Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128413 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Remi’s rage was a black wave. He didn’t give a fuck about the money, but he did very much give a fuck that they were trying to erase Auden while Auden lived and breathed and still had the fucking majority controlling interest in Scott companies.
She’d told him that the night they’d shared intimate skin privileges.
“A lot of families work with the ownership vesting in the family as a group and there’s a board that makes major decisions,” she’d said, “but that was too egalitarian for my mother’s taste even though, in practice, no one would have ever gone against her decisions. She built her own private empire to the extent that the Scott Group companies are a minor part of the family’s overall operations.”
She’d shrugged then. “I have no idea why, but she gave it all to me in her will.”
Because Shoshanna had intended to take control of her own assets through Auden’s child.
The insanity of Shoshanna’s plans aside, the blunt fact was that one couldn’t simply erase that inheritance—not when it had been put together by a team of legal sharks working under former Councilor Shoshanna Scott. And while it might’ve been intended to be a masterstroke in manipulation, it had failed. Because Auden had fought and won.
The fucking Scotts didn’t get to just steal her legacy for her child.
Remi crumpled the empty coffee cup in his hand. “No one gets to make those calls until we know about Auden.”
“Cancellation letter was signed by Hayward Scott, with the notation that he has power of attorney over Auden since she is medically indisposed. I looked him up—he’s Shoshanna’s younger brother. Auden’s uncle.”
Remi snorted. “Auden’s more likely to have given power of attorney to a random person on the street.” His leopard prowled against his skin. “I think it’s time the Scotts learned that she isn’t alone anymore. And that her friends know the family doesn’t have the codes to the system with Charisma dead. Fuckers have to be panicking.”
Turned out Remi had snapped Ms. Wai’s neck when he’d thrown her against that wall. He felt fine about that. There wouldn’t be any consequences, either, not with Lomax and Verhoeven having undergone judicially mandated telepathic scans that confirmed Remi had acted in self-defense against an armed Wai.
The Scotts had also disavowed any knowledge of the medical staff and their “unauthorized” medical experimentation on their former CEO, and they were, at present, confined to a prison holding facility designed for Psy.
Everyone else at the compound at the time of the incident had also fared much the same. The Scotts cleaning up their mess by claiming ignorance of the entire operation; he’d heard they were pinning it all on Charisma Wai, not that they had any idea of the entirety of what had taken place.
It amazed him the games the assholes continued to play while their lives hung in the balance. An exhausted Aden had visited him here, told him the crippled status of the PsyNet as they sat side by side on hard plas chairs in the hallway. “It’s going to fail any day now,” he’d said. “Liberty will survive—she’ll be pulled into the RainFire changeling network through your bond with her.”
“The squad?” he’d asked the man who was an alpha with the attendant heart; it’d crush him to be unable to protect his pack, all these wounded Arrows who looked to him for hope.
“We have a statistically unbalanced number of high-Gradients. We’ll survive in a small private network, as will others. None of us have given up on finding a solution, but the clock is close to midnight now.
“If the worst does happen, even with the highest possible number of projected survivors, including the stable island held by Ivan Mercant, it’ll only equal a single-digit percentage of our current population.”
“What can RainFire do? Just tell us, and we’ll do it.”
“You’re already doing everything you can for a population of your small size—you can’t take any further load,” Aden had explained. “My people have bonded with yours. The emotional ties will further strengthen our local network. We may end up having to move closer to you and ask for you to initiate blood bonds to help with the integrity of it. It might be uncomfortable, but it shouldn’t hurt your pack.”
“Consider it done,” Remi had said without hesitation.
The leader of the squad had stared at the floor, his shoulders slumped and his hands hanging between his knees. “And your home territory, it’s far from where millions of Psy will die in a matter of days. Our children deserve not to grow up in a graveyard.”
Too bad his brave, loving, little cat’s family was full of cockroaches who’d probably survive the biggest loss of life the world had ever seen. The horror of it was something Remi’s brain struggled to comprehend.
So for today, for this minute, he focused on a wrong he could put right, a piece of the world he could fix.