Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Transitions
Mother? Where are you? Mother?
—Repeating whisper in the PsyNet
PAX HAD NEVER expected to end up at a lunch table with multiple bears while his twin laughed at his side and tried to tempt him into trying new dishes, but life, he’d come to learn, had a way of throwing surprises at you.
This surprise, at least, was a good one.
He could breathe now that he knew Theo was safe. Not even the most venomous member of their family was stupid enough to go after her at this point, their mother included. The Marshalls might be arrogant, many yet believing themselves better than changelings, but they also knew that the bears were allied with Kaleb Krychek.
No one in the PsyNet wanted to pick a fight with Krychek.
Tonight, hours after the lunch, he found himself standing on the roof of the apartment building where he stayed when he came to visit Theo. The air was crisp, the lights of the city glittering all around him—and best of all, he didn’t have to worry about a knife in the back.
Not here. Not in his sister’s home.
He rubbed at his forehead, exhausted from the viciousness of what was going on in the family. The power plays, the machinations, the political backstabbing. He was starting to believe that Theo was right, that their grandfather had poisoned them at the root, and there was no chance of salvation.
At least the current spotlight on their family had made the cockroaches scuttle back to their holes, giving him more breathing room than he’d had for months. He still wasn’t certain what to do with Claire. She was a venomous snake, but even Pax couldn’t simply order the assassination of his own mother.
Had to be Theo’s conscience nudging him away from their grandfather’s brand of psychopathic governance.
He could walk away, he thought with the cold part of his mind that had been nurtured by Marshall Hyde, let the others murder each other scrambling for control. Whoever “won” the CEO position would make a mess of it.
Pax could then buy it out from under them, with no obligation to “family” or the line. The entire empire would be his to shape, his to rebuild . . . unless the rot went even deeper than that.
Arwen Mercant had been blunt with him after Theo convinced Pax to accept empathic help. His twin had already spoken to Mercant at that point, with the E agreeing to a meeting with Pax to see if they could work together.
After that introductory contact—during which Pax had found himself taken in by too-perceptive empathic eyes—Mercant had accepted a short-term contract to offer Pax advice on which members of the family and the organization he might be able to trust.
The results hadn’t been good.
“I’ve never met a family this disturbed, this . . . twisted.” A grimness to the fine line of Mercant’s jaw as they’d stood side by side on the balcony outside Pax’s San Francisco office, an office that had become his default HQ after his move to the city. “There’s no sense of loyalty except between you and Theo. The senior employees are cut from the same cloth, each loyal only to themselves.”
His grandfather, Pax had thought, had filled the ranks in his own image.
“I’m no business consultant,” Mercant had continued, “but I’d advise you to cut and run, set up your own clean operation, and offer employment to lower-level employees when the Marshall Group inevitably begins to hemorrhage. To those people, it’s just a job; they have no skin in the game.
“Do not accept the applications of anyone in your corporate or even mid-level managerial staff.” He’d made a slicing gesture with one hand. “I hate to write anyone off, but the senior ranks have been too long embedded in the organization, have absorbed too much of its ethos.”
Even as Pax considered what that said about him, the person who’d been raised by the cold-eyed cobra at the center of the Marshall Group, Mercant had looked at him and said, “Theo.” A quiet answer, a compelling indication of how well empaths read people. “Your devotion to Theo, your refusal to allow that bond to break? It defines you.”
“More than being my grandfather’s protégé?”
Piercing eyes of silver with blue undertones on his. Arwen’s power was wholly different from that of Memory Aven-Rose, but the empaths had one thing in common: a spine forged of steel. Those who believed designation E weak had no idea of the strength it took to walk into the abyss time and time again.
“Yes,” Arwen had said. “Your bond with Theo was there before him, and it’s outlived him. I don’t often tell people to dance on someone’s grave, but in this case, it’s more than justified.” He’d slipped his hands into the pockets of his suit pants, the fabric a dark gray pinstripe that Mercant had paired with a shirt and tie in a hue caught between blue and silver, much like his eyes. “The Syndrome . . .”