Page 59 of Shaken Knot Stirred

“He’ll be here later tonight. Shall we start with the Esther pack first?”

“You’re so kind,” I purred at her.

From her clutch, she pulled out a business card and raised her jeweled hand. Three heartbeats later, a server was at her elbow, uncapping a fountain pen. She scribbled notes on the back of the card and handed it to the server.

“Oh, and Yesenia, will you be a dear and refresh our glasses? We’re drinking…” she paused for my response.

“Bellinis.”

The server nodded and stepped away to deliver the card.

Chapter 33

Star

I crept into theSanctum through the service entrance, lost in my new phone. The IT guy was working on retrieving my pictures. He had just uploaded a bunch of them, most were inconsequential, but there was an entire folder of Moxie at the Delta Lounge.

I tucked the phone back into my pocket and gave it a pat for luck. I’d worry about logging into all my apps another day.

Soft music tinkled through inconspicuous speakers that encircled the room. They had invested a lot of money into the setup. The acoustic experience would differ depending on whereyou were in the room. It also provided a remarkable level of privacy. Sound didn’t really carry here, yet you could hear your conversation partner perfectly.

I made my way to a grouping of armchairs, but Aria intercepted me. She kissed me on both cheeks. Actual kisses. None of this air-kiss nonsense for paragons. Half of them had their own makeup lines featuring smudge-proof lipstick. We’d have no lip print disasters today.

“I was worried you’d sneak out on me, Star,” she said. Her voice was like a sexy lullaby designed to soothe you and make you horny at the same time.

“Well, I’ve had quite the morning,” I replied as a server brought me a whiskey in a short, fat glass, unbidden.

“I have some people to introduce you to if you’re up to it.”

I took a swift inhale through my nose and chased it with a sip of whiskey. Pay and Win had been arguing all day about Beg’s motive.

Pay believed this was a raging case of sibling rivalry. Pay and Win were close in age, as were Beg and I, but there was more than a decade between the first and the last son of the Knightbridge Pack. Regardless of the age difference, we were highly competitive. None of us liked to lose.

Win took the financial angle. While he didn’t have eyes on the internal books of the Pax, no one believed that Beg was financially responsible. Our grandmother’s will was very clear. Her wealth should be divided between her grandsons, only if they were in a pack. Which naturally, to her, meant being pack lead. And she was quite generous, giving us 10 years from the time our auras presented to make that happen. Should we fail to do our duty to the city and pack, that portion of the inheritance would be split between the remaining brothers. So, the question was – was Beg broke?

I was going with pathological hatred. Or maybe simply pathological. I didn’t have a single childhood memory of Beg not knocking me down and taking what I had. He’d hated me since the day I was born.

I pulled out my phone again to check the progress of the pic uploads. My text message archives were the first thing I got back. I’d caught up with Houston earlier. He was in Port Haven, but he had nothing new. I knew I’d seen Moxie at the Convention Center. It shouldn’t be too hard to find one auracle in a city of millions, right?

I used my foot to nudge the armchairs into a different arrangement. Feeling a little exposed, I didn’t want to advertise that I was here and open for business.

The second part of my brothers’ deliberation was that we absolutely could not let Beg win. If he was after my inheritance, then a pack solved that. Win had been with his lawyers all day, drafting a pre-bond agreement to include a clause where I could dissolve the pack. Pay was right. The will said I had to form a pack to inherit. It didn’t say anything aboutremainingin a pack.

I shivered at the thought. Breaking pack bonds was possible, but it always left damage. Even the death of a packmate could lead to severe damage. Our birth pack gossiped endlessly if it was aura damage that had led Grandmother to create this insane will. She was the last surviving member of her pack and had watched all eight of them die.

I swirled the whiskey in my glass and stood as Aria reappeared with a young, beaming alpha. A parade of people followed her over to my little nook.

What felt like 47 years later, I checked my watch and smiled. It was my favorite one, had been his too. I was too pretty not to have shiny things.

I knew I should have been paying better attention to the surrounding activity. I was about to make a monumentaldecision. But it wasn’t the pack that I wanted, so why should I care at all?

I shook my glass and inclined my head towards the bar, letting Aria know I was going for a refill. It was pretty ridiculous considering the attentiveness of the staff here. I just needed a breather.

A fresh whiskey was already waiting for me by the time I got there. My mostly empty glass was promptly swept away. When Win had first built this place, there was no bar. He thought it would be more elegant if the making of food or drink was kept behind the scenes. Turns out, people needed a demilitarized zone. Especially alphas. Sometimes, a change of scenery was not only refreshing but necessary.

“Star, baby,” I inwardly cringed at Aria’s voice behind me, knowing that she had another well-bred yet socially climbing alpha or beta to introduce me to. I plastered on my meet-and-greet smile and took a breath for strength before turning. “I have someone I’d like you to meet. This is…”

“Moxie.”

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