Page 4 of Reckless: Corruption

“I wanted to see if you’d die.”

The words land like ice water down my spine, delivered with such casual indifference that I nearly laugh. My sister is disturbing. Fascinating, but disturbing.

“You didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“Die.” She delivers this observation with the same enthusiasm most people reserve for discussing tax returns, though a slight tilt of her head suggests something almost like approval. “Most don’t make it this long.”

“That is...” I search for the right word through the fog of dehydration and fear, my mind stumbling over possibilities before settling on, “deeply unsettling.” My mind races through escape scenarios, each more impossible than the last.

“You can’t,” she says, reading my thoughts with unnerving accuracy. “Roman had the bars reinforced. You can’t even dig out—he has iron meshing under the ground.”

“Who the fuck does he keep in here?” The question slips past my self-preservation filter, carried on a wave of genuine curiosity that momentarily overrides my fear.

“His enemies.” The way she says it makes me think of nature documentaries about apex predators. Her lips curve slightly, not quite a smile, but an acknowledgment of shared understanding. For a moment, something like animation flickers across her features before the flatness returns.

“So I’m enemy number one. Wonderful.” Though being Roman Sterling’s enemy is probably healthier than being his daughter. I run my tongue over cracked lips, tasting blood and exhaustion.

“He hates you.”

“Gathered that.” I’m surprised to find myself enjoying this twisted sisterly bonding. It’s like having a pen pal in purgatory. Her deadpan delivery and clinical observations carry a strange comfort—at least someone’s talking to me, even if it’s to inform me of my impending doom.

Don’t get used to it, warns the rational part of my brain. Shut up, says the part of me starved for connection.

“How old are you, Mona?”

“Does it matter?” A pause heavy with unspoken history, her fingers tapping an irregular rhythm against her thigh. “We are the same age, you know.”

My mother’s letter flashes through my mind—her description of a woman appearing with a baby when she discovered she was pregnant with me.

The realization hits like a system crash. Sisters. I stare at her face, hunting for resemblances like missing pieces of code. There—the slight upturn at the corner of her mouth when she’s suppressing something. The way her eyes narrow fractionally when processing. Even the tilt of her head as she watches me—all mirror images of habits I’ve caught in my own reflection.

“Alpha or omega?” I ask, though if she were a beta like me, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. She’d be in here with me instead of out there with freedom.

“Omega.” The word falls flat, stripped of society’s usual reverence. Her shoulders tense minutely, the only indication that the designation carries weight.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a twenty-nine-year-old omega with Roman Sterling as a father. I’m guessing you have a pack you didn’t sign up for.” I watch her carefully, looking for cracks in her facade, for hints of the person beneath the performance.

“I don’t.”

The surprise hits like a slap, jolting through my system and momentarily overriding my pain. “How is that possible?”

“I keep rejecting them,” she says in that same dead tone. A sigh escapes her, followed by the squeak of a chair and rolling sounds. And then there she is, fully visible at last.

Mona Sterling.

She’s nothing like I expected, yet exactly what I should have known she’d be. Beautiful in a haunted way, like a Gothicheroine who might also be a serial killer. Her fingers never stop moving—twisting a candy wrapper into increasingly complex patterns, the methodical precision at odds with her deliberately blank expression. She has our father’s eyes, but where his calculate, hers dissect.

Long dark hair falls past her shoulders, brown but almost black in the dim light, straight and shining despite the damp surroundings. Her dark eyes hold the kind of emptiness that comes from seeing too much—wells of shadow that reflect nothing back. She’s wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and an oversized sweater—an outfit that should look casual but somehow makes her seem more dangerous, like a weapon disguised as something ordinary.

“You reject packs? Without Roman punishing you?” The question comes out incredulous.

“I’m a daddy’s girl.” The words drip with something darker than venom, though her expression remains unchanged. The juxtaposition between her words and her flat affect creates a dissonance that’s deeply unsettling.

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