Oath Bound (Unbound)

Oath Bound (Unbound) - By Rachel Vincent

One



Sera

I’ve never been very good with the word no. I have trouble saying it. I have more trouble hearing it. And accepting it...well, I find that damn near impossible. Always have. Which is why, when the guard at the gate in front of Jake Tower’s house—his estate—refused to let me in, I kind of wanted to pound his teeth into his throat, then out the back of his head.

Instead, I took a deep breath and counted to ten. “Let’s try this again.” I laid my left arm across the open window in my car door and glanced through my windshield at the huge house beyond the closed gate. The road actually ended in front of the Tower estate in a cul-de-sac of its own, so that drivers, rebuffed by the locked gate, could turn their cars around and skulk back the way they’d come, properly intimidated by a wealth and power most could never even touch.

I don’t skulk.

“Sera Brandt, to see Julia Tower,” I repeated, my voice firm with the kind of self-appointed authority only colossal loss and boundless rage can produce.

“I told you, miss.” The guard sounded exasperated this time. “Ms. Tower isn’t seeing anyone else today. She’s suffered a recent family tragedy, and—”

“She’ll see me. Just get on your little radio and tell her I’m here.”

“You don’t have an appointment, and she’s not—” My left arm shot out the open window and I grabbed the front of his black shirt. Before he could do more than grunt in surprise, I jerked him down and forward, smashing the front of his face into the top of my car.

Dazed, he backed away on wobbly legs when I let him go, blood dripping from his nose and down his chin, and before he could think clearly enough to go for his gun, I shoved my car door open, knocking him off his feet entirely. He landed flat on his back, his head inches from the guard booth, arms splayed out at his sides.

If his partner had been there, I’d have been in big trouble. But I’d waited until his partner left for the bathroom, or coffee, or a cigarette, or whatever the Tower estate guards spent their free time on, specifically to avoid that snag.

While the man on the ground moaned and held both hands to his bloody face, I unsnapped the holster exposed by his open jacket and pulled the gun out. I wasn’t sure what kind it was—I’d never shot one—but it was big, so I set it on the desk through the window of the guard booth, to keep it out of his immediate reach.

If I’d known how to get the bullets out of it, I would have taken them.

Then I pulled his radio free from the other side of his belt and pressed the button.

And that’s when I realized where I’d messed up. I’d introduced myself by the wrong name. The guard didn’t give a shit who Sera Brandt was, and Julia Tower—Lia, to those who knew her personally—certainly wouldn’t. So when I pressed the radio button and the soft hum of static was replaced with an even silence, I looked straight into the camera attached to the roof of the guard booth and gave them my real name.

“This is Sera Tower. Open the f*cking gate.”

For a moment, radio silence followed my announcement while the camera whirred, zooming in on my face, and I wondered if my message would even get through to Lia, who surely had better things to do than listen in on the guards’ radio frequency.

According to the internet, both the official news sites and the often more reliable gossip pages, Lia Tower had taken over her brother Jake’s business affairs when he’d died four months before, and I could only assume she’d taken over most of his personal affairs, too. But that was truly just a guess. Until the guard refused to let me see her, I didn’t even know for sure that she still lived in his house—according to the obituary, Jake Tower also left behind a wife and two small children, who had surely inherited the property.

“Sera...Tower?” a faceless voice asked over the radio a second later. His skepticism was clear. He’d never heard of me. I’d never wanted to be heard of, until then.

I’d never even said it out loud before—my real last name. I’d never claimed my connection to the family I’d never met. The family my mother had hidden me from, for most of my life. But there was no other way through that gate, and I couldn’t get what I’d come for without the resources locked away in the fortress of a house behind it.

“Do you have an appointment?” However, I could tell by his uncertain tone that the question felt as ridiculous to him as it sounded to me. I was a Tower, after all, if I were telling the truth. But protocol is protocol.

“I don’t need one. Just tell her Sera is here. Jake Tower’s love child has come home.”

* * *

The first-floor study they stuck me in could well have been called a library. Hardback books lined floor-to-ceiling shelves covering three walls. The center of the room held two couches and several small tables, but I sat on the window seat built into the fourth wall, so I could see the entire room.

A glance at my cell phone told me I’d been there for nearly forty minutes—8:00 p.m. had come and gone, without even the offer of a drink. No wonder my butt was going numb. But they’d stationed a guard outside the door and told me to stay put, and now that I’d already gotten Lia’s attention, creating another scene didn’t seem very likely to work in my favor.

Making me wait was a strategic move on Lia’s part. It had to be. To show me how unimportant I was. The internet was virtually void of information about the Towers’ personal lives, and my mother hadn’t been much more forthcoming, but I remembered every single thing she had told me over the years.

They are master manipulators.

Everything they do has a purpose—sometimes several purposes—whether you can see that or not.

Don’t think that being one of them makes you safe. They won’t hesitate to spill their own blood from your veins, if you become a threat.

With that in mind, I suddenly wondered if I was being watched. Studied. Or had I moved beyond simple caution and into paranoia? Either way, I couldn’t resist a couple of casual glances at the ceiling to look for cameras. But if they were there, they were hidden. Like I’d been for years.

On the first day of kindergarten I’d discovered that the dad I’d grown up with wasn’t actually my father, genetically speaking. My dad—he was Daddy, back then—was still waving goodbye to me through the classroom window when this little girl with curly pigtails asked me how come my dad was dark and I was light.

I’d never really thought about that before. I’d always assumed that I matched my mom for the same reason my little sister matched our dad. Just because. The same reason the ocean matched the sky, but the grass matched the trees. But before I could explain about how we each matched a different parent, a little boy with a smear of chocolate across one cheek poked his head into our conversation with an unsolicited bit of vicious commentary.

“That’s ’cause he’s not her real dad. She’s pro’ly adopted.”

I punched him in the nose, and then his cheek was smeared with chocolate and blood.

That was the very first punch I threw. It was followed, in rapid succession, by my first trip to the principal’s office, my first expulsion and my first visit with a child psychologist.

In retrospect, I can see that I overreacted. Pigtails and Bloody Nose were just naturally curious. They probably didn’t mean to throw my entire life into chaos and make me question my own existence at the tender age of five.

It took nearly an hour for the principal, guidance counselor, and my parents to calm me down enough to buckle me into my seat in the car. It then took another hour for my parents to explain that I wasn’t adopted. I was simply conceived out of wedlock, fathered by a man my mother knew before she ever met my dad.

That’s a lot for a kindergartner to absorb, but my parents seemed confident that I could handle it. My dad reassured me that he loved me more than I could possibly imagine, and that he would always be my dad. And that was that.

But my temper failed to improve.

When I was about fifteen, I overheard Mom tell Dad that I might have gotten my temper from my father, but my sharp tongue had come from Aunt Lia. Eight years later, as I stood waiting impatiently for an audience with her, nerves and anger buzzing just beneath the surface of my skin, that was still virtually all I knew about the aunt I’d never met.

That, and that Aunt Lia was perfectly willing to let her own niece stew in isolation. Obviously this wasn’t the hugs-and-kisses kind of family. But it was the only kind I had left.

My dad had been a mechanic and an amateur musician who smiled with his eyes, even when his mouth took a firm stand. My biological father had been the head of one of the largest, most dangerous Skilled crime families in the country who, according to my mom, probably smiled as he ordered people hunted down and executed.

I hadn’t come into the Tower house with blinders on.

Finally out of patience and buzzing with nerves, I crossed the room and pulled the study door open.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’ll have to wait inside,” the guard posted in the foyer said.

“Or what?” I propped my hands on my hips. “You’ll shoot me?”

His hesitation and confusion told me two things. First, he was accustomed to intimidating people with his size and his gun. Second, he wasn’t actually prepared to shoot me in broad daylight, in the middle of his boss’s formal entryway—an admirable trait in a human being, but quite possibly a liability in a syndicate muscleman.

“Fine. Shoot me,” I called over my shoulder as I marched past him on the marble tile, headed for an office whose blurry occupants I could see through the frosted-glass door. I was halfway there, irritated guard on my heels, when something small and mechanical raced across the tile in front of me, and I stopped inches short of tripping over it.

I bent to pick up the remote control car just as two small children stumbled to a stop in front of me.

“Sorry.” The little girl pushed tangled brown hair from her face and stared up at me through huge, bright blue eyes. “Ms. George says Kevin drives like a maniac.”

“She also says you suck your thumb like a baby.” The boy—Kevin, evidently—snatched the toy car from my hand. I started to tell him exactly how rude he was being, but then I saw his face and the words froze on my lips. It was like staring at a younger version of me, with shorter hair. He had my pale skin and ruddy cheeks, and those greenish eyes no one else in my family had. And based on the utter disdain for adults that shone in his eyes, our similarities went far beyond the physical. I’d never met an authority figure I hadn’t challenged.

If my mother hadn’t had the patience of a saint, life would have been very difficult for us both.

“Where is Ms. George?” The voice—feminine, but completely lacking in warmth—was accompanied by the click of heels on the marble floor. I looked up to find Julia Tower, the aunt I knew only from my mother’s description and photos found online, crossing the foyer toward us, looking not at me, but at the children.

The little girl clasped her hands at her back and stared up at her—our—aunt. “She fell asleep during Charlotte’s Web.”

“She lost interest when I told her the spider dies,” Kevin added. “I shoulda told her they’d butcher the pig.”

Julia exhaled slowly, as if clinging to her patience, then frowned at the guard coming to a stop behind us. “Take them back upstairs and wake up that worthless nanny.”

“Should I tell Mrs. Tower—”

“No.” Julia’s features scrunched up with the word as though she found the thought revolting. “There’s no reason to bother Lynn.”

As the guard herded the children back upstairs, my aunt finally looked at me for the first time. The weight of her gaze made me want to squirm, but I knew better. Show the wolf a weakness, and it’ll rip out your throat. Stare it down, and it might back off.

But Julia Tower didn’t back off. She didn’t rip my throat out, either, but I couldn’t dismiss the certainty that she was holding that option in reserve.

“You’re Sera?” She studied my face as intently as I studied hers. In person, her eyes were bluer than they’d appeared online, but the real-life version lacked the warm, approachable quality she’d evidently worn like a costume at various social and political gatherings.

In person, her eyes were more of an ice-blue, as if I were looking into the soul of a glacier, rather than that of a warm-blooded human being.

When she’d finished her silent assessment of me, she gestured stiffly toward the office I’d been headed for in the first place. Two large men dressed in black followed us inside, and I wondered what it said about her that she employed not one but two personal guards to protect her in her own home.

Just how many people currently wanted my aunt dead?

“I asked you to wait in the study,” Lia said as one of the men at her back closed the office door and lowered blinds to cover the frosted glass, effectively isolating us from the rest of the house. I blinked at him, and my pulse tripped a little faster. Were they closing the blinds for a private conversation, or so they could shoot me without witnesses?

Did that kind of thing really happen?

“Yeah. I’m not very patient.”

Julia’s brows rose. “Well, you certainly sound like my brother.” From the liquor cart to the right of her huge dark wood desk, she poured an inch of amber liquid into a glass, then sipped from it while she examined me from across the room. Without offering me any.

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 your 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.”

“Money?” I gaped at her. “You think I want your brother’s money?”

“I don’t know what you really want, Sera. I know your net worth, your college GPA and how much you paid for the heap of metal parked in front of my house, but I don’t know anything about you as a person, because you evidently felt no desire to connect with this side of your family until you needed something from us.” Her accusation was as sharp as her gaze, and I couldn’t really argue, though I felt my cheeks flame again. “But I will do whatever needs to be done to protect those children. If you really aren’t trying to steal their inheritance, you should have no problem swearing to that.”

“I don’t,” I snapped, struggling to think through the anger swelling rapidly to fill both my head and heart. The bitch was appealing to my morals on behalf of two half-orphaned children. I didn’t for a second believe that was her only interest in the matter, but I didn’t want anything from the dead father I’d never met, and I certainly didn’t want anything from her. Except this one favor. “Write it. I’ll sign it, and you’ll never see me again. I don’t want anything but the slow, painful death of the bastard who killed my family.”

“Wonderful.” Lia shifted in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. “And, of course, you’ll be willing to give up the Tower name.”

“My name?”

“My brother’s name,” she corrected. “His children’s name. My name. You’ve never even used it, have you?” I shook my head, and she shrugged as if what she was asking was no big deal. “Then why would you mind giving it up?”

Why would I mind?

I started speaking before my thoughts had fully formed, fueled by anger, unburdened by forethought. “Because it’s my name. It belongs to me every bit as much as it belongs to you. Because for whatever reason, my mother wanted me to have it. Because whether you like it or not—hell, whether I like it or not—that name is part of who I am, and I don’t even know what that means yet, other than the fact that the aunt I share it with is a real bitch.”

Julia blinked, and I relished the glimpse of surprise that flickered across her expression, the first I’d seen so far. “You’re not thinking this through. There’s nothing that can be done about the fact that it belongs to you, so in that sense, it can never be taken from you. But you’d be safer using another name. Your stepfather’s? Or even your mother’s. You’ll be infinitely harder to Track if no one knows your real surname, Sera.”

Yet we both knew she wasn’t thinking of my wellbeing.

But that wasn’t the point. The point was that whichever last name I used was my decision. Mine. And no snotty rich bitch with a chip on her shoulder and blood on her hands was going to tell me what I could or couldn’t call myself.

But Julia Tower had yet to come to that conclusion. So I helped her along. “No.”

She stood and leaned forward, both palms flat on the surface of her desk. “I am the only person in the world who will do what you want done without asking for a dime in return. My price is simple. You will sign over your right to anything Kevin and Aria stand to inherit. Including their surname. Or I will have you removed from this property immediately, and you can hunt down this killer yourself, then spend the balance of your life behind bars, paying your debt to society. You have three minutes to make a decision.”

But there was no decision to be made. And Lia damn well knew it.

While I sat glaring up at her, resisting the urge to stand and start yelling, the office door opened behind me and Lia gestured for someone to come in.

I twisted in my chair to see a woman in her thirties carrying a manila folder. My aunt held out her hand and the woman marched past me to give her the folder. “That’s the best I could do, on short notice, but if you have another hour...”

Julia waved dismissively, and the woman’s sentence faded into a tense silence while my aunt read whatever the folder held. After several seconds, she lifted the top sheet of paper and scanned the next one. Then she flipped the pages back into order and closed the folder. “Sometimes simpler is better. Unnecessary language leaves room for loopholes. This will do. Send in the Binder.” She motioned toward the door, and the woman in brown headed for the foyer as though she was being physically pulled in that direction. As though she couldn’t wait to leave.

I knew exactly how she felt.

Julia sat, then slid the folder across the desk toward me. “Sign.”

“Now?” I could practically feel the blood drain from my face as I stared at the newly drafted binding document—the real reason she’d kept me waiting so long. She expected me to sign it right then and there, and the Binder she’d called for would seal my promise in blood—either his or mine. Or both.

I hesitated, my hand flat on the closed folder.

“Sign, or get out,” Julia said, and there wasn’t a hint of doubt in her voice. She’d already figured out that I wasn’t going to leave without getting what I came for. No matter what it cost.

I opened the folder, my hand shaking with rage. It doesn’t matter, I told myself, as I picked up the pen she slid toward me. You don’t need them. You’ve never needed them.

But what if those kids needed me someday? What if Kevin or Aria needed help from a relative who didn’t have a chunk of ice in place of her heart or wasn’t the dim bulb in the proverbial chandelier? Was there anyone in this cesspool of corrupt power they could count on? Could money buy friendship or trust?

The only thing I knew for sure was that if I didn’t sign, the man who killed my entire family would never see justice. The police can’t catch a Skilled criminal, much less convict him.

I scanned the first page, only half reading my own promise to forfeit any and all birthrights, including the Tower surname. I’d scribbled the first three letters of my name on the line at the bottom of the second page when the door flew open behind me and slammed into the wall.

“Sera?”

Startled, I turned so fast the pen left a long black line across the bottom of the page. Gwendolyn Tower stood in the doorway, as perfectly put together as any picture of her I’d ever seen, except for the puffy, pink flesh around her eyes.

She blinked at me and I wondered what she was seeing. Did I look like her husband? Why didn’t she look surprised? Lia had implied that Lynn and her children knew nothing about me.

Then Gwendolyn’s gaze slid past me. “Julia, what the hell are you doing? Did you tell her?”

My pulse spiked. Tell me what?

Lia stepped around the corner of her desk, ready to intercept her sister-in-law. “This is business. It’s none of your concern.”

“Tell her!” Lynn Tower shouted, and the guard standing behind her flinched, then looked to my aunt for some instruction.

“Go back to your room.” Julia took Lynn’s arm while I watched in stunned silence. “I’ll explain everything when we’re finished here.”

Lynn turned to me then, her eyes damp, her gaze strong. “It’s yours, Sera. All of it. Jake’s personal property and assets went to me, but his business holdings go to his oldest child. Don’t let her cut you out.”

“Gwendolyn, out!” Julia shouted as I fell backward into my chair, my legs numb from shock. The guards guided Lynn, gently but firmly, toward the door at about the same moment I realized I still held the pen Lia had given me.

Business holdings? What did that even mean? Properties? Companies? Buildings? Cash?

It’s yours, Sera. All of it.

Lynn’s words played over in my head as I watched the guards escort her forcibly out of the office.

The truth hit me in that moment, like a burst of light in front of my eyes—painful, disorienting and nearly blinding.

I’d just inherited Jake Tower’s criminal empire.