Rachel Vincent - Shadow Bound

“Smart.” Holt nodded thoughtfully. “And he really doesn’t cheat on his wife? At all?”

“Nope. Not once, that I know of. Why?”

“I want to know who I’ll be working for. If I sign on.” He glanced to his right, toward the party still going on in the main part of the house. “A man like that, with plenty of money, in a position of extreme power over dozens of beautiful women …” He glanced at me, as if to say I was one of those beautiful women. Or maybe he was pointing out that I was powerless. “It has to be tempting to sample the goods. It’d be easy to get away with. In certain circles, it’s practically expected, right?” he said, and I could only nod. “But Tower’s loyal to his wife. That says something, doesn’t it? Something about him, as a man?” Holt watched me closely, studying my reaction, and an uneasy feeling churned deep in my stomach.

Most syndicate employees didn’t have the luxury of caring what kind of man Tower was, or what kind of business he did. They signed on because they were desperate for something they couldn’t get for themselves. Usually money, protection or services only a syndicate could provide. Why else would you sign over even part of your free will to someone who doesn’t give a damn whether you live or die, so long as you do both in service to the syndicate?

But Holt was different. He actually gave a damn. Which could make him very hard to recruit.

“Doesn’t that also say something about the way Tower runs his organization?” He waited for my answer, staring into my eyes like he wanted to see past them and into my thoughts, and suddenly I recognized the ploy, and my teeth ground together.

Ian Holt wasn’t naive enough to believe that a man with Jake’s power and breadth of influence had climbed to the top of the hill without stepping on a few heads. Or that fidelity to his wife translated into any kind of integrity in business. He knew what the Tower syndicate was like—at least, he thought he knew—and this was a test to see which I would choose: loyalty to my boss or honesty to the potential recruit.

Assuming I had any choice in the matter. And he had no way of knowing whether or not I did.

He’d see through a lie—he seemed to be expecting one anyway—but I couldn’t exactly tell him the truth about Jake and the syndicate, even if he already knew most of it. Or even some of it. Which brought up an even bigger problem.

If Holt already knew what kind of man Tower was and what kind of business he ran, why did he accept Jake’s invitation in the first place? I could only think of two possible reasons. First, Holt had no moral qualms about syndicate business or lifestyle. Or, second, he couldn’t afford the luxury of indulging whatever moral qualms he did have. Which meant he was either corrupt or desperate.

But then a third, even worse possibility occurred to me and that uneasy feeling in my stomach swelled into a roiling discomfort. What if Holt was neither of those? What if he was just some curious, greedy asshole looking to get everything he could out of Jake before politely turning down our offer and walking away with his free will intact?

If that happened, I would have to harvest Holt’s blood instead. And if I handed over nothing but blood from a venture this expensive, when what Tower really wanted was Holt’s service, Jake would kill me. But first he’d give Kenley to Jonah, down in the basement, so that the last thing I ever heard would be my sister screaming.

Bile rose in my throat, and I swallowed a sip of warm champagne to keep it down. And when I looked up, I realized that Holt was still waiting for my answer to a question I’d almost forgotten.

“Does Jake’s fidelity to his wife say something about how he runs the organization?” I said, rephrasing the original question, and Holt nodded. “Yeah, I guess it does. There’s nothing Jake wouldn’t do for his wife, and even less he wouldn’t do for the syndicate.”

Including kill me and torture my sister.

The thought of damning someone else to the hell I was living in made me want to light my own hair on fire and take a bath in gasoline. But I would do it. I’d do whatever it took to make Holt sign.

I had no other choice.

Ian

“Which is it you dislike, parties or champagne?” I asked, nodding pointedly at the virtually untouched flute in her right hand, as the party buzzed on without us.

Kori blinked, obviously struggling to refocus her attention, and twisted to face me on the ornate gold couch, both an expensive eyesore and an uncomfortable perch. “It’s parties with champagne. And food served in bites too small to taste.”

I laughed. “You’d rather drink from a trough and eat from a bucket?”

“I’d rather eat from a paper wrapper and drink from the fuckin’ bottle.”

“And your bottle of choice?” She had yet to say anything I’d expected to hear, and I couldn’t help wondering what would come out of her mouth if we got a chance to talk about something more meaningful than appetizers.

“Vodka.”

Any of the waiters could probably have gotten her whatever she wanted to drink, but I couldn’t really talk to her surrounded by two hundred other partygoers, and if I couldn’t talk to her, I couldn’t make her trust me.

“And since you used to live here, you’d probably know where Tower might keep a bottle of vodka …?”

“I might.”

“So maybe we could grab that and go for a walk on the grounds, free from the intrusion of pointless small talk as well as bite-size snacks.”

Kori hesitated, and for a second, I was certain that she didn’t want to be alone with me. Then she glanced at the guard stationed on either side of the front entrance. “They’re never going to let you wander around the property without an escort from security.”

“Aren’t you an escort from security?”

She huffed, and I wondered what I was missing. “It’s complicated. I protect you, but they protect Jake and his interests, which would not be served by giving an unbound man free access to the grounds. We could sneak out, but the patrol would probably find us.”

“Then it sounds to me like we have two options. We can ditch the party entirely and forage for a bottle of vodka elsewhere—”

“Jake would be pissed if we leave without telling him …” she said, and I nodded, not surprised.

“Or we could go upstairs, which—I’m willing to bet—isn’t being patrolled.”

She gave me a conspiratorial grin. “That’s because no one’s allowed upstairs. Jake’s kids are asleep in the family wing, so there’s a guard at the foot of both staircases.” She glanced over her shoulder, and I followed her gaze to the closer of two mirror-image staircases, where a huge man dressed all in black stood directly in front of the bottom step, arms clasped at his back. He was obviously armed, and if his expression was any indication, he suffered from a severe lack of personality.

“But you used to be a guard, so you could take one of them, couldn’t you?” I teased. “If I were to snatch a butter knife from the kitchen, you could bisect him from neck to groin in a single stroke, right?”

Her smile spread slowly, and her brown eyes practically sparkled. “Hell yeah. But Kenley will kill me if I get arterial spray on her dress.” She slid one hand over her own hip to where the dress ended above her crossed knees, and my gaze traced the path, before I realized what I was doing.

Oh, hell no.

Don’t believe a word they say. Don’t let your guard down. And do not make friends.

I’d heard it over and over, from Aaron. Hell, I’d said it over and over to myself. I couldn’t get personally involved. I couldn’t afford to see any of them as real people. They were a means to an end. Tools for me to use, like a wrench, or a hammer. Kori Daniels was the hammer I’d have to swing to smash through Jake Tower’s defenses and gain access to his prized possession, and you couldn’t be attracted to a hammer. Right?