Oath Bound. Rachel Vincent

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