Kori hesitated for one long moment, like she was trying to decide whether or not she could trust me. Then, finally, she spoke. “Kenley and I have an older brother, but he’s not syndicate, thank goodness. He’s his own brand of trouble, even without criminal ties.”

I didn’t ask her brother’s name, and she didn’t offer it. Either would have been a big faux pas among the Skilled, who know that names, like blood, carry power.

“What about your parents? Are they bound to Tower?”

“No, they died when I was a kid,” she said, and I blinked in surprise.

“Mine died a few years ago,” I said softly, and I recognized the echo of old pain in her eyes. “Who raised you?”

“My grandmother, and no, she’s not syndicate, either. In fact…” Kori exhaled, like she couldn’t believe what she was about to say. “In fact, she doesn’t even know Kenley and I are bound. If my parents knew, they’d probably come back from the dead just to yell at us.”

“So, how did you wind up bound to Tower?”

“I…um…” She stared at the stark-white tablecloth. “That’s kind of a personal story, and it’s not entirely mine to tell.”

Not entirely hers? My curiosity doubled. “So just tell me your part,” I said. “You have my word it will go no further. If that means anything.”

I desperately wanted my word to mean something to her, but at the same time, I was fully aware that it shouldn’t. I had been lying to her all along, and the lies would have to continue, but this part was true. I wouldn’t betray this trust.

“I signed on to be with Kenley,” she said after a moment of thinking it over. “I couldn’t leave her here alone. She’s not like me. She doesn’t have any hard edges or any self-protective instinct. She’s sweet. And nice. She would have been eaten alive.”

But that didn’t make any sense. The only thing I knew about Kenley Daniels—other than what I’d learned from Kori—was that she’d sealed my brother into a nonconsensual binding strong enough to kill him. And she must have done it by accident, because my brother didn’t use his own name. She had to be aiming for me.

How could someone with enough power to seal the wrong person into a binding he hadn’t consented to possibly be the sweet, innocent sister Kori had sold herself to Jake Tower to protect?

“You okay?” Kori asked, but I barely heard her, and I only distantly noticed the tray of one-bite salmon and rice appetizers the waiter set in the center of the table.

“You joined to protect your sister?”

She nodded. “I joined to try. But there’s only so much I can do.”

“What makes you think she needs protection?”

Kori frowned, like she may have heard me wrong. “The fact that she’s here. Kenley got into some trouble when she was in college, and one of Jake’s scouts swooped in promising to clean up her mess, in exchange for her services. She was terrified, and naive, and very young. She thought she had no other way out, so she signed up. Two days later, she showed up at my brother’s New Year’s Eve party in tears, begging for my help. But there was nothing I could do. She’s a piss-poor negotiator and her binding had already been sealed. All I could do was negotiate protection for her in exchange for my own services.”

“What kind of protection?”

Kori exhaled heavily and fiddled with the knife next to her plate. “I’m not allowed to discuss the specifics of my contract with Tower. But life in the syndicate can be really hard for a pretty twenty-year-old woman with only one chain link on her arm. Especially one who doesn’t know how to shoot or fight. So I negotiated for a position with enough power to protect her. Then I defended that position by taking down everyone who got in my face, to make sure they all knew what would happen if they messed with either of us.”

She shrugged to punctuate what felt like a confession, and I could only stare at her, trying in vain to reconcile the beautiful, almost dainty-looking woman with the warrior I—and the entire west half of the city—knew her to be.

Kori picked up one of four silver spoons on the platter and sniffed at the single bite it held, then set the spoon down again and made a face. “I think the salmon is underdone.”

She was obviously trying to change the subject, and I decided not to push the issue. I didn’t know what to do with what she’d already told me, and I wasn’t sure how much more I could take with her sitting across from me, barely-but-elegantly draped in thin black silk.

There was nothing under that blouse. There couldn’t be. Nothing but her.

“It’s smoked,” I said, picking up one of the spoons, just so I’d have something else to look at. And something to occupy my hands and my mouth, which seemed to be forming an alternate plan of their own, involving thin ribbons of black silk, bare skin and any room with a decent lock on the door.

“So it’s raw?” Kori looked horrified. “People actually pay someone to not-cook their food? Even cavemen had fire.”

I laughed. “Try it. You might like it.” I ate one of the bite-size appetizers in demonstration, but she only frowned. “Am I going to have to dare you?”

“Low blow,” she mumbled, choosing one of the three remaining spoons. “If I get sick from raw fish, I’m blaming you.”

“If you get sick from a thirty-five-dollar smoked salmon appetizer at one of the best restaurants in the city, I’ll nurse you back to health myself.”