Page 22 of Down Knot Out
“I do not lurk.” She sneers in disgust at the empty seat beside me. “But some things should be kept in the family.”
My chin lifts as I stare up at her. “Oh, yes.Family.Are you speaking of the Sinclairs?”
“No, of course not.” Her delicate nostrils flare. “I’m speaking of the Santaro pack. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
I look away from her. “What happened to Louie was his own fault.”
From her small purse, she produces a handkerchief to place over the cracked vinyl before sitting, and her tone shifts to a venomous whisper. “Everything I worked for is gone because of your stubbornness. The board froze my accounts. I havebillsto pay.”
“I haven’t done anything to you.” My fingers curl around the armrests.
“No?” She leans closer, her breath hitting my face, and the cinnamon gum can’t hide the undertone of alcohol. “If you had just accepted the courtship I arranged for you, even for ayear, we could have had theworld. But you ruined it, you ungratefulchild.”
I rear back. “Yousoldme and left me to be bred like livestock.”
“Did I report it to Louie when my suppressants went missing?” She shakes her tiny beaded purse at me. “No. I wanted you married, not knocked up. Louie knew he wasn’t to touch you.”
Disbelief shoots through me, and a broken laugh escapes. “You can’t be serious. There’s noway you’re that delusional about what he was planning to do!”
The receptionist’s head turns in our direction before her attention returns to her computer screen. The waiting room seems smaller, the antiseptic smell stronger, choking me.
“He almost?—”
“But he didn’t.” She cuts me off, her manicured finger jabbing toward me without making contact. “And now I’m left to fix things. Another of the Santaro brothers will be taking over the pack. He’s willing to overlook the role you played in Louie’s death as long as?—”
“I’m not going to marry into the Santaro pack!” I stand, unwilling to be near her a second more. “Youmarry him if you’re so desperate.”
“Sit back down.” She grabs my wrist, yanking me back into my chair. “It has to be you.”
“Why?” I shake my head, exhausted by all of this. “Because I’m a Sinclair?”
Vivian’s expression flickers with surprise, followed by quick calculation. “You did a DNA test.”
“Of course I did. I’m being courted by the Misty Pines Alphas now.” I yank my wrist from her grasp. “Why have you lied to me my entire life? Does Dad know?—”
“That man is not your father.” Vivian sneers. “He wasn’tAlphaenough to breed a child.”
“Then who?” I demand, the same question I’ve been asking since I was sixteen. “Is it Leopold?”
Considering the size of the bargaining chip my mother has made me out to be, and how much the Santaro pack wants me, my first cousin is a good guess. Since my father never had more children, the head of the pack would default to my great-uncle’s line.
“I would never touch that sniveling Beta,” she scoffs.
Okay, she has a point. If she planned to cheat on my father, she would have chosen someone powerful. My stomach sours at the thought of her and my great-uncle together. He was old even when I was a child.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” Tears sting my eyes at the betrayal. “That I’m really a Sinclair?”
She glares around the waiting room at our audience. “Keep your voice down.”
“Why? Are you afraid someone might hear the truth?” Heat rises to my face. “That you’ve spent years lying about who I really am?”
Vivian’s hand shoots out, gripping my wrist with surprising strength. Her nails dig into myskin, five points of sharp warning. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I pull free, the movement jerky and leaving welts on my skin. “Then explain it to me. Explain why you hid who I am. Why you falsified my DNA when I was supposed to start my courtship with Dominic. Why you let us live in squalor and took on huge gambling debts instead of just… just…”
The memories of cold apartments and empty refrigerators flood in. The constant worry that she wouldn’t come home. That when she did finally appear, her pink eyes would be glazed with alcohol and her face covered with bruises from debt collectors.
“I did what I had to do.” Her voice drops lower. “Your father—yourrealfather—rejected me when I got pregnant with you. He’s spineless and deserves everything that’s coming to him.”
