Page 78 of Nicolette

Mortas rolled his eyes and stood, walking over to me. “Nicky, I can call you Nicky, right, just like your father did? You might have found a way out of your contract with The Broker, but not with me.”

“We don’t have a contract, you delusional walking corpse,” I spat. “You tried to bleed me dry and bind me to you, but that failed the moment I was turned into a shifter.”

“Yes, that did make things slightly more challenging, but that’s not the contract I’m talking about. Did you ever ask your mother about the deal your grandfather made with me? The one that allowed your dearly departed father to marry his frail human wife?”

“Why would I need to ask her about that? If it was important for me to know, then she would have said something,” I reasoned.

Mortas reached out and trailed a finger along my jawline. “What did I tell you about trusting people? Here I thought you’d taken my lesson to heart only to find out you’ve missed the point entirely.” He nicked my skin with this sharp nail and licked the blood off it humming. “Felines have such a unique taste, and yours is full of power. I can’t say I’m surprised seeing who your birth father is. That man has such a distinct taste. I’d know his offspring anywhere.”

“You know who my sperm donor is based off a drop of my blood?” I questioned skeptically.

Mortas clucked his tongue at me. “Nicky, I drained you nearly dry the last time we were together. I knew then, and if you hadn’t disappeared, I would have shared that knowledge with you. Now I’m so upset over the whole thing you’re going to have to earn that information.”

“Okay, I’m still not understanding why you think I’m going anywhere with you. My men are going to show up, stake your ass, and burn this whole building down just to make sure you’re dead. If I were you, I’d get the fuck out of here while you still can,” I suggested.

The vampire tossed back his head and gave the most elegant laugh. “Oh, you really believe that, don’t you? Well, I’ve just made sure they know that if they come here, the twenty other members of their pride I’ve been holding onto for the last day or so will die.”

“You have them?” I blurted.

“Keep up, girl. Of course I have them.” Mortas huffed, waving his hand dismissively at me. “It would appear that you’ve pissed off a few in your short time with the Savage Pride. Amaretto was just full of ideas we could use to get President Nine Lives to give you up. Then you had to go and get Zealot cast out of his pride. Imagine my surprise when he brought you here and dumped you at my feet. It appears the next lesson I need to teach you is making sure you kill your enemies. When you leave them alive, it gives them time to think of a way to fuck you over. Which you’re experiencing firsthand.”

“To be honest, I agree with you, and I would have been more than happy to kill them both,” I admitted. “Killing is easy for me. I’ve been doing it with my bare hands for years. The difference is now I’m not fighting for my life, and I have to account for the greater good of the pride.”

“Yes, how’s that working out?” Mortas asked, finishing off the last of his blood and chucking the glass against the cinderblock wall. “Now you’re strung up at my mercy while twenty of your people are locked in cages as an insurance policy. One of Broker’s more feral and twisted monsters is in the cage next to them, with only a few bars of steel separating them. With the simple flick of a switch, they could be killed.”

“So, remind me why I’m here again?” I asked with a sigh, getting bored with his threats.

It’s like he watched every James Bond movie and took pointers from the supervillains who loved their endless monologues. I had no idea how long I’d been here, but Dice would have known right away something had happened, and I was missing. Then he also said he made sure they knew the missing pride members were here. With that information, they’d know where to show up, so what was the holdup? Did I need to keep him talking forever? Besides, I wasn’t trusting a fucking thing that came out of this lying blood bag’s mouth. He’d say anything to me just to get me to give in, manipulation at its finest. The difference was there was nothing he could offer me that I wanted.

“Because you belong to me,” Mortas answered simply.

I laughed.

I couldn’t help it.

There was nothing about this situation that made any fucking sense.

It would appear that Mortas didn’t appreciate my laughing and grabbed my throat, digging in his nails and cutting off my air.

“You dare to laugh at me? I tell you I own you, and you laugh?” Mortas fumed, getting worked up to the point he was spitting as he talked. “The contract your grandfather signed, freeing your father, guaranteed his son and wife would love each other and keep their vows of marriage for life. To be faithful, loving, provide for each other’s needs in sickness and in health. Now tell me, Nicky, how were you born?”

A fucking donor.

“The contract would have held if they went through the proper channels and carried out this process in a hospital setting. However, that’s not how it happened. They were too poor for the treatments, but they went anyway. Problem was your parents could easily have a child of their own the natural way, so they were refused. That’s when your father took it upon himself to ask a friend he knew would help. A friend that would never be interested in his wife or sticking around to be a father. What a find, a man who’d fuck your mother, knock her up, and like smoke on the wind, disappeared. No one’s seen him since,” Mortas shared, then finally loosened his hold, allowing me to suck in a gulp of air.

“They were not faithful to each other. Your mother cheated on your father, breaking the contract and making you mine,” he announced.

“Is it really cheating if they both agreed to it and knew it was happening?” I challenged.

Mortas scoffed. “Do you think blood magic is smart enough to differentiate? I went to check after I killed your father, and there was nothing left of the contract but ash. You needed time to grow up, learn the reality of the world, so I left you in The Broker’s care. Then when the time was right, and you’d be ever so grateful to me for saving your life, I swooped in to save you. How the fucking hell did you end up having multiple fated pairs when you were still human?”

“Guess I’m just lucky since it saved me from you,” I shot back and spit right in his face. “You have no hold on me. If you did, you wouldn’t need me to agree to it. That’s the catch, isn’t it? I should have turned into a mindless human servant to you that night after all the blood I ingested, but because I rejected it and you, it didn’t work. Now here you are again trying to get me to agree, toying with me, promising information you don’t even have. Save your breath. I’m not fucking ever going to be a slave to someone else ever again. I’d rather die first.”

Mortas released his hold on my neck and grabbed a handkerchief from his suit pocket to clean his face. “That can be arranged. We’ll see if you decide to keep that same choice when you’re on the brink of death. You two, get in here.”

At the order, Amaretto and Zealot walked into the room I was strung up in. Both of them looked far too pleased with seeing me like this. It wasn’t until I watched Mortas hand each of them a whip with bits of metal woven in the three strands of leather that I started to worry.

“Whip her until she passes out, then I’ll see if she can be reasoned with,” Mortas instructed as he started to leave the room but paused at the exit. “If she gives in and accepts my offer, come find me. Know this…” his face stern and eyes wide, “… if you ignore her surrender and she dies, I will bleed you dry.”