Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 114617 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114617 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 573(@200wpm)___ 458(@250wpm)___ 382(@300wpm)
I cocked my head. “You really don’t know? I thought it was obvious after the whole performance I put on about knowing everyone’s secrets. I wanted you to escape because I know now why you need the money.” I tipped over, breaking away from his shocked look. “If you just left, I would’ve let you go. If you came here and attacked me, I would’ve kicked your ass and then given you this”—I took a slip of paper out of my nightstand—“lording it over you that I’m a better fighter and person than you. Would’ve made you feel so bad, bawling on the floor, cradling your broken bones and thanking me on your knees.
“But then you had to come in here and be all sweet.” I dropped the check on his lap. “Thanks for that. You completely ruined my fantasy.”
Edric read the check with the number two million on it, and jumped to his feet. “What the fuck is this!?”
“It’s the money you need to buy your sister out from Sunella’s thumb. Take it. It’s yours.” I smiled at him. “And just to get back at you for ruining a perfectly good revenge fantasy, I’m going to tell you that I would’ve given you the money that very first night if you had simply told me why you needed it.” I hummed, nodding. “Although, I am a bit impressed now that you wanted to pay Sunella with her own stolen money. That would’ve been some nice poetic justice.”
“This is a trick,” he barked, still stuck on the first half of my speech. “It’s fake! You don’t know— You can’t possibly know—”
“That Sunella has been recruiting innocent, pretty, young omega women, forcing them to sign ironclad contracts, and then using them in the most disgusting of ways, so that she can hold on to her council seat for the rest of her life.”
His jaw slackened.
“Yes, Edric. I know.”
Edric dropped hard, falling on the step and pitching over. He fell on his hands and knees, gasping hard—gazing on the check like he couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t breathe. “How?” he rasped. “Who?”
“Most of it was Lucia,” I admitted. Why not? He’d given me back something infinitely precious. I could give him the truth. “Everyone hates me for working with a vampire, but Lucia hates vampires too. For thousands of years, vampires have lived under the law of only turning people with their consent. The man that turned her broke that law.
“Lucia was young, happy, and married to the love of her life when a blood-sucking rapist turned, kidnapped, and locked her away in his castle. She was trapped with him for over a hundred years until one day she staked him through the chest and took off. But he was a vampire king.”
Edric hissed, wincing. Even he knew what that meant for Lucia.
“The others hunted her down like a dog. Didn’t matter that he broke their most sacred law. A king is a king.” I blew out a breath. “She spent the next century running, hiding, fighting, killing, and learning.”
“Learning?”
I nodded. “The vampire community is stuck. Trapped in the past. They hide away in ghost towns, or blend into the seedy darkness of overcrowded cities. But as mundane technology got more and more advanced, they weren’t prepared to deal with it. Now everyone everywhere has a camera, and they’re recording every flipping thing from their food to their reactions to people recording their food.
“Lucia taught herself hacking and tech, and when a vampire prince got himself on camera draining a horse dry, she’s the one who sent the virus that cratered the hard drive and destroyed the video. Just like that, she was valuable to the vamps again, and they got over their hangups on her killing a piece of shit no one liked in the first place,” I said.
“But I wouldn’t say Lucia is on good terms with her kind. They more see her as a necessary evil, but they don’t want anything to do with her outside of hiring her to protect the community, and she wanted nothing to do with them. Actually, her price for dealing with them at all was for them to sell her the land she’s living on now.
“Lucia turned it into a safe haven for other people like her. Not other vampires, other people,” I stressed. “Men and women who are on the run, escaping terrible people. Who were forcibly turned into vampires or werewolves. Demigods defecting from the unending war in their homeland. And even a few mundanes,” I admitted. “The entire hundred square miles of it is walled and protected. As terrible as she is, and she’s really terrible, when someone is scared and alone—she helps them. No matter what.”
I sighed. “I’m telling you all of this because when you said you had good reason for needing the money, and that Castor was going to help you, I had Lucia dig into you and your life. She found the contract on your computer, signed by Sunella. And then she found even more contracts on Sunella’s computer. They’re insane. They read like Sunella owns whoever signs it for as long as she fucking wants, and the only way to break the contract is to pay her damages in the amount of—”