The Viper's Queen

Chapter2:The Impossible Choice

The finger was still on the floor.

I couldn't stop looking at it.

I knew it was his. I knew it the way you knew things about the people you loved without having to think about it. The thickness of his knuckle. The old burn scar from when I was four years old and he'd grabbed a hot iron off the stove to stop it falling on me. I knew every mark on my father's hands.

That was his hand.

The bile hit the back of my throat. I swallowed it down hard.

The man — Varek — had moved to the desk. He dropped a thick leather book onto the granite and the sound of it made me flinch. He didn't look at me. He just stood there flipping it open like I wasn't bleeding on his floor.

"Your father was a thief," he said. Flat. Bored. Like he was reading from a list.

I shifted my weight. My knees were killing me. The zip-tie had cut deep enough that my hands were wet. "He didn't steal anything. We barely paid rent."

"Four million," Varek said.

The number didn't make sense. I turned it over in my head. Four million. I could strip every wire out of every building in Sector Four and not come close to that in ten lifetimes.

He walked to a side table. Poured himself a drink. Didn't offer me one. The smell of it reached me across the room — smoky and sharp.

"He skimmed the northern shipping lanes for ten years," Varek said. He took a slow sip. "The debt was his. Now it's yours."

"Then shoot me."

I don't know why I said it. It just came out. It tasted like the blood still sitting on my tongue.

Varek put his glass down.

He turned and looked at me. Really looked. His eyes were dark — the color of old motor oil. Cold in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room.

"A dead girl doesn't pay anything back," he said.

He reached behind his back.

I scrambled. My boots slipped on the polished floor and I went nowhere fast. He crossed the room before I found my feet. He grabbed my jacket, pulled me forward, and shoved a blade between my wrists.

The plastic tie snapped.

The feeling that came back into my hands was the worst thing I'd felt all night. Like a thousand needles all at once. I bent forward and pressed my forehead to the cold floor and just breathed through it, making sounds I couldn't control.

Varek stepped over me.

He pulled a stack of papers from his desk and dropped them on the granite.

"The syndicate is bleeding," he said. "Tokyo and London think I'm too unstable to hold the inner ring. They want someone else in charge."

I sat up slowly. My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against my thighs. "What does that have to do with me."

"Shareholders like married men." He leaned back against the desk and crossed his arms. "It looks stable. Six months. A contract marriage. You stand next to me. You smile when I need you to smile. You play the part." He looked at me. "Do that and the four million disappears."

A laugh came out of me. Ugly and short. "You want a mechanic from the outer rim to play your wife?"

"Tor watched you move in the hallway." He looked at my hands. At the marks the tie had left. "You already carry yourself like you were trained for something. You just need different clothes."

Something snapped in my chest.

Not dramatically. Just quietly. Like a wire that had been pulled too tight for too long and had finally given up.

I got up.

My legs were shaking so badly I nearly went straight back down. I locked my knees. I kept my eyes forward. I did not look at the floor where my father's finger was lying on the marble.

I walked to the desk.

I didn't stop until I could smell the scotch on his breath.

"No," I said.

The boredom left his face. Just gone. What replaced it was something cold and very still.

"Excuse me?"

"I'll sign it," I said. My left leg was trembling. My voice wasn't. "But I say the terms first. My father — if you took his finger he's still alive. I want proof of that. And I want him in a medical room tonight. Not tomorrow. Tonight."

The silence that followed had actual weight to it.

Varek stared at me. Three full seconds without blinking. Then the corner of his mouth moved. Just slightly. It wasn't a smile. It was the look of someone who had just found something they weren't expecting to find.

He moved into my space. I kept my feet where they were.

His hand came up slowly. His fingers were rough and cold. He pressed his thumb against the side of my throat, right over my pulse. It was going so fast. I knew he could feel it.

I didn't move.

He picked up a heavy metal pen from the desk and pushed it into my raw palm. He wrapped his hand around mine and squeezed my fingers around it.

He leaned down until his mouth was right next to my ear.

"He gets a doctor," he said quietly. "But hear me. If you run — or if you make me look stupid in front of Tokyo—"

His thumb pressed down hard.

"I won't just kill him. I'll take him apart piece by piece until you beg me to stop."

He let go and stepped back.

I stared at the papers on the desk. My hand was shaking so badly the pen scratched across the stone when I leaned down.

I breathed once.

Then I signed my name.