Page 83 of Corruption

“We’ll just have to… persuade her to cooperate.”

“I thought you didn’t want to use force on her?”

“I said persuade. Not force.” Alik raises an eyebrow at me in skepticism. I ignore him and continue. “Besides, we’ve given her space. Now we have a plan and we need her help. She’ll see the reason in it and realize this is her and our best way forward.”

Alik gives me a skeptical look that says everything that words can’t adequately convey for him. He knows as well as I that Kiya has all the leverage in this. That if she refuses, all she has to do is wait everything out until Adrian inevitably comes looking for her. Because daughter or not, Adrian has claimed some responsibility for her. And then all she has to do is tell him what she found. And once Adrian knows what to look for, he’ll exercise all his power and resources to find it, and then… it might spell the end of our family.

Kiya is smart enough to have figured all that out by now. We just have to hope that she doesn’t want to see our entire family harmed. We just have to hope that Alik’s not right.

“Didn’t say it would be easy,” I say to try to appease Alik.

He only sets his glass down and stands up, nodding for me to follow him to Kiya’s room.

Alik promptly knocks on the door and demands, “Open the door, Kitten.”

I roll my eyes and push Alik aside.

“Pretty Girl. Can we come in? We have an idea. To get you out this marriage that doesn’t involve…”

“Everyone with the blood of a Vorobev from here all the way up and down the east coast being wiped out by the Viper,” Alik says, unhelpfully.

“That,” I reply dryly.

“Go away,” Kiya says.

I sigh.

Alik pushes me aside. “Guess we’ll have to do this by force then.”

He doesn’t even bother trying to unlock the door. Simply grabs the knob tightly and pushes his weight against it, breaking the frame and forcing the door open.

“Pretty Girl…”

I trail off upon finding Kiya gone, a colorful piece of paper in the middle of the bed.

Alik shows me that she recorded her voice to replace the normal voice-activated AI on the television and then programmed it to answer conversation.

“But you didn’t want her to be bored,” Alik mutters.

“She can’t have left the house though,” I say, grabbing the paper in the middle of Kiya’s bed. “The cameras would have—”

Your cameras have blind spots,Kiya has written on her runaway note in an exaggerated flourish.

I can’t help but laugh as I hand it to Alik. Of course a girl who was so careful and skittish when she first got here would have figured out a way to find blind spots in the security once she knew they were there.

“Fucking Generation Z is too fucking smart for their own good,” Alik mutters as he crumples up the paper while getting our security on the phone. “She couldn’t have gotten far without a phone.”

“It’s Kiya. Underestimating her is why we’re in this mess,” I say.

Alik suddenly frowns and says into his phone. “What?”

“Did they find her?”

“No. It’s Isaak.”

“Isaak.”

“He’s downstairs. He—”

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