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?”