Page 36 of Secret Twins for the Alien Dad

“Zair. Welcome back, brother. Come upstairs, something turned up.”

It's unusual to see my boys huddled around a set of plans instead of brews and video games. My fated mate has brought out the best in all of us. For the first time since setting foot back in this city, it's looking up that together we can clear her name.

“So, what have you got?”

“Okay, so,” Finn begins. “Here's the word from around town. You know I've been seeing that dancer over at Twin Stars when I'm in town.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Yeah so, I'm over at her place the other night, and I hear her talking with some of the other girls. That room comm everyone was looking for was Boris Vorra’s.”

“Vorra? How do I know that name?” Then it hits me. Dwight Vorra, otherwise known as Brev’s main competitor, the owner of Twin Stars Casino. Boris is his wild, spoiled son. He's notorious on Glimner as the city’s most entitled party boy. He’s always in the society papers, wearing outlandish clothes and driving hover-cars I could only dream of.

“Okay, so, rumor is Boris has been spending extra time over here at Nova, seeing some dancer from Brev’s chorus line. A human, like your girl Myra. Then Boris's room comm goes missing, with some pictures and videos of them together–”

“And he runs to Brev rather than back to Daddy to try to get it back.” Danton interrupts.

“Because Vorra hates humans.” I stare at Danton, but I’m thinking of Myra.

“Right.” He blushes pink, the human part of him more apparent than ever. “Boris can’t live without Daddy’s money, so he’d rather take his chances with his competition.”

“That’s where your girl comes in. Brev gets a tip that Myra was in one of his guest's rooms and threatens her to try to get the comm. He figures she'll find it for him just to get out from under it. Not to help Boris, of course, but to sell the pictures to the gossip blogs and piss off Vorra. And since heknowsthere’s evidence of it somewhere, he has her followed.”

“Which is what spooked her and sent her out of town.” Finally, something makes sense. She got herself and our babies out in the nick of time.

“Why am I just now hearing about this? Why didn’t you call me sooner?”

“Because no one knew who the dancer was. Until then, there wasn't a connection to Myra. It was her roommate, Lyrenne Turner.”

I feel like punching a wall.

“I knew it! I knew she was hiding something. She knew why Myra took off and she knew she deserved some of the blame for it.”

“There’s something else, Zair.” Danton seems loath to meet my eyes. “The comm. We’ve been tailing some of Vorra’s thugs, just some light work. They’ve been knocking on doors and running down halfway houses all over town looking for the missing comm-pad. And today they just stopped.”

“Stopped?”

“Yeah, a comm call came, and just like that...”

“Which means…” I’m too afraid to think the words.

"Which has us thinking Vorra probably got the comm back by now, Zair," Skalt adds. "And if he did, he would’ve destroyed it."

I want to take it in, to believe them. It makes sense, it does, but then there’s Myra. There’s the fight in me.

“Zair, hey, where are you going?” Danton asks, flushing again.

“You said Lyrenne was the dancer?”

“Er, yes.”

“Then she has answers.”

Nova Casino stands like a domino to be knocked down. So let’s knock. Starting with Zorch. He’s been helpful before, but tonight I’m asking a lot.

“I can’t just let you into the stacks, bro.” I thought of this, and so I flash him my comm-pad, screen ready, waiting to transfer 500 Koltecs into his account. His eyebrows shoot up, along with half a grin.

“I can’tstopyou, either.”

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