Daddy's World Read online

  Daddy’s World

  Ava Sinclair

  Copyright © 2018 by Ava Sinclair

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published by Ava Sinclair

  www.avasinclairauthor.com

  Cover design by Ava Sinclair

  Images by Adobe Stock Photos

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Love Daddy Doms?

  One

  Roman

  “Roman, you can’t be serious.”

  Felicia’s voice is as cold as the ice in my glass of vintage Scotch. Even though my back is to my sister, I know without looking that she’s crossed her arms in irritation. She’s also scowling, although that would be harder to detect. She was barely twenty-three when she started the EverYoung injections that left her face flawless but often devoid of discernible expression.

  “The least you could do is think of the family.” This attempt to play on my sense of familial duty is accompanied by the click of her heels on the marble floor as she walks over to where I’m standing by the penthouse window. I’m staring towards the horizon, beyond New Bethel with its orderly grid of pristine city streets between shining glass and metal buildings, beyond the suburbs where wives are preparing to greet breadwinner husbands coming home from work, beyond the farms to the last battered stronghold standing against the utopia our leaders envision.

  “Are you listening to me?” Failing to make me feel guilty, my sibling as turned solicitous. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  I glance down at my glass, then turn to her. “I’m thinking 2047 was a good year for Scotch.” It’s an honest answer and elicits what could be a scowl.

  “So, you won’t listen to me either?” She looks away. The “either” has slipped out, and Felicia tenses as she catches herself. Our father, Gareth Daley, is an elder in the Order of the Patriarchy. The Daleys are a political family; it’s understood that the men affect the embodiment of male authority or—in Felicia’s place—the picture of blissful acquiescence. If I were to rebuke her now she’d have no choice but to beg my forgiveness. But Felicia is my beloved twin. I cannot be anything but lenient with her, even when she is difficult. I can’t give her what she wants, either.

  “I’ve gotten Father’s blessing,” I say. This settles the matter, and while I don’t have to explain further, I do. “Think of it, Felicia. Think how much more successful Paternas will be if I set the example.”

  “Example? This is your life we’re talking about, Roman. You’re going to risk it with some half-wild savage from the Warrens? Wouldn’t you rather have the kind of marriage I have with Marcus?” She folds her arms across her large breasts, a self-conscious gesture she developed after my brother-in-law made her go to the enhancement clinic on their first anniversary.

  “No. I want a different kind of marriage.” I stare back at the ruins of the distant city, its boundaries walled off by high fences that move closer every month to contain the last pocket of resistance.

  “Such an eyesore,” Felicia joins me in staring at the remains of the shelled city in the distance. “But if you want the novelty of trying to civilize some feral urchin, who am I to disagree?” She turns away. “If the government had any sense, instead of spending so much on this colony they’d take the last of the rebels held up in that place and sentence them to drift.

  “That’s unkind,” Felicia. I avoid her eyes so she can’t see the disappointment in mine. She’s parroting her husband, who argued in the senate for the resumption of the cruel practice used in the early years of New Bethel.

  “It’s not unkind. It’s practical.” When I shake my head in disgust, she sighs. “Fine. I’ll drop it. Go ahead. It’s not like you have anything to lose. You can choose another wife if it doesn’t work out.” She pauses. “Must be nice.”

  “Don’t let Marcus hear you talk like that, Felicia.” I fix her with a hard stare. It hurts me to scold Felicia, but I sometimes after talking freely with me, she’ll slip with an unpopular opinion in front of her husband. I understand her resentment, however. In New Bethel, divorce is always a man’s prerogative, while women are not even allowed to speak of it.

  I see the slim column of her throat flex as she swallows the hurt I’ve caused. I wish I could offer her a drink but that, too, is forbidden for women unless served by a husband’s hand.

  “How’s Marcus?” I ask. “I haven’t seen him since the Senate’s convened for summer session.”

  “He’s fine.” And just like that, the fake smile she’s so good at returns. Felicia rotates the wedding band on her finger, another nervous gesture. “Does he know what you’re doing?”

  “Yes,” I reply. “He’s the one who sent me the prospects.”

  “So, you’ve chosen one already?”

  “No.” It’s a lie. The file with her picture and all the information is in my desk across the room. Not only did I personally select my ward, I’ve arranged her capture.

  “Marcus didn’t tell me.” Her voice is quavering, and she wipes the inside of her sleeve cuff across her eye and sniffs. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you gone for a half a year. He’s jealous of how much I love you.” She looks down. “He’s jealous of everything.”

  I want to tell her it will get better, but I don’t want to make false promises. I want to give her a hug, but it’s against the law for any man to touch her except in the presence of her husband, and with his permission. I want to tell her that I don’t want to do to a woman what Marcus is doing to her. There is no way to avoid the pain I’ll inflict on the rebel I’ve selected, but it will be worth it to give her a life without the pain my sister lives with daily.

  Happiness for me and a future partner—that’s my goal.

  Or one of them, at least.

  Two

  Kit

  I don’t want to look out the window. I don’t want to see. But I know if I don’t keep my focus on the horrible scene, the big woman will hit me again. If I could, I’d hit her back, but that’s not an option given that my hands are bound.

  I run my tongue on the inside of my lip, probing the painful split.

  “Are you watching?” There’s a mean mirth in her tone. I hear her heavy boots as she approaches and leans down, pushing my face against the window.

  “Just look at them, floating forever in the vast cold, and all because they wanted to defy the glory of our vision.” She points then. “Oh, my! That one could be your twin.” She’s pressed her cheek to mine. I can smell her sour breath.

  I fight back the urge to shudder. She’s right. The dead woman floating past the window is about my age. She also has long black hair, but where mine hangs down my back, the anti-gravity of space makes hers stands out from her head like a feathery halo. I can’t tell if her eyes are brown like mine; the cold has turned hers milky white. Her mouth is open in a silent scream.

  New Bethel no longer sentences people
to the drift, but we know from spotty intercepts that there is growing support to bring the punishment back for some crimes. I want to close my eyes, but know I can’t, know that even if I did, I’d still see her. Did she think it would be an easy death? When she was jettisoned, how long did it take her to realize what her defiance had cost her?

  “Remember her face. It could just as easily be yours.” The guard shoves the back of my head and my forehead hits the window, instantly raising a goose egg. I dig my short nails into the palms of my bound hands, resisting the urge to scream.

  The drift field is enormous, a testament to the inflexible ruling class that rose from the ashes of apocalyptic destruction. Society had been largely secular before the cataclysm. The shaken survivors, not wanting to accept the randomness of rocks hurling through space to hit Earth, embraced order with religious zeal and a return to a simpler time with rigid rules.

  The Order of the Patriarchy was established. Rigid gender lines were drawn. Those who didn’t adhere were designated part of the Sin Class, and unrepentant homosexuals, feminists, or heretics were sentenced to the drift where, years later, they float preserved in the cold of space. It’s all I can do not to avert my eyes the sight of two women, their faces buried on one another’s necks. A person has maybe two or three minutes after jettison to survive. Somehow, these two found each other in those final moments.

  “Are you looking?” The big woman’s hand is still on the back of my head. I am watching but not seeing. Instead, I’m relying on an old trick I haven’t used since I called myself Luna. I was five then and hadn’t decided on a name. The girls who found me next to my dead mother had originally called me Twig because I was so skinny. When I was older, I’d decided I wanted to be called Luna, so Luna it was until Jeanie started calling me Loony. I finally settled on Kit with Mae’s help.

  I wonder what Mae is doing? I wonder how she took the news when Alma told her I’d been snagged?

  Although just a few years older than I was, like so many in the Warrens, Mae was mature beyond her years. It was Mae who helped me set up my own room, a walk-in cooler in what used to be a nightclub. The cooler no longer worked. It was windowless and hot, but Mae insisted upon my staying there since it was safe from the bombs.

  I fix my gaze on a distant point beyond the drift field and imagine the cooler. What I wouldn’t give to be there now, sweltering as I fanned myself, staring at the faded pictures I’d taped to the walls so long ago that the edges were curling from age. My favorite was the picture of a little girl holding a cat.

  Mae. Alma. Avis. What will become of them now that I’ve been snagged? My evolution from skinny, sickly kid to a leader of what remained of the patchy existence was my only source of pride. I’m overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of anger. I’d been so sure the snaggers would not be hunting north of the fence when I’d led the others to scavenge beyond the boundaries. I’d been tracking them. I was so sure we were safe. I was wrong. How could I have been so careless?

  Now my sisters have been left leaderless as I head further from Earth to somewhere unknown.

  Three

  Roman

  My sister isn’t here to see me off, but my brother-in-law is. Marcus tells me Felicia couldn’t make it. She had a headache. He also says she is excited for me. I know this is a lie. Even though Felicia doesn’t want me to go, there’s no way she’d willingly miss saying goodbye when I’m about to leave for six months. We’ve never been apart that long.

  “If I wasn’t a happily married man, I’d be jealous.” Marcus flashes me a dazzling smile. He’s just had his teeth capped with PureWyte, and the absence of lines around his eyes reveals he’s using as much EverYoung as my sister. “I got video footage of your little rebel in the hold.” He pulls out his CommuniPort and taps a button. An image flashes on the screen and he zooms in on a small brunette woman. “She’ll clean up well once the bruises fade.”

  “Bruises?”

  He zooms in further, and I can see that she’s been hurt. Her lower lip is swollen and purple.

  I bite back my anger. “Is that necessary? She’s bound.”

  Marcus snaps off the image and pockets his device. “These women are little more than animals, Roman, raising themselves in the Warrens without parents, without rules. Understanding begins with fear. I instructed the Head Matron to give her a taste. You’ll thank me for it later.”

  “This is my ward, Marcus. Disciplinary protocol needs to be cleared by me.” I turn away from my brother-in-law and hand my PermPass to the gate manager, although it’s unnecessary. All I really have to do is flash the government seal. That’s what Marcus would have done, but Marcus and I have different approaches to just about everything. I glance back at him. “Besides, the Good Works Department is supposed to emphasize grace.”

  “Of course,” comes the smooth reply. “But authority must be established before leniency can be shown. Trust me. From what I know of your little project, establishing boundaries at the outset makes things easier. Boundaries make for happier females in the long run.”

  I imagine Felicia sitting in her chair by the huge bay window, sipping tea brought to her by a servant as she watches the sky for the shuttle that will carry me away from her for at least half a year. I imagine her having a good cry so that she’ll have no tears left to shed by the time she welcomes home a husband who expects only smiles.

  I pull out my CommuniPort. We’ve reached the shuttle and I check to make sure all the files on my ward have been transferred, even though I’ve committed all the information to memory. What I don’t know about my ward I’ll learn at the intake exam. Until then I’ll spend most of my time doing what I did last night—staring into the image of haunted, angry eyes of a woman I can only hope will accept the chance I’m giving her.

  I knew the stir it would cause when I expressed my intention to participate in the project I’d championed. Paternas was never intended to be a resource for men like me, men who had their pick of society’s best bred, placid and plasticized women who’d been raised knowing what was expected of them.

  Paternas was intended for men whose reach for the brass ring of societal success had been too short to qualify them for a marriage voucher— men like Gavin Reed. Marcus has never forgiven our classmate for turning down an appointment to the Good Works Department. Instead, Gavin had fought for the right to start a development on the outskirts of New Bethel with the goal of building midlevel housing for the labor class males who’d put in for marriage vouchers, since home ownership is a prerequisite for engagement.

  I’d admired his efforts, and his outspokenness on the inequities of a system in which men who could afford housing were able to marry and start families while many labor class men could not. Gavin believed that wealth did not equate with morality, and that it was unfair to deny marriage rights to men who could not afford housing.

  Five years ago, he’d lobbied both the Good Works and Daily Bread departments for public funding to supplement the development. I voted in favor. But Marcus and his cronies, who’d argued that such stipends would encourage dependency, were in the majority. Despite government help, Gavin forged ahead financing the project himself. In the end, it went under. But wasn’t the only loss. He’d borrowed against his own house to keep his dream afloat. When it was learned that he’d lost his home, his marriage certificate to the wealthy daughter of a New Bethel business owner was immediately revoked.

  What happened to Gavin motivated me to start the Paternas Project. For years we’d been closing in on what used to be the inner cities where poor resisters lived in the rubble and hid in tunnels, hence the nickname—The Warrens.

  I saved the Warrens by selling the Department of Patriarchy on the benefits of capturing and converting the last of these females. They would make suitable wives for the labor class, I’d argued; any man willing to take a chance on a rehabilitated female should be granted a marriage certificate, even if he didn’t yet own his own home.

  For the six months, Paternas had be
en operating quietly as a pilot project, matching and reforming women who’d been captured by hired government bounty hunters dubbed the snaggers. I’d monitored the progress, even as my family increased pressure on me to marry. When I told my family that I wanted to go public with the project by taking a Paternas bride, at first, they’d objected. But then my father had ordered internal polling. When he discovered that such a populist move would put me in good political standing with the labor class, he’d supported my decision.

  But my motivations go beyond political. The Paternas model relies on reforming the women through giving them the father figures they lacked. The women are regressed to a state of dependency and then brought into a new understanding with a system of punishments and rewards.

  In the shuttle, I pull out my CommuniPort and stare at the image of the woman I’m going to meet. I will eventually be her husband. But first, I will be her Daddy.

  Four

  Kit

  Once we’d passed the drift field, the woman brought me a drink. I’d known it was drugged as soon as I tasted it and had refused more than the first sip. But she’d told me one sip was enough. My last memory before darkness consumed me is of her catching the cup before it could fall from my hand.

  I wake with my head feeling as if it’s stuffed with cotton and an awareness that dim light is starting to stream through the window. The vessel is approaching what looks like an inverted mountain, and I realize it’s one of remnants of the three asteroids that the missiles were able to obliterate before the big one got through. In the sky, they show up as a ring, with the pieces ranging from the size of football fields to small planetoids. Despite my circumstances, I can’t help but marvel at what I’m seeing as the ship rises upward from the jagged bottom that widens to a flat surface.