Barren Vows (Fates of the Bound Book 3)

by Wren Weston

  “That eases my mind,” he said, taking a cookie.

  Lila pulled the plate away. “Your doctor, Father. You know what—”

  “It’s only one. And it goes without saying that you’ve done your last job for Bullstow and Chief Shaw. You can’t be prime and do that sort of work too, not when you have the entire family depending on you. Things could get sticky if you were caught.”

  Lila fidgeted with the handle of her mug. “Things are sticky now,” she said. “I’ve had some complications.” She looked Lemaire in the eye as she told him about the blackmailer, about the messages, about the broken promise after she’d paid.

  Her father crossed his arms over his chest, worry peeking from every line on his face. “Bea didn’t tell me. This is a mess, Lila. You have to clean it up. You can’t have this problem still in your lap. If your blackmailer comes forward, it will have repercussions for us all. Deadly repercussions.”

  “I know,” Lila said, eyeing her father carefully. “That’s why I need your permission to hack BullNet once more.”

  “Elizabeth—”

  “Don’t. I’m tired of being called that today. You asked me to find the hacker in BullNet. I haven’t finished the job, and until I do, this blackmailer is a threat to us all. If you don’t let me hack Bullstow again, you’ll lose your council seat before the first session.”

  Her father scratched at his beard. “What do you need?”

  “A day. I need to make sure I deleted everything from the logs that night. I also want to check the rest of BullNet for more traps. I peeked into the BIRD because we that’s where the highborn had been caught, but every state database might be booby-trapped. I don’t know what sort of partner this person was to Reaper. They might still have access to everything Reaper hacked. I need more data. We need more data.”

  “Lila, I don’t know about this.”

  “I can do it from here.”

  “That would put me at risk,” he warned, and sipped his hot chocolate. “You know exactly what will happen if the press thinks I gave you free rein in BullNet. I couldn’t even blame them.”

  Lila nodded. She’d been against Tristan’s plan to steal into Bullstow and hack the network without permission. Asking her father directly seemed the better course of action, playing on their sense of honor, on the desire to finish what they’d started, on the need to protect the state from the likes of Reaper and his partner.

  On the need to protect her.

  She hadn’t counted on her father having second thoughts.

  “You’re already at risk, but if you have any better ideas, I’d love to hear them. For oracle’s sake, you can always just say that you had no idea what I was doing anything on my laptop the entire time I visited you.”

  Lemaire put down his hot chocolate. “I’d have to bring Chief Shaw in on it.”

  “Of course, but he wouldn’t want a gaping hole in his network either. Let me finish the job we started.”

  After a moment of silent contemplation, Lemaire snatched up his palm and trudged from the room, greeting Shaw over the quiet in his booming voice. While he spoke, Lila grabbed her satchel and slid out two brand-new laptops. As they booted up with a series of little beeps, she took off the star drive from around her neck and uploaded her snoop programs to each one.

  Her father sighed from the doorway. “You’ve already started, haven’t you? What if he’d said no? What if I’d changed my mind?”

  “I would have figured out a way to do it anyway. We can’t leave this asshole in the network. Too many people could be harmed, and I’m not just talking about the hackers or the ones who pay them. This asshole has access to everyone’s data. Everyone’s at risk.”

  Lemaire pulled up his coat sleeve and checked his watch. “I need to go. I couldn’t dump all my meetings when I left Unity. I have a holo-conference at eleven, but I’ll be back for lunch.”

  Lila waved him off. “Go. We’ll eat when you get back.”

  “Without the laptops.”

  “No, around the laptops. I’m not wasting my time with food and conversation when I could be downloading data. My time is finite. I have an appoint at five for Helen to stick a few scalpels up my—”

  “Don’t finish that sentence.” Her father frowned, raising his hand. “The less I know of that, the better.”

  With a graceful turn, her father exited the suite.

  The door closed behind him with an echoing snick.

  Her palm vibrated in her pocket. Tristan had sent her another message, the fifth since breakfast. She sipped her hot chocolate and cycled through the messages one by one.

  How did it go?

  What happened?

  Are you okay?

  Do you need help?

  Talk to me.

  She had no idea how to reply to any of them. What could she write that he’d understand? She wasn’t even sure that she understood, and speaking with Tristan would only spin her head and make things worse.

  Besides, he’d always hated the highborn. What would he say when he realized that she wouldn’t just be a highborn or an heir, but that she would soon be in the thick of highborn intrigue once more?

  He’d try to talk her out of it.

  And what would happen when he found out about the Closing Ball? They had never talked about monogamy, but he’d press it now. He’d demand it. She’d have to choose, and she couldn’t choose him.

  She’d lose him the second she opened her mouth.

  But for now, at least, while silence reigned between them, they still belonged to one another.

  Everything’s fine, she typed out before shoving her palm in her pocket.

  She had other things to think about. Tristan and his reaction would have to wait.

  She rang downstairs for a bottle of Sangre de las Flores, her favorite wine, and turned back to her work.

  Chapter 5

  Lila reclined against the smooth leather seat in the back of the luxury sedan, trying to relax as a piano concerto pumped through the car’s speakers. A small rip in the seat kept scratching against her thigh, an annoyance even through her thick woolen trousers. Other things also annoyed her, like the odor of oil and industry that lingered in the gray carpet. Someone had tried to cover it with a liberal application of something overly chemical and overly floral, but she had trouble judging which smelled worse.

  Lila rolled down the window halfway and pressed her forehead against the glass. Sergeant Norwood drove the car through New Bristol, crawling past the parks and lowborn businesses, both clustering around the grandeur of the highborn estates like poor, begging relations. Blackcoats patrolled around the edges of each compound, with only the cut of their coats, the shape of the coat of arms, and the piping on their uniforms betraying their family’s identity.

  The militias waved off most of the traffic attempting to enter each compound as unsuitable or unwanted because the inhabitants did not have the proper paperwork. Few could slip inside a highborn compound, not unless they belonged to the family through blood, marriage, contract, or purchase. Only an appointment and grasping money—money ready to be spent on the businesses inside—might gain entry.

  The clothes on the passersby never dipped in quality, all straining to match the highborn around them. At least, they didn’t until the sedan took a turn to the east, sliding past Wilson Tower, the skeletal backbone of a haunted family estate. Her mother now owned it. Lila now owned it. No one lived inside any longer, for Bullstow had removed the Wilson family, ferrying them to workborn housing throughout the city. Only a few Randolph appraisers and a detachment of militia tarried inside the stone walls.

  The detour was no accident. Her mother had willed it, had wanted Lila to gaze upon the fallen giant.

  Lila rolled the window all the way down, not caring if the workborn children in the area peeked into the sedan to glimpse her.

&nb
sp; She needed air.

  It didn’t help that Sergeant Norwood drove much too quickly. The car hurtled through the streets, promising to arrive at Randolph General far too soon. She stifled a laugh at the idea of her appointment, at the idea of Elizabeth Randolph becoming the heir to Wolf Industries, and a mother. Both seemed equally comical in their ridiculousness, and she did not know which one she looked forward to the least. But she supposed anything trumped Elizabeth Randolph, the exile, or Elizabeth Randolph, the felon and soon-to-be-executed heir.

  Perhaps that made the entire situation even more ridiculous. Instead of digging through the mounds of data she’d just pilfered from BullNet, her mother had forced her to take an evening off to repair her broken womb. At least her snoop programs would still dig and search while she slept after the surgery.

  Perhaps she would have answers by the next morning, not that she really believed it would be that simple.

  Randolph General quickly came into view, a sprawling complex of a half-dozen buildings, each connected by a series of covered walkways. One could make a circuit through each building or pass into a courtyard in the middle. Lila had filled the space with the greenest grass in all of New Bristol, ensuring it remained so even during the height of a drought-marred summer, all to calm the patients, their families, and her staff.

  She had not come up with the idea, regardless of what her father likely believed. Before her childhood best friend had died, she’d spent a great deal of time in the hospital. Holly had often lamented that the only flower or tree she ever got to see during those times had been made of plastic and jammed in a pot. It seemed like such a little thing to fix.

  Lila had wanted to fix all of Holly’s problems back then. That desire led to the chairwoman gifting Lila the hospital on her fourteenth birthday, along with a horse named Daisy. Lila had renamed the horse Captain Beauregard and the hospital Randolph General. The project had been meant to show Lila that her efforts would be well served as prime, to show her all the good she might do in the world.

  Lila had taken the challenge seriously, not because it was a test, but because she either wanted the project to work as a tribute to Holly or fail so miserably that her mother would choose another as prime. After weeding through her group of advisors, ejecting as many flatterers and spies as she could, she made several key changes to the structure of the hospital. The most important change had to do with the staff. Though most employees were Randolph family members, Lila had taken steps to ensure that the best talent had been poached throughout all of Saxony. She had even used her fledging spy network among the servants and slaves of New Bristol to ferret out which doctors and specialists might be convinced to break from their families and work at the hospital. A decade later, medical professionals from all over Saxony aspired to work among the best at Randolph General.

  Family be damned.

  Class be damned.

  It had not been easy to remake the hospital. Lila had taken advantage of her tenure on the High Council, exchanging favor after favor among senators and other highborn heirs to achieve her aims. She’d also endured her mother’s criticisms, the endless complaints that she’d put sentiment above profits. Her birthdays had flown by, straddled between the hospital, classes at Bokington, and High Council meetings.

  The chairwoman had stopped complaining about Lila’s methods when her daughter’s promises rang true. Money had poured in from all over Saxony after the highborn realized what level of care could be expected at Randolph General. It had become the highest-rated trauma center in all of Saxony, perhaps the entire country, and had already doubled in size. Even the less affluent lowborn in the region saved their money and traveled to the hospital to seek treatment. The cancer center was particularly accomplished and lucrative. For although it did accept those who could pay very little, those family members still needed to eat and sleep while in town. As such, the surrounding hotels rarely had vacancies, and the restaurants, florists, and toy stores nearby were always busy.

  She’d impressed her mother with that, for the Randolph family owned those businesses outright. The hospital added prestige and money to Randolph coffers, and even if the servant class could rarely pay their entire hospital bill, it all balanced far in the black at the end.

  Unfortunately, Lila had surrendered the day-to-day operations of the hospital to the care of another after becoming a militia officer, for she had little time to run it. Over the years, she’d backed off more and more. Indeed, her schedule had become so busy lately that she had not visited the hospital in almost a month. Before her appointment, Lila abandoned Sergeant Norwood in the lobby and checked in with the harried Ms. Fredericks, who looked even more harried than usual at her arrival.

  After a quick chat, the director of the women’s clinic found her. The affable woman escorted Lila to the fifth floor, mouth continually flapping with pleasantries, and held open the door to the clinic.

  But Lila did not step through.

  She brushed her belly, knowing she couldn’t put off the decision any longer. She either walked through the door and continued along her mother’s path or she dove for the exit and…

  Did what, exactly?

  Turned her back on everyone and everything she’d ever known? Ran away to spend the rest of her life in the city or in Burgundy, tarnishing her reputation?

  She’d already ruined it, hadn’t she? Not in Bullstow, but in the warehouse.

  The gods had seen it.

  The gods now asked for compensation for her actions.

  Perhaps it didn’t matter if she believed in them or not.

  Lila fixed her gaze on the engraved plaque next to the entrance. The Sophia Randolph Women’s Care Clinic had been named after her grandmother, who had died in childbirth with her mother’s younger sister, Katrina. Sometimes Lila wondered if the chairwoman and her mother had ever clashed so much. Judging by the chairwoman’s reddened eyes when she found out about Lila’s small gesture, she guessed that they had not.

  Two peas in a pod, Aunt Georgina had told her later.

  “Is there a problem?” the director asked her, clutching a file.

  “No,” Lila said, stepping inside the clinic at last. She’d chosen a dusty orange hue for the walls, matching it with brown moldings and trim. The doctors, nurses, and assistants that should have bustled about inside had vanished, save one. Not a strand of gray hair stuck out amid the blonde to prove her experience.

  “I’m Dr. Cristina Rubio, madam,” the young woman said, bowing, clad in scrubs of the same orange hue as the walls. “If you’ll follow me, we’ll get started.”

  Lila cocked her head, surprised that her usual doctor, the squat, steel-haired Dr. Helen Hardwicke-Randolph had not been waiting. Lila trusted Helen, and only Helen, to provide all her medical care, despite her specialty. Not only had she proven herself a brilliant and capable doctor, but she also stood thirtieth in line to the chairwoman, as Edith Randolph’s only daughter by blood.

  In contrast, Dr. Rubio looked barely older than Jewel. She was not even a Randolph, nor was she a highborn, judging by her name. The silver caduceus around her neck got Lila’s attention, though, for on the same chain she wore a tiny Randolph coat of arms. Only members of the Randolph family could wear such a pendant, and no one joined the family unless they married a Randolph daughter. Who had Rubio married to earn that pendant? Few women in the Randolph line favored other women. Fewer still favored marriage, and Lila could not remember any taking a wife recently.

  She fingered her palm. It would only take a few minutes to seek out the woman’s identity.

  “Your mother has made all the arrangements,” Rubio assured her, escorting Lila to an operating room that had been prepped for surgery, painted in the same dusty hue. A bed sat in the middle, covered with wax paper, waiting.

  “This room is not necessary, of course,” the doctor said. “The chance of complication is extremely low for
this procedure, but we like to be on the safe side, especially with the chairwoman’s firstborn daughter.”

  “Where is Dr. Helen Randolph? I always see her,” Lila asked cautiously from the doorway, nose crinkling at the smell of cinnamon cleanser.

  Rubio stared at the floor. “Dr. Randolph is out sick, and even your mother could not make her fit for surgery.”

  That got Lila’s attention. A trap lurked somewhere. She just couldn’t see it.

  Or perhaps she could. The chairwoman had wanted Lila to reverse her CUT since the day she got it, all so she could have an heir. But Helen knew exactly how Lila felt about children. She would have refused to do the procedure until Lila had a few days to consider her choices, especially if she knew her mother had scheduled the last-minute appointment.

  Rubio would do it, though. She wouldn’t even question it.

  “You can choose another doctor if you wish. I can get the numbers from—”

  “That won’t be necessary. I was just curious.” Lila slipped her palm into her pocket. In this one instance, she agreed with her mother. Delaying the CUT procedure would only delay the inevitable. This was her birthright. Her duty. Her punishment. Her compensation for the lives she’d ended. It was the place she’d always end up eventually, no matter how much she fought against it.

  Even her father had said as much.

  If she waited, the rumor mill would only grind louder and louder. A crowd of senators would encircle her at the ball.

  “I’m here to reverse my birth control,” Lila said. “Nothing more.”

  “Of course, chief.”

  A nurse entered the room, carrying a clipboard. After Rubio performed a quick physical on Lila, she started an IV. The pair injected the line with a shot of clear fluid, which made Lila terribly sleepy, sleepier than it should have because of the Sangre she’d drunk in her father’s suite. If she hadn’t been half naked, with her feet stuck in cold stirrups, she might have actually slept through the entire procedure. Instead, she faded in and out of consciousness, annoyed at the dull tugging and pinching.