Page 240 of Slashed Bonds

“Daddy Dearest’s empire is in shambles.” He counts on inked fingers. “Same as his partners’. Who happen to be the fathers of the other three in that pack. Four families, one table, and every one of the fathers has a gambling problem of his own particular flavor. Cards, horses, a property fund that was a casino with paperwork. It’s been catching up for a decade. It caught.”

“Oh, shit,” says Valerie.

“What’s it got to do with the inheritance?” I ask. “He doesn’t have access to it already?”

“He’s not allowed to touch it,” Dox says, “unless he has an heir.”

The laughter starts at the bench across from me.

Viper. A real one, which I’ve never heard, which sounds like something coming up out of a well, and we all turn to look at her and she’s got the IV line taped flat against Mori’s forearm with her thumb and she’s laughing with her green eyes shut.

“Now that,” she says, “is fucking rich.”

She opens her eyes.

“For the fact that he threw the Omega who gave him years of her life off a second floor. The one who’d have given him his heir.” Flat now. Reading a label. “I suppose he didn’t give a fuck that she was pregnant, because he thought he’d be popping babies with Naomi Vance by Christmas. Fucking hilarious.”

“Seeing your life frightens me,” I mutter.

Viper smirks.

“Should.”

“Wait.” Valerie’s frowning, hands on the seatback. “If the priority’s an heir. If that’s the whole lock on the money. Why hasn’t he done it in five years with Naomi?”

“He probably needs someone from a reputable family,” Dox says. “Right income bracket. The will’s going to have language.”

“But she’s rich,” I say. Then I think about a changing room and a phone call and an accountant. “Well. Apart from whatever financial shit she’s dealing with now. She’s not broadcasting that part.”

“That’s not the reason.”

Viper.

She has us. All three. She lets it sit a second, with the van rocking under us and the IV bag swinging on its hook, and then she drops the thing none of us expected.

“She can’t have babies.”

Silence.

I don’t know why it lands the way it lands. Four people who’ve seen the worst of what people do, frowning in dismay at a woman with a needle in her hand like she’s told us the sun’s gone out. Speechless. Staring at her like she’s talking pure shit.

“What?” Valerie, at last. “What do you mean? She can’t have kids?”

“I did a bit of digging.”

A shrug. The leather creaks.

“She had a hysterectomy at nineteen. Voluntary. Private clinic, three states over, paid in cash under a name that wasn’t hers, but a clinic’s a clinic and a clinic keeps records.” Her thumb smooths the tape. “She’s known for years that she can’t carry. No stored eggs. No surrogacy on file. Nothing. She knew when she went through Mori’s drawer and found two lines on a stick.”

She leans back.

And the smirk that comes onto her face is a thing I’ll remember. Smug. The green contacts catching the dome light and throwing it back in a way that makes the whole face look lit from inside, and menacing with it, the way a lamp’s menacing in a window you thought was empty.

“She did what she did to Malice because she envied her.” Each word set down. “The girl who had it all. The family that adored her. The Alphas who’d submitted to her and once, in their way, loved her. The career on the ice that she’d worked for with her hands, not bought. And she would’ve been the one to carry those Alphas’ children. All of it. She had the whole life Naomi Vance wanted and couldn’t have, and Naomi was a cunning bitch with money at the time, and money got her what she wanted.”

A pause.

“But those fuckers are about to find out in a hurry that the snake they married into is a fraud. The heir they need can’t come from her. The money they need can’t come from her father. And the Omega who could’ve given them both is sitting in a van with my needle in her arm.” The smirk goes wider. “I’ll be generous, though. And patient. Until the gala.”