All Chapters of The Viper's Queen: Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

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 mil

The gun didn't move.Neither did I.I stared down the barrel and my lungs just stopped. The draft from the hallway hit my bare skin and I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel anything except the fact that the distance between me and that gun was not enough.Varek didn't shoot.But he didn't lower it either."Push the door," he said.His voice was completely flat. No anger in it. No anything.I put my palms against the cold steel and pushed. The hinges groaned like they were complaining about it.Varek lowered the gun. He let out one slow breath. Fresh blood dripped from his split knuckles onto the concrete floor."Inside," he said. "Close it."I stepped over the threshold and pulled the door shut behind me. The lock clicked. The smell hit me all at once — bleach fighting a losing battle against something much worse underneath it. I knew what that smell meant. I'd grown up around enough of it to know.Varek turned his back on me.He walked to a metal tray against the wall, grabbed a cloth

The woman pulled the laces tight and I made a sound like I'd been punched.Because honestly. That's what it felt like.The thing under the dress wasn't fabric. It was body armor. Stiff and heavy and so tight around my ribs that breathing became something I had to think about instead of something that just happened. Every breath was a negotiation. A small careful conversation between me and my own lungs about how much air we were actually going to get.Not much. The answer was not much.And on top of the armor was the dress.Dark red velvet. Heavy. It touched the floor all the way around and the weight of it pulled at my shoulders constantly like a gentle reminder that this was not my life and these were not my clothes and I had absolutely no business being inside either of them.I kept thinking about my jacket.My canvas jacket hanging on the back of my door in Sector Four. Worn through at both elbows. Smelled like engine grease and the particular dust of the outer rim. I had owned it