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Isabel bowed and scurried from the room.
Between a few mouthfuls here and there, Lila cycled through messages from her spies. None of them had any news about Oskar. Tristan’s didn’t either.
Considering that he had turned more than a few workborn inside the Holguín compound, it surprised her that he hadn’t found anything. She’d anticipated a race, that they’d rib one another over who had found Oskar first.
Both of them coming up dry could only mean one thing. Chairwoman Holguín had done the deal the night before, smuggling Oskar from the compound with no one being the wiser, including the Bullstow representative assigned to his case.
Lila turned toward her desktop. She visited the Pirate’s Cove, a black-market online auction house, and searched their history for mentions of Oskar. It was a stupid, last-ditch effort, but she had no other ideas.
Unsurprisingly, she came up empty. Whoever wanted Oskar must have contacted the Holguíns directly. If she could break into HolNet, she could peek at their servers and copy every message sent and received by every device for the last two weeks, then execute a global search on the data. If that didn’t work, she could read every damn message herself.
Unfortunately, the approach was completely illegal and unethical.
A few years ago, she would have balked at such measures, balked at destroying the privacy of several hundred people. She then recalled Oskar, clutching his blue teddy bear while being led away from Patrick’s car. She recalled him standing on the stage, eyes closed, not caring whether Hans Schulte shot him through the heart. Perhaps wanting it to happen.
Ethics be damned.
Lila stared at the pixels on her screen, thinking of everything she’d need to steal their data. She wouldn’t need physical access to their servers; she’d just need access to the network. They’d never see her if she did it right.
The last time she’d done something like that, the Wilson militia had seen Tristan’s truck. They’d nearly been caught.
Lila choked on her fudge, the chocolate going down the wrong way in her surprise, settling in her windpipe like hands squeezing her neck. She wrapped her napkin around her mouth and coughed, trying to free it, her eyes tearing up as she struggled to breathe.
She had been caught, after all. One of the Wilson militia had put her ruse together, had started the rumor of Lila being involved in their family’s downfall because she had enough sense to believe that Lila Randolph had ripped information from their network.
But even if Bullstow believed her story and chose to investigate it, even if Shaw didn’t stop the investigation outright, the computer techs wouldn’t find anything. She hadn’t taken information. She’d just borrowed their connection for a little investigation of her own, covering her tracks well.
Besides, the Wilson militia no longer had access to their own servers. Most of them didn’t even live in New Bristol any longer. They’d been snatched up quickly by lowborn families and private security firms throughout Saxony.
Lila finally coughed up the fudge and wiped her mouth, gulping half a glass of water to still the burning in her throat.
Her eyes strayed back to her computer. The messages from Reaper’s partner stared back at her. Apathetic. Innocuous.
Perhaps she should call Max to find Oskar. He was better than her at finding things, and she had other matters demanding her attention.
Lila rubbed her eyes and sent Max a message, ignoring the tray of food she’d barely eaten. Hopping out of her chair, she shut down her computer and brushed her hair into a sleek ponytail. She then added more concealer and changed into her formal militia uniform. It was the same as her everyday uniform, only shinier and better tailored. She then pulled on a pair of polished black militia boots and matching white cotton gloves, then added her leather blackcoat and shoved her Colt and her short sword back into their holsters.
Straightening the four silver officer’s stars on her collar, she stared at herself in the mirror. She was ready to go toe to toe with ten chairwomen and primes from the other families.
She was ready to condemn her best friend’s mother and brother to death.
Lila turned away and trundled down the corridor, passing her sister’s door. It should have been Jewel going to the meeting. Unfortunately, her sister had flopped so badly on the High Council that her mother had given up on the idea of Jewel representing the Randolphs. The chairwoman had nearly torn up Lila’s contract in a moment of resolve, forcing her to take over the prime spot. In the end, Lila had agreed to assume the prime’s role at High Council meetings while Jewel spent more time in training.
It had twisted Lila’s stomach to accept. It felt like she’d begun to roll down a hill, gathering moss and snow and weeds that would turn her into something else. But it had been five years, and her mother hadn’t asked more of her.
But she hadn’t asked less, either.
Lila put her ear to Jewel’s door, wondering where she’d gone. Perhaps she’d had a late dinner with Senator Dubois and Gabriel.
Turning away, Lila jogged downstairs and trotted into the kitchen. Chef took off her apron and handed it to Isabel, whose face had gone pale.
It went even paler when a sulking Alex entered seconds later, clad in her best outfit, an old black dress of Lila’s and black tights. Lila had liked the dress because it made her feel anonymous. She’d given it to Alex for the same reason, especially now that her friend wasn’t allowed to wear color anymore. Her life would be an endless collection of black, gray, brown, and white.
Lila spied a golden serpent brooch pinned to Alex’s breast as though her friend still belonged to the Wilsons. It had been the first time she’d been so supportive in a decade.
It must have stung Alex’s pride to wear Lila’s clothes, but it would have stung her even more to show up in her housemaid’s uniform, no matter how fine the clothes might have been. She’d walked among heirs for years, after all, as a prime and an equal, attending the same parties, attending the same schools. All before she’d left her family to go into business for herself, all before her business had fallen apart, all before Lila’s mother had seen an opportunity to strike at a weak family.
All before Lila had finished them off.
