Page 75 of The Vipers and Their Vendetta

He scrolls on his cell to find some pictures and hands the phone over to me. “You can keep scrolling from there. Most of them are of Reagan. She was a very photogenic child.”

The first picture is her at about four years old. Her blonde hair is all fine, wispy curls, and her blue eyes—so similar to her father’s—seem too big for her face. She’s smiling in the picture, but even at that age, it’s as though something is holding her back. I keep scrolling, watching my half-sister grow up before my eyes. She really was nothing like me. By ten years old, she’s so waiflike, she looks as though she’d blow away in a light breeze. Then I see her as a teenager, appearing even more withdrawn, no longer making eye contact with the camera. She reminds me of something ethereal, mysterious and not quite of this world.

What would she have made of me?

I find myself having to speak past a strangled lump in my throat. “She was beautiful. Thank you for sharing these with me.”

“Of course.” He accepts his cell back. “Is there anything else you want to know about her?”

Everything,I want to say.Tell me everything.“What kind of person was she? What did she like?”

“She was quiet, reserved. She liked to dance.”

I smile. “She did?”

Maybe we’d have had that in common, though I have a feeling she was probably more into ballet than my version of dancing, which was jumping around a room to rock music.

“Yes, though she struggled with people watching her. She got terrible stage fright. She’d pushed herself to do a performance here, but I guess it had all been too much.”

“Was that why she…” I can’t bring myself to say the words.

Jarl glances over at Angelica. “I guess none of us will ever know the full truth about that.”

He’s referring to the Vipers again.

We all know it, but none of us says it. That doesn’t stop their name hanging between us all like a cloud of cigarette smoke.

CHAPTER 28

Lex

My idiot brotherleft his jacket in the bar on Friday.

I haven’t questioned his reason for being in the bar, and since I’m on my way for a drive, which means walking past the bar to get my car, I offered to pick it up for him.

I reach the door, my hand on the wood, and pause. There’s a window in the top part of it, and there, seated at a table on the other side of the dance floor, is Vani. She’s sitting with her back to me, but I’d recognize that hair and those tattoos anywhere.

She’s not alone. That bitch, Angelica, is sitting with her, and there’s a man I don’t recognize opposite.

Scratch that. Idorecognize him, but I wish I didn’t.

My stomach knots. That’s Jarl Olsen. What the fuck is he doing here?

I clench my fists. Deep down, I hadn’t wanted it to be true. I’d wanted us to be wrong about her. But now she’s sitting, hidden away in a dark alcove, talking to that son-of-a-bitch. We were right about her all along.

I take out my phone and text the others.

Saint’s jacket forgotten, I turn and move at a jog back the way I’ve come. My cell buzzes in my pocket, but I ignore it. It’lljust be Zane or Saint wanting to know what’s up. This kind of information isn’t something I want to share via text. They can find out when they come to meet me.

It doesn’t take me long to run back to the mansion. Neither of the other two are there, but then they don’t understand the urgency in the same way I do.

I can’t sit. I’m too angry. Instead, I pace, clenching and unclenching my fists. My mind is a swirling whirlwind of confusion and anger. I’m furious that Vani has the nerve to betray us, but I’m also hurt that she has.

Movement comes at the door, and Zane and Saint burst through at the same time.

“What the fuck is so urgent?” Saint demands.

Zane nods and curls his fist, indicating he’s ready for a fight.

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