Finally Lia set her glass on the desk blotter, but before she could speak the office door opened behind me and another man in black stuck his head into the room. “Sorry to interrupt, Ms. Tower,” he said without even a glance at me. “But they’re ready. Just waiting on your authorization.”
“Do it,” Lia said. “And let me know the moment it’s done.” The man nodded once, then backed into the hall and pulled the door shut.
I wondered what order she’d just given, and whose life it would ruin. Just because the Tower syndicate knew nothing about me didn’t mean I knew nothing about it. I hadn’t been able to find many day-to-day specifics online, but the overtones of greed, violence and corruption came through loud and clear, even in vague articles citing anonymous sources, who may or may not have disappeared shortly after they were interviewed.
My birth family was dangerous and evidently unburdened by scruples. I’d come to the right place.
My aunt focused on me again, as if she’d never been interrupted. “What do you want?”
“Couldn’t I just have come to meet the rest of my family?”
“Of course you could have.” Still standing behind her desk, she stared straight into my eyes without a hint of doubt. “But you didn’t.”
That’s when I realized I was being tested. My mother was right; Lia Tower never did anything without a reason. Lying to a Reader—someone who could scent dishonesty in the air, the way the rest of us might smell meat on the grill—wasn’t going to get me anywhere.
“No. I need a favor.”
“Of course you do.” Her slow smile made my skin crawl. “Let’s sit and chat.” She gestured toward a chair in front of the desk and when I sat, she sat behind the desk, clearly establishing our roles—my aunt and I would begin our relationship on opposing sides.
“First of all, who are you?” she said, and I realized that our chat would actually be an interrogation.
“I’m Sera Tower. Your niece.”
When she glanced at the open laptop on her desk, I wondered if she’d spent the past half hour researching me. Or maybe she had some faster, Skill-based method of finding information.
Lia waved one hand, dismissing my reply. “Your full name.”
Right. Like I was going to give her that kind of power over me. My mother had been unSkilled, but well-informed, and she’d taught me well. With my full name, Julia could have me tracked. Or bound against my will. At least, she could try.
I shrugged and tried on a lighthearted smile. “I’ll tell you mine, if you tell me yours.”
Her forehead wrinkled in a frown. “Fine. Your full first name, at least. What is Sera short for?”
“Serenity.”
Lia’s brows rose in surprise. “I’d guessed Seraphine. And Cecily actually gave you my brother’s surname?”
My chest ached at the memory of my mother, and at Julia’s acknowledgment that they’d once known each other. The truth was that they’d been friends back in high school, before Lia’s brother had come between them. My mother hadn’t gone into detail beyond that, but I’d gathered that the end of their friendship was neither swift nor painless. At least, not for my mom.
If Julia’d suffered from the loss, I saw no sign of it twenty-three years after the fact. However, I could see one small truth behind her eyes, but only because my mother had warned me of it. Lia had said my mother’s name on purpose, hoping to draw more information out of me than she’d actually asked for. More than I should be willing to give.
She wanted to know how much my mother had told me about her. About Jake. About the family and their business.
But I was desperate, not stupid.
“Yes,” I said, holding her gaze. “It’s not on my birth certificate or anything, but I’m officially a Tower.”
What many people—mostly the unSkilled—didn’t know was that it doesn’t matter what’s written on some stupid form a new mother fills out, while she’s still high on painkillers. It’s what she names the baby in her heart and head that counts. And for some reason, the day I was born my mother was thinking of me as Jake Tower’s daughter.
“Why would she do that?” Lia looked privately puzzled for a second, then she directed her confusion toward me.
“My guess is because I’m a Tower.”
“And you’re willing to submit to a blood test?”
“Hell, no.” She could do more damage with my blood than she could with my full name. “But I’ll take the cheek-swab DNA test. From a disinterested third party.”
Her brows rose again. “It’s adorable that you think there’s any such thing.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
Lia folded her arms on her desk. “Needless to say, I won’t be doing anything for you until I have proof of our alleged genetic connection.” She set her drink on her desk blotter again, then leaned back in her chair, arms now crossed over her chest. “But for the sake of expediency, what is this favor you want?”
I glanced at each of the guards, one of whom stood behind Lia and to her left, while the other was posted at the closed door behind me. Their short sleeves covered their upper arms, hiding their binding marks so that I couldn’t tell whether or not they were Skilled, and if so, what those Skills were. But they obviously had ears and mouths. “Will you ask the gentlemen to step outside?”
Lia shook her head slowly. “I can’t do that. What if you’re an assassin sent here to kill me?”
“Why would an assassin walk through the front door?”
“That would be a very good question for the man who killed my brother,” she said. “He did that very thing.”
Right. But he wasn’t an assassin, at least, not according to the newspapers. The official story was that Jake Tower and several of his men had been killed by an angry, mentally unstable employee, who’d also died in the tragic shooting.
“Why would I want to assassinate you?” I asked, but she only watched me, waiting for me to draw my own conclusions. “I don’t want to hurt anyone here. I just need a favor. A private favor. Can’t you hear the truth in my words?”
Something fierce flickered behind her eyes, and I realized the game had changed. I’d changed it, by admitting I knew her Skill.
“Out,” she said, and at first I thought she was kicking me out of the office, or maybe off the property. But then her bodyguards silently filed into the foyer, and I realized the order wasn’t aimed at me.
When the door closed behind them she studied me again through narrowed eyes. “What is your Skill, Serenity Tower?” She said my name with a special emphasis, as if it was the punch line of some joke I would never understand.
“I don’t have one.” I’d been saying that for so long I almost believed it myself, and it didn’t occur to me until the words were already hanging in the air between us that a Reader would be able to hear the truth, even in such a tiny lie.
Her brows rose again, and she seemed to be tasting my words on the air, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe, certain she’d caught me in a fib I’d been living for so long it felt like a part of me.
But my lie was practically true, which must have made it taste true, because when she met my gaze again, hers was much less guarded. She was no longer threatened by me. “You’re a long way from home for a little girl with no Skill.”
“And you’re hiding out in your home behind your Skill,” I shot back, bolstered by my small, secret victory. I enjoyed the anger that settled into the thin lines of her forehead. What was she hiding from?
“I’m not hiding. I’m in mourning,” she insisted, but I didn’t have to be a Reader to see that there wasn’t a single note of truth in those words. “So, why I should do this favor for you?”
I hesitated, momentarily stumped. I’d expected a yes or a no, but I hadn’t expected a why. “Out of respect for yo
ur dead brother?”
Julia’s frown deepened. “I fail to see the connection between his death and your brazen, opportunistic grasp at a branch of the family tree you’ve never even acknowledged before.”
Right. Like my “acknowledgment” of their blood in my veins would have been welcomed in the house Jake Tower had shared with his wife and two legitimate children.
Take two. “Because we’re family, and I need your help.”
“And what will you do for me in return?”
“If I have to pay for it, it isn’t a favor,” I pointed out, and that time she laughed out loud, looking genuinely amused for the first time since we’d met. “You should help me because we’re family. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
Julia sipped from her glass, looking at me in some odd combination of pity and delight. “The big city is going to swallow you whole, country mouse.”
I wouldn’t be around long enough for that. “Are you going to help me or not?”
“Assuming your DNA test comes back as you say it will? Yes. We’re going to help each other. Tell me what you want, so I can determine what this favor is worth, Serenity Tower.” She set her glass on the desk blotter, then gave me a humorless little smile. “That sounds like the name of a building. A sweet, pretty little building where flowers grow in the front yard. So what is it you want from me, Serenity?”
“I want you to kill someone.”
The slight narrowing of her eyes was the only sign that she’d heard me, and after that, she only watched me, waiting for more. Making me uncomfortable with every second of the silence that stretched between us, until I had to speak, or risk losing my mind.
“It doesn’t have to be you personally.” I was just prattling by then, but I couldn’t help it. I’d never ordered a hit before, and suddenly I wondered if I was doing it all wrong. Was I supposed to use some kind of special code to avoid incriminating us both? Too late now... “I just need you to...coordinate. And pay.” No sense hedging about that part. If I’d had the money, I might have tried another...contractor. One who didn’t share my DNA.
Julia didn’t even blink. If she’d ever been flustered in her entire life, I couldn’t tell. “And what makes you think I would be able to help you with something like that?”
My pulse whooshed in my ears, but I was in too deep to turn back now. So I sucked in another breath, then forged ahead, full steam.
“I know who you are. Who you really are.” Which is why I’d never been closer than eight hours from the Tower estate in my life. Until now. “I know what kind of people you employ, and I know how you keep them loyal.” They were bound in service, their oaths sealed in blood-laced tattoos that would not fade until the day the bindings expired. If they expired. “And you’re not surprised that I know, because everyone knows. Your business comes from word of mouth. It has to come from word of mouth, because...well it’s not like you can advertise.”
“Is that so?” Julia was a statue. A living, breathing statue, her expression frozen in an almost convincing mask of disinterest.
My temper flared. “Help me or don’t help me. Either way, stop wasting my time.”
Julia exhaled slowly and this time when she met my gaze, hers was stripped of all pretense. “You get that impatient streak from your father,” she said, and I almost sagged with relief. “I assume the prospective target is the human-refuse pile who slaughtered your mother and the rest of your surrogate family?”
I blinked at her in surprise. “How did you...”
Her gaze flicked toward the laptop open on the desk between us, then returned to me. “Sera, there’s nothing about you that I don’t know or can’t find out.”
“Good.” I shrugged, refusing to be intimidated. I may not have grown up in a Skilled cartel family, but I’d faced scarier things than a woman with high-speed internet and cold eyes. “Then you shouldn’t have any trouble figuring out who that ‘human-refuse pile’ is. I have a description, and the police may have some of his DNA from the crime scene.” Easily the most difficult sentence I’d ever had to say aloud. “But that’s all I know.”
A short moment of silence followed, but I sensed that was less respect for my slain family than an opportunity for Lia to gather her thoughts.
“First of all, I’m very sorry for your loss.” Yet she sounded distinctly disinterested. “However, it sounds like what you really want is more complicated than simple closure on a family tragedy. You’re asking me to identify this killer, track him down and deal with him in some permanent manner. Right?”
I couldn’t help noticing that she hadn’t once said anything incriminating. Which made me wonder if we were being recorded. Or if she thought we were being recorded.
“Yeah, I guess. Some painful permanent manner.” No sense in playing coy when I’d already said what I wanted, in front of whatever cameras may have been recording.
“Well, those complications raise the price.”
“I don’t have any money.” Not enough to pay what she was likely to charge, anyway. What little life insurance there’d been had barely paid for the funerals. Three of them.
“I would never charge my own niece for such a service,” Lia said, and I couldn’t tell whether or not the irony was intentional. “However, I do require something from you in return.”
“And that would be...” I shifted in my chair. It took every bit of willpower I possessed to keep from promising her whatever she wanted, right then and there. The price didn’t matter. I just wanted the bastard dead, my family’s deaths avenged with blood and pain, so that I could mourn them, then start to let them go. So I could gather the shattered remains of my life and try to piece them back together.
So that they would be avenged.
But the price did matter, the voice in my head insisted, sounding just like my mother. She’ll demand service, that voice insisted. She’ll make you sign on the line, and you’ll work for her forever to pay off this debt. His life for yours, Sera. It’s not worth it.
But I wouldn’t be dead, and he would be. That bastard’s death was worth a few years stuck in a less than ideal job. Worth whatever they made me do. And it wouldn’t be forever. It would just be for a few years, right? Service terms had limits, didn’t they?
People survive working for the syndicates. It happens all the time. Right?
I was already resigning myself to life under Julia Tower’s thumb when she leaned back in her chair again, watching me for a moment before she spoke. “I want you to disappear.”
“Excuse me?” Surprise made my voice squeak, but Lia only waited for my answer like she might if she’d asked for the last fry from my plate. But I didn’t know how to answer.
“If I do this favor for you, Sera, I want you to disappear. Forever. My brother’s wife and children are devastated with grief,” she said, and I frowned, picturing the children who’d nearly bowled me over in the foyer. Were they laughing and chasing butterflies over their father’s no doubt overpriced grave? No. But they weren’t crying and ripping their hair out, either.
“They don’t deserve this,” Lia continued. “I won’t put them through the additional pain and humiliation of finding out he sired a bastard with some slut he knew in high school.”
She said it with no visible emotion, her words just as cold now as her condolences had been minutes earlier.
My cheeks flamed. I shouldn’t have cared what she thought of me. Jake Tower may have been my father, but he was never my dad—that title would always go to the man my mother married, who’d loved me and my sister more than he’d loved his own life. And who would never have called me a bastard or insulted my mother.
But Lia’s insult hit its mark, and I knew that if I wanted to avenge my mother’s death, I would have to let the insult against her stand. And I would have to leave the Tower estate, so the Towers could continue to live
in blissful ignorance of my existence, and the messy circumstances of my conception and birth.
No problem. After fewer than ten minutes spent with Julia, I never wanted to see her again.
“So, if I promise to go away after it’s done, you’ll...take care of this for me?”
“I’ll need more than a simple promise, but yes.”
“What does that mean?” But I was pretty sure I already knew.
“I need your word in writing. Sealed in blood.” She wanted to bind me to my oath, which would physically prevent me from ever going back on it.
My heart dropped into my stomach. I had no intention of going back on my word, but the thought of letting someone bind me to anything made me sick to my stomach. My mom had preached against that the way most mothers warn their kids not to talk to strangers, or run in the house.
Or jump off a cliff.
“Why? You have my word that I don’t want anything else from you, but someday I might want to get to know my...half siblings.” Just saying that felt strange. My real sister was dead, and she was the only sister I would ever have. Surely the only one I’d ever want. But...I’d just lost the only family I’d ever known. I wasn’t about to give up the right to ever get to know what few relatives I had left, even if they couldn’t replace what I’d lost. Even if they were rich, and spoiled, and quite possibly as vicious as our father and aunt.
My mother was an only child and her parents were dead. Jake Tower’s children were the last blood-based connection I would ever have to another human being. There was always the chance that one of those kids—probably not Kevin—would grow up to be a decent human being and parent to the only nieces and nephews I’d ever have.
I shrugged. “Or they might want to know me.”
“Sera, it’s those children I’m thinking about.” Lia pushed her laptop aside and folded her arms on her massive desk, meeting my gaze with an intense one of her own, like we’d suddenly become confidantes. “Lynn, their mother, is a sweet, beautiful woman, but between the two of us, she’s never been the brightest bulb in the chandelier, and right now she’s too blinded by grief to think clearly. But someone has to look out for the children. I’m not going to help you unless you’re willing to give up any claim to their inheritance.”