birthdays like they’re coronations. Our day to reign. Even if some of us don’t care much about them. Honestly, if Charlie weren’t a twin, I think he’d Houdini himself on his birthday so no one could celebrate him.
Novak is silent, but I sense his utter relief when I step toward the SUV. My bodyguard rounds to the front passenger-side door, and I climb into the backseat beside my older brother. Oscar Oliveira mans the wheel, and I avoid making eye contact with Charlie’s bodyguard through the rearview.
Really, I just want this night to end.
I’m splintered open from feelings I can’t wrestle with properly. I still haven’t texted Harriet not to return to the club when she’s done at the lab. Because I worry if I tell her I’ve left she’ll think it’s because I’m angry at her.
Charlie lowers his window. “I don’t want to ask.” Cigarette between his lips, he lights it, then actually blows smoke outside and not in my face. “But this is my birthday present to Beckett, so I’m going to ask…” He raises his brows at me. “What’s wrong, Ben?”
The question sounds like he couldn’t care less for the answer.
“Consider your birthday present given,” I tell him with heat. “You asked me.”
He rolls his eyes. “I need an answer.”
I turn my gaze to the blurring city lights. “I’m not talking to you about this.”
“Eliot and Tom seem to think it has something to do with Harriet. They say she left, and your mood turned to shit, so what happened?”
I don’t reply.
He lets out an irritated exhale. “Let me guess. She offered to suck another guy’s dick—”
“Fuck off.” I shoot him a glare.
“He’s alive,” Charlie golf claps with the cigarette pinched between his fingers.
“Do not fucking talk about her like that.” Anger lances my voice. Novak is casting glances back at us. He might need to physically restrain me from strangling my brother in the next minute.
Charlie takes a drag from his cigarette, then taps the ash casually out the window. “Then explain why you looked like you just saw roadkill?”
“I thought I was about to get kidnapped off the street!” I shout. “I had no fucking idea it was you.”
“This is a security vehicle,” he says like I’m a moron.
“We aren’t the only people who own Range Rovers!”
He pinches his eyes like my lack of forethought is a bullet to his brain. We’re both grating on each other. “Before you stupidly thought you were going to be kidnapped, you were upset.” He drops his hand from his face. “So let’s not do this pointless runaround tonight. I’m not in the mood to chase you.”
“When are you ever in the mood?”
“Good point,” he deadpans. “You’ve made one in a blue moon. Now explain what the fuck went wrong.” He hangs his wrist out of the windowsill.
I exhale a rough breath, trying to cool down. “You of all people aren’t going to understand.”
Charlie takes the longest drag, then slowly blows smoke outside. When he slings his head back, he says, “Try me.”
I release another coarse breath. Why not? What do I have to lose? My nerve? I’m already on edge. So I tell him, “Right before Harriet had to leave, I learned her research involves animal work.”
Charlie doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t roll his eyes. He just asks, “What are we talking about? Rats, mice, guinea pigs, rabbits?”
“Mice.”
He looks me over. “And you hate her now?”
My face fractures. “No. I don’t hate her.” I could never hate Harriet. “But I don’t approve of what she’s doing. It’s just as unethical to experiment on animals as it would be humans.” I’ve never wavered from this ideology. I add, almost as an afterthought, “I got detention for spray painting frog killers in the science lab at Dalton.”
“I remember,” Charlie says, which surprises me. I was fifteen. He was twenty and already in New York by then.
I pull at the Capybara bracelet around my wrist. “I can’t justify animal suffering, even in the name of science. The thought of killing any living thing…it sickens me.”
“How do you know it doesn’t sicken her?”
That question catches me off guard. “Why would she do it then?”
Charlie lifts and drops his shoulders, shaking his head like he doesn’t have the answer. But then he says, “Sometimes we endure pain because the end goal has more value than our own suffering.” He lets out a dry laugh. “Or she could be gleefully murdering Stuart Little. You just never know.”
I don’t believe she’s happily killing mice—but I don’t know if she’s considered the ethical ramifications either. And should it matter what she does?