Oath Bound (An Unbound Novel)

by Rachel Vincent

  “That’s an odd criticism coming from a woman who had her own brother murdered.” I glanced at the guards stationed around the room, hoping for a reaction, but none of them even blinked, that I could tell.

  “They already know.” Julia crossed her ankles beneath her folding chair. “Most of them don’t care. Jake wasn’t exactly loved by most of his employees. Those who do object to his timely demise are prohibited from expressing their displeasure by the contracts binding them to me.”

  I frowned as what she’d said sank in. “She isn’t Jake Tower’s heir,” I called, loud enough to be heard throughout the room. No one reacted.

  “They know that, too. These are all my men.”

  “New hires?” I didn’t think she’d answer. I was wrong. In fact, she seemed quite forthcoming, which probably meant she was proud of herself.

  “Some of them.” Julia smoothed her suit jacket over the blue blouse beneath. “Others were on Jake’s staff, most of which knows all about Sera’s surprise inheritance, thanks to the curse of instant communication.”

  “So glad to hear the mass texting worked.” Surely proof that Sera was smarter than her aunt.

  “Not as well as you might think. Thanks to your baby sister’s generous blood donation, I’ve spent the past three days transferring bindings from Sera to me. Starting with the gunmen in this room. None of those newly bound employees were affected in the slightest by your wireless campaign.”

  “That’s not possible.” I gave my arms an experimental tug, but the bindings held tight. And they felt sharp, more like a zip tie than a rope. The irony there was that they’d probably gotten the damn thing out of my pocket. “Kenni’s blood can’t be used to bind someone without her will attached to it.” And there was no way in hell that Kenley wanted to give Julia Tower any more power than she already had. “You’re lying.”

  “If I were, you would never know it. But as it happens, there’s no need for lies. Kenley’s will didn’t seal the bindings. Mine did.” Julia watched me, waiting to see if I could connect the dots on my own.

  Kenley’s blood, but Julia’s will...

  Horror washed over me, and the room seemed to spin—the result of my entire world being knocked off-kilter. It shouldn’t have been possible. “A transfusion? You gave yourself Kenley’s blood?”

  “Only a little.” Julia shrugged, and the casual gesture looked strange on her. “Honestly, I got lucky. If we’d been incompatible blood types, the transfusion would have been very risky for me. But I had little choice, thanks to you and Jake’s bastard daughter.”

  “You had a choice.” I tried to move my legs, and discovered that my ankles were tied to the legs of the chair. “You could have chosen not to be a maniacal bitch.”

  “Trust me, my way was easier.”

  “So, what, you took a transfusion of Kenley’s blood, then sealed the new contracts yourself?” I said, and she nodded, looking more than a little proud of herself. But I could see what she was trying not to show me. There was a reason we were in a warehouse rather than in the Tower basement. “This is all you got away with, isn’t it? Just these men? You didn’t have time to reseal most of the bindings. Sera still holds them, doesn’t she?”

  Julia’s scowl could have peeled the paint off a car. “Not for long. You’re going to bring her to me.”

  “Never gonna happen.” My legs had less freedom than my arms. By my best guess, they were duct-taped to the chair legs, over my jeans.

  “Oh, it will. But first, I need a little information from you, so we’ll all be prepared for my darling niece’s arrival.” Julia recrossed her legs in the opposite direction. “Does Sera have a Skill?”

  I stared at her in silence.

  “Are you really going to make me repeat the question?”

  I shrugged as best I could with my hands tied at my back. “I don’t see what good that would do.”

  “It wouldn’t do you any good at all. But I’m sure your sister would appreciate your candor right about now.” She made another off-hand gesture, and one of the guards turned and opened the door he stood next to. A moment later, through the glass, I saw the door to Kenley’s room open, and he stepped inside.

  “You touch her, and I’ll kill you,” I spat, openly struggling against my bindings now, though I knew I had no shot at breaking them.

  Julia gave me a small smile. “You’re going to try to kill me anyway, and I have no intention of touching your sister. But Lincoln has been looking forward to it all day. So, you answer my questions, or he’s going to give your sister something to cry about.”

  He wouldn’t kill her. Julia couldn’t let that happen, without losing every binding Kenley had sealed. But he could hit her. Or cut her. Or burn her. And Julia would let him.

  It killed me that I hadn’t been able to protect Kori from Jake’s fury—I hadn’t even known she was in danger until it was nearly over. But Kori was a survivor—a fighter with tough skin and even tougher insides.

  Kenley was none of that. I couldn’t let them hurt her. But I couldn’t betray Sera, either.

  “Does Serenity have a Skill?” Julia repeated, watching me while, in the other room, Kenley squirmed in her chair and said something I couldn’t hear through the glass.

  When I didn’t answer, Julia rolled her eyes and dug something from her jacket pocket. Some kind of small remote. She pressed a button, and there was a short buzz of static, then my sister’s voice came over the tiny speaker, fuzzy with static.

  “—there? I can here you breathing. Say something!” she screeched, and if she’d looked drowsy before, she sounded terrified now.

  “Kenni!” I shouted, and Julia frowned at me.

  “She can’t hear you. Answer the question. Does Sera have a skill?”

  I couldn’t lie to Julia—a Reader—and get away with it. And I couldn’t refuse to answer without getting Kenley hurt. But I knew I’d hesitated too long when Julia picked up her remote and pressed a button, then spoke into it as if it were a handheld radio.

  “Kenley, can you hear me?”

  Through the window, Kenni’s head pivoted toward a corner of the room I couldn’t see, where—presumably—the speaker was mounted. “Fuck you, Julia!” she shouted, and I almost laughed out loud, in spite of the circumstances. She’d sounded so much like Kori!

  “Your family resemblance is showing,” Julia warned. “Speaking of family, I have your brother here—”

  “Kenni, just hang on. I’ll get you out—”

  Julia spoke over me. “And you have his stubborn streak to blame for what’s coming. Lincoln?” She released the speaker button and Lincoln nodded.

  “No!” I shouted, and Julia held the remote up, so I could see that her finger was still off the button. Lincoln couldn’t hear me.

  A blur of motion through the window caught my gaze, and Lincoln punched my baby sister in the face. Still blindfolded, Kenley never saw the blow coming. She grunted in pain, and my pulse raced so hot and fast that my vision started to blur. Kenley’s chair rocked back and forth, and for one interminable second, I was afraid it would tip over and she’d hit her head on the floor, and if that happened, there was nothing I could do for her.

  “Stop!” I strained so hard against the zip tie at my back that the plastic bit into my skin, and the sudden warmth told me I was bleeding.

  If Kenley fell unconscious, would Julia make it stop? I honestly didn’t know. Unconscious people make terrible torture victims, because they can’t feel pain, but it was my pain Julia was counting on, and I would suffer each of my sister’s blows whether or not she was conscious.

  Julia held the remote up to her mouth again and pressed the button. “Kenley? How you doing? Hangin’ in there?”

  Kenley gasped and raised her head. Tears spilled beneath her blindfold and a horrible bruise was already forming at the center of the red patch on her left cheek. She turned her head to the side and spit blood on the floor—no reason not to, since Julia already had more than enough of her blood
. Then she cleared her throat and sat straighter. “Just fine. Also? Fuck you. And fuck Lincoln, whoever the hell he is. What kind of coward hits a woman while she’s blindfolded and tied to a chair?”

  Lincoln actually chuckled. “I only work here,” he said, examining his knuckles, and I wanted to rip his throat out and watch his blood drain onto the floor. “If I had my way, this would be an entirely different kind of...session.”

  Kenley bit her lip as silent tears rolled down her face, and my blood boiled. I recognized Lincoln now. He was the one who’d slit Chase Alexander Curtis’s throat.

  “Hmm...” Julia turned back to me. “Someone’s been spending a lot of time with her big brother and sister. But I don’t think she’s as tough as Kori, no matter what she wants us to believe. Do you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Tell me about Sera’s Skill, or we’ll find out just how tough your baby sister is.”

  She was now assuming Sera had a Skill, and I wasn’t sure whether that was a bluff or a conclusion she’d drawn based on the fact that I hadn’t claimed otherwise. Julia lifted the radio to her lips again and opened her mouth.

  “Yes.” I glared at her. “Sera has a Skill.” That was the truth. It just wasn’t the whole truth.

  “Good boy,” she said, and I wanted to put my fist through her face. “And what is her Skill?”

  But I’d figured out her game. “You already know the answer to that, don’t you?” She was testing me.

  “I have my suspicions. She’s a Jammer, isn’t she?”

  “Just like her father. Your brother.”

  Julia nodded. She had known. But I was sure she didn’t know about Sera’s other Skill. No one did, other than the residents of our hideout house. And Julia couldn’t make me give her information she didn’t know she was missing.

  “Sera didn’t know, did she?” Julia sat straighter, and her eyes lost focus with the thought. “She was telling the truth when she said she didn’t have a Skill, and the only way that’s possible is if she didn’t know she was Skilled. Which makes sense for a Jammer—there’s no intent required for her Skill.”

  I shrugged. I was afraid to say anything, one way or another—Sera had obviously been blocking Julia’s Skill when she needed to get away with a lie, just like she’d done with Anne.

  “It’s too bad, really, because I could use another Jammer—if she weren’t trying to usurp my position.”

  “Sera doesn’t give a damn about your position, your money or your power. She didn’t ask to inherit the mafia, and she has no desire whatsoever to run it.”

  Julia frowned at me. “You actually mean that. She spoke to you, didn’t she? She confided in you.” She frowned and glanced at the floor without waiting for my answer. “Why would she do that?” When she looked up, I saw comprehension written all over her coldly attractive features. “You’re not just trying to keep her for her Skill. You actually like her. Or is it more than that? Am I making you choose between your sister and your lover?”

  “Fuck off.”

  Julia laughed again. “Oh, you Daniels siblings. You’re all guns, and knives, and flying fists on the surface, but on the inside there’s nothing but mush. Gooey touchy-feely pulp, rotting you from the inside out. Your emotional fragility is what makes you so easy to manipulate. So let’s try another question. What’s Sera’s other Skill?”

  For a moment, I could only blink at her. How the hell had she known?

  “What other Skill? No one has two Skills.”

  Julia stared at me with both brows arched high, as if she was waiting for me to take it back. But I couldn’t tell her. The only advantage Sera would have, surrounded by Skilled mafia members who wanted her dead was the ability to negate their Skills.

  When I said nothing, Julia pressed the button on her radio/remote again and said, “Again, Lincoln. Somewhere else this time.”

  “Wait!” I shouted, but Julia didn’t wait. Neither did Lincoln. He pulled his fist back, and Kenley braced herself for the blow, and I hated myself for the fact that she had to do that. But I hated Julia more.

  Lincoln punched my sister in the gut and she hunched over in agony, as far as her bindings would allow. For one long moment, her mouth hung open, silent, because she couldn’t suck in enough air to scream. So I shouted for her.

  “You cold-hearted sadistic bitch! She can’t defend herself. She can’t even move. She can’t even fucking see! What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me. In fact, like my late brother, I am blissfully unencumbered by traits like sympathy and pity, which keep people like you from doing what needs to be done. The only reason I haven’t killed you is that I need to know what Sera’s capable of. The only reason I haven’t killed Kenley is that I need her until I finish transferring the bindings. But I don’t need her unbruised. I don’t even need her conscious. And I certainly don’t need her...untouched.”

  I could feel the blood drain from my face. “Don’t.”

  “Name Sera’s second Skill, or I’ll tell Lincoln he can do whatever he wants with your sister, as long as her heart keeps beating.”

  “Why?” This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. “Why would you do that to another woman?”

  Julia frowned, as though my logic confused her. “You seem to be under the impression that my ovaries came with a lifetime supply of empathy and compassion. I assure you that is not the case. Start talking.”

  “Sera’s your niece.” Time was the only resource I had, distraction my only weapon. I had to keep her talking, even if that meant pissing her off. So long as she only took that anger out on me. “She shares your blood, and you tried to have her killed. You had her whole family slaughtered. And her baby... What kind of psychotic bitch has a baby murdered in its mother’s stomach?”

  Julia stood, and I’d never seen her more pissed off. “Flattery won’t work, mostly because you’re giving me way too much credit.” She stalked closer, until she towered over me, staring straight into my eyes from inches away, and I itched to take her down. To put my hands around her throat and squeeze until her skin turned purple and her eyes popped out of her skull. “I had nothing to do with what happened to her family, but I can’t say I’m sad about the dead fetus. That’s one less Tower in line for my inheritance.”

  “Would you call that irony when a truth-reader lies through her teeth? I know you had them killed. Sera knows you had them killed. And even if you pulled out a gun and shot me through the forehead in the next thirty seconds, I’d die satisfied with the knowledge that when she finds you, Sera is going to rip your heart right out of your chest. And if she’s not fast enough, Kori and Ian will fight her for the honor.”

  “Dramatic. Nice imagery. You have the heart of a poet.” She crossed both arms over her suit jacket, the small remote secure in her right hand, and stared calmly into my eyes. “But none of that changes the fact that your sister is in a very small room with a very big man, about to suffer what is no doubt her worst nightmare. Start talking, or I swear on the entire Tower syndicate that I will give the order and we’ll both listen to her scream.”

  “The resemblance to your brother is beyond creepy,” a new voice said, and though it was familiar, I couldn’t place the owner, and I didn’t even try. Julia turned, surprised, and all I could think about was that whatever this distraction was, it had bought me time. She’d pocketed the remote, and Kenley was still tied to her chair, her clothing intact.

  Then I saw Mitch standing behind Julia with one hand on the doorknob, the other holding his shoes. His shirt was on backward, his pants were unbuttoned and his socks were mismatched.

  “That was fast.” Julia’s heels clicked on the concrete as she crossed the warehouse toward him, and I had to divide my attention between what they were saying, and what I was planning—some way out of this mess, for both me and Kenley. “Well?”

  “They bought it.” Mitch’s grin was obscene, in size alone. “I have to say, my acting was superb, but the re
al clincher was your text. They wouldn’t have believed I had legitimate information for them if I hadn’t had yours to point out as false.”

  “That’s why I do the thinking, and you do what you’re told.”

  Mitch’s grin faltered, but then he rallied with a more intimate smile and reached for her waist. “I’m already half-dressed. Why don’t you tell me to do something else?”

  Nausea churned in my stomach at the thought of them together. Of Julia intimately involved with anyone. I preferred to think of her as asexual. Which went along with the fact that she was also amoral.

  She slapped his hand away. “If you ever touch me without permission again, I’ll have you skinned alive and rolled in salt.”

  Mitch looked hurt for a moment, not by her threat, but by her rejection, and with sudden insight, I understood why he’d come back—he didn’t know how to be free. He’d tried to warn us. He’d tried everything he could think of to remain in Sera’s employ, and when she’d turned him down—when I’d run him off—he’d obviously come back to Julia. But...

  “You told her about Sera? About her second Skill? How?” It shouldn’t have been possible. The one caveat to his freedom was that he couldn’t tell anyone about where we’d been that day or that Sera had a second Skill.

  Mitch glanced at me, then at Julia, obviously asking silent permission for something. She waved one hand at me in a “be my guest” gesture and Mitch dropped his shoes on the floor and zipped his pants, then padded across the concrete toward me in sock feet.

  “Your baby sister has no idea what a help she was on that front. I ‘snuck’ in to see her and begged her to break my binding. To free me. She has no idea Sera even exists, and once she’d broken my binding to Jake Tower’s bastard, I was free to renew my vows to the true heir.” He glanced back at Julia, evidently expecting to be rewarded with a smile or a word of gratitude, but as far as I knew, Julia was unfamiliar with both concepts. I also knew that the fact that he’d had information for her was the only reason she’d taken him back instead of killing him.