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 to let the insult against her stand. And I would have to leave the Tower estate, so the Towers could continue to live in blissful ignorance of my existence, and the messy circumstances of my conception and birth.

No problem. After fewer than ten minutes spent with Julia, I never wanted to see her again.

“So, if I promise to go away after it’s done, you’ll...take care of this for me?”

“I’ll need more than a simple promise, but yes.”

“What does that mean?” But I was pretty sure I already knew.

“I need your word in writing. Sealed in blood.” She wanted to bind me to my oath, which would physically prevent me from ever going back on it.

My heart dropped into my stomach. I had no intention of going back on my word, but the thought of letting someone bind me to anything made me sick to my stomach. My mom had preached against that the way most mothers warn their kids not to talk to strangers, or run in the house.

Or jump off a cliff.

“Why? You have my word that I don’t want anything else from you, but someday I might want to get to know my...half siblings.” Just saying that felt strange. My real sister was dead, and she was the only sister I would ever have. Surely the only one I’d ever want. But...I’d just lost the only family I’d ever known. I wasn’t about to give up the right to ever get to know what few relatives I had left, even if they couldn’t replace what I’d lost. Even if they were rich, and spoiled, and quite possibly as vicious as our father and aunt.

My mother was an only child and her parents were dead. Jake Tower’s children were the last blood-based connection I would ever have to another human being. There was always the chance that one of those kids—probably not Kevin—would grow up to be a decent human being and parent to the only nieces and nephews I’d ever have.

I shrugged. “Or they might want to know me.”

“Sera, it’s those children I’m thinking about.” Lia pushed her laptop aside and folded her arms on her massive desk, meeting my gaze with an intense one of her own, like we’d suddenly become confidantes. “Lynn, their mother, is a sweet, beautiful woman, but between the two of us, she’s never been the brightest bulb in the chandelier, and right now she’s too blinded by grief to think clearly. But someone has to look out for the children. I’m not going to help you unless you’re willing to give up any claim to their inheritance.”

“Money?” I gaped at her. “You think I want your brother’s money?”

“I don’t know what you really want, Sera. I know your net worth, your college GPA and how much you paid for the heap of metal parked in front of my house, but I don’t know anything about you as a person, because you evidently felt no desire to connect with this side of your family until you needed something from us.” Her accusation was as sharp as her gaze, and I couldn’t really argue, though I felt my cheeks flame again. “But I will do whatever needs to be done to protect those children. If you really aren’t trying to steal their inheritance, you should have no problem swearing to that.”

“I don’t,” I snapped, struggling to think through the anger swelling rapidly to fill both my head and heart. The bitch was appealing to my morals on behalf of two half-orphaned children. I didn’t for a second believe that was her only interest in the matter, but I didn’t want anything from the dead father I’d never met, and I certainly didn’t want anything from her. Except this one favor. “Write it. I’ll sign it, and you’ll never see me again. I don’t want anything but the slow, painful death of the bastard who killed my family.”

“Wonderful.” Lia shifted in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. “And, of course, you’ll be willing to give up the Tower name.”

“My name?”

“My brother’s name,” she corrected. “His children’s name. My name. You’ve never even used it, have you?” I shook my head, and she shrugged as if what she was asking was no big deal. “Then why would you mind giving it up?”