Page 52 of Vicarious

“What are you doing it for then? Why risk your life for this when you’ve just gotten it back?”

Phae scoffs. “You call this a life? Locked up in another gilded cage for my own protection because if it gets back to my uncle that I’m alive and not exactly where he left me to rot I’ll be killed.”

“I’m sure Viper appreciates your grateful attitude.”

Phae winces. “It’s not… it’s not that I’m not grateful for everything Adrian has done for me. Or you have done for me. It’s just… it’s still not the life I chose. It’s not the life I want. I can’t even see my kids with them knowing exactly who I am to them.”

“A lot of parents aren’t going to be able to see their kids if you pull the trigger on this.”

“It’s part of choosing this business. You know you might get caught, and you’re prepared for the consequences of it.”

“Maybe. But a lot of people aren’t going to see it that way. A lot of good people just trying to make a dollar aren’t going to see it that way. Isabella Uccello certainly won’t. Especially after she’s helped hide Lady and Leon all these years.”

“Like I said,” Phae says without taking her eyes off her computer.

Suddenly, I see why Phae and Viper clicked so well that they got married. They both have that single-minded determination to accomplish a goal no matter who or what gets in their way. That blinding tunnel vision that keeps them focused but blinds them to consequences or threats in the peripheral. That stubborn insistence to think that they’re helping a situation when they might just be making it worse. The only difference is that while Viper knows he’s the bad guy in all this, that there’s nothing noble or righteous about his cause, Phae thinks she’s the good guy here and that her cause is noble and righteous.

Maybe it is.

But I’ve only had one cause in all this. Protect my children. And, after that, protect Viper.

If Phae were to go public with this, forget a fucking criminal empire. Those who would be lucky enough to be left behind wouldn’t stop until her and anything she cared about was obliterated as revenge. They might not be able to get to her soon. But they would get to her later.

None of that is to say that Viper and I aren’t going to piss off a lot of people when we carry out our own plan for vengeance. But at least by leaving Pray’s criminal empire intact, we’ll have the power and allies to fend all those people off before they could even get close to us. Phae’s idea leaves us with nothing, and I doubt there’s anything I could say to convince her otherwise.

Bella was right. Phae is a problem. Worse than that, she might be a more immediate and dangerous enemy than Pray right now. Viper and I have to find a way to deal with her. But first, that’s going to involve me figuring out a way to get Viper to agree that we have to deal with her.

“Dele.”

I blink out my thoughts. “What?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure? I lost you there.”

“I was just thinking. We’ve planned and worked so long and this could be the end.”

“It is the end,” Phae says as she closes her laptop.

She says something else, but I’m distracted by her hand. The hand she used to close her laptop. Her left hand. The hand now sporting her old wedding ring. Before I can disguise my stare, Phae follows my gaze and then self-consciously holds her hand close to her chest and begins twisting the ring around her finger.

“Are you and Viper…?”

Phae blushes. “No. Not really… nothing… nothing concrete. But since we’re so close to the end, I thought I should get used to wearing it again. You know. Getting ready to get my life back.”

“Where’d you find it? The wedding ring, that is.”

“Adrian gave it back to me.”

“Did he?”

Fuck needing to do something about Phae because of Pray and preserving his criminal empire and this life we’ve chosen. This lifeI’vechosen. Viper needs to do something about his fucking wife beforeIdo something about her. Because dealing with her the way all mafias deal with people they don’t want to deal with is sounding very appealing right now. Viper would eventually forgive me for it. Or maybe not, considering the reason all this started is because we thought Pray killed her.

But even if Viper did forgive me for it, that’s not enough. It’s not enough for Phae to be gone. It’s not enough for me to be second to the woman he’d choose if he could.

“Dele?”

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