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“I’m always fishing.” He smirked, circling the counter to sit next to her. “I just don’t sell the information when it’s about you.”
“Well, put aside your fishing pole. Both of them,” she said, grabbing her glass and casting a languid eye at his trousers. “Mark my words, Natalie will have put some of her money in reserve to pay for lawyers and sent the rest to Burgundy.”
“She doesn’t have an account in Burgundy.”
“What happened to it?”
“Perhaps you should ask your dear father. He’s stepping outside the bounds of his role as prime minister more and more these days. Perhaps his heart is in the right place, but it’s going to get him into trouble if he moves against the matrons, trying to govern as a king rather than as a satellite of the highborn. You should warn him if it’s not already too late.”
“You’re claiming that my father froze Natalie’s account? The entire banking industry in that country hasn’t frozen the accounts of any Allied criminal in two hundred years, not unless the courts have found them guilty. Why would they do it for my father? And why now? They only exist so that the shadiest among the Allied Lands and the Holy Roman Empire can do business together without risking the hangman’s noose. It would put the entire country out of business in an instant if word leaked that they’d become anything less than neutral. They’d be bankrupt.”
“Perhaps they were under the mistaken impression that the account belonged to your mother. Or perhaps they weren’t so mistaken after all.”
“You want me to pay for information that I can get by asking my father?” Lila pinched Max’s cheek. “Are you that hard up for a shiny, new Adessi of your own?”
“No. Where would I drive it? It’s far too flashy,” Max said, brushing her hand away. “Do you honestly believe your father tells you everything? You’re smarter than that, Lila. For his entire adult life, he’s been best friends with one of the sneakiest matrons in the commonwealth. I know you see him as a plodding idiot, Lila, but he didn’t become the prime minister on his cock alone. Don’t be so gullible.”
“Don’t talk about my father’s…thing. And I don’t think he’s an idiot.”
“Fine. You think he’s a golden retriever, but even happy dogs can growl and bite.”
Lila sipped her wine and ignored the slights against her father. They weren’t the first Max had ever made. “So Natalie’s accounts have been frozen. Big deal. She’ll have more money soon. Natalie, of all people, wouldn’t want to see the auction house. She’s pissed off too many people for that. She’ll have a way out of this jam. Just follow the wine, and you’ll find her.”
“I’ve been trying, but Natalie’s usual hideouts are empty and I don’t think she’s in the wine business anymore. More than a few Randolphs have been asking my minions to procure Sangre. It’s beneath my people, Lila. They just stroll into a liquor store, buy a few bottles, and sell it at an obscene markup. I think the highborn merely like throwing their money away.”
“It’s safer. They can’t exactly ask their servants to buy it for them. It might get around.” Lila didn’t have that problem anymore. Tristan had cleared out a Holguín warehouse filled with wine the previous month. He’d offer her crates of Sangre if she asked.
“Just like the rest of the highborn. You’d never ask anyone to buy it for you. Word might get out. How would it look for the future prime of Wolf Industries—”
“I’m not prime.”
“You will be. On that, I’m certain.” Max poured himself another glass. “My mother taught us human psychology on the playground, Lila. Your mother is like the child who never learned to share. She won’t let the militia keep you for much longer.”
“She’s not sharing me. I’m not a toy.”
“You could be. Why haven’t we slept together?”
“Because we grew up like siblings?”
“I can get past anything if the lights are off. Maybe even if we leave them on.”
“Fine, because you’d probably film it without me knowing and sell the tape?”
“Hey, that’s a good idea.” He grinned. “I bet it’d go for quite a bit, too. I’d ask you to wear a costume. A pretty little dress with—”
“Focus, you perv.”
“Fine. Natalie has no money and isn’t moving any product. What does that mean?”
“It means that she has another source of funds we haven’t found yet, or she found a better way of making…” Lila put down her wine. A blush rose on her cheeks. “Gods, you think she took Oskar, don’t you?”
“It was a bit obvious, Lila. You’re slipping.”
Lila didn’t even bother contradicting him. “It’s a bit obvious for her as well. It won’t take long for people to put two and two together.”
“By then, she’ll be gone. It’s a risk, but not too risky for a pissed-off niece with nothing to lose. I bet you’d try to screw over your matron in her spot, so long as it didn’t involve selling a child.”
“The big difference is that I have the skills to pull it off.”
