Page 78 of Outfoxed

Life enjoyed fucking around with me. Since the Alley hadn’t killed me, the East needed to take a few swings in an effort to finish the job. I clutched Peace and the mostly empty backpack containing my paperwork, including the provisional contract I’d signed with Sandro.

My buyer possessed a disturbing and striking resemblance to the bounty hunter. Maybe her skin wasn’t quite as tanned as his, but I recognized her smug expression. While I’d thought Sandro had mastered it through becoming a quadrant master, I was forced to reevaluate my stance. No, there was no way in hell he’d earned his smug expression and hotter-than-hell body.

His mother packed the goods, and she’d given her son more than his fair share of it.

How unfair.

I flattened my ears, wondering what sort of nightmare I’d been dumped into. Dealing with Sandro Flores Moretti would be the death of me, but for him to be the male clone of the woman who had to be his mother? Then for her to have purchased me at auction like I was some broodmare?

Life had it out for me. There was no other explanation.

Something about my expression pleased the woman. She smiled.

If I could have flattened my ears more, I would have, and the fox in me wanted to chitter a warning.

Could Earth survive two people like Sandro? One Sandro vexed me and did a good job of driving me more than a little crazy. For his mother to be cut from the same cloth? No. That wasn’t right. How dare Sandro be cut from the same cloth as a woman willing to spend a ridiculous amount on me?

I couldn’t blame her for going to extremes to try to rein her son in, however. Sandro was trouble, especially when he wore white shirts in the rain.

I wondered if she’d dump a bucket of water over his head while he wore a suit for me. I could tolerate a lot if admiring him when wet became a daily part of my life. For once in my adulthood, my fox and I agreed on a man, although our reasons for our interest differed.

She liked him wet.

I did, too, but I also appreciated not dying in an alley far more than she did.

Dick dipped into a bow, and to my amusement, kept his hands clasped in front of him, as though making certain he didn’t commit some sin by succumbing to society’s tradition of shaking hands when greeting each other. “Mrs. Moretti, here she is. Most items of your list have been attended to, and we have substituted everything we could. What was not accomplished has been noted in the system.”

“Excellent. Thank you, Dick. Come along, Jade. We have much to discuss.”

Yep. The woman was definitely Sandro’s mother—or an aunt? I supposed an aunt might be a possibility. But why would Sandro’s mother steal his contract? No. Wait. That couldn’t be possible.

Sandro had sealed the records in the Alley, so unless she’d gone to the Alley, she couldn’t have identified the contract holder, and if she had, would she have paid so much for me? It would have been far cheaper to notify her son to finalize our contract in the East.

I pricked my ears forward at the thought of the mother and son battling each other in the most ridiculous financial war ever to be played. Better yet, Sandro had no idea of his mother’s involvement.

I discovered that, somehow, I had emerged a potential victor in the odd dispute. I could tolerate Sandro. The wild side of me wanted more than to tolerate him. She wanted me to make use of her claws to tear him out of his clothes.

Unable to come up with a reasonable reason why to argue with her, I ignored her severe case of lust to focus on my more immediate problem: Sandro’s mother and her ownership of my person.

Dick and three auction house employees ferried my new acquisitions through an underground parking garage to where a limousine waited. Mrs. Moretti opened the back door and gestured for me to go inside. “I’ll go around the vehicle, darling. Make yourself as comfortable as you can. Our physician is waiting at the house to check on you, and then you can get some sleep. You must be tired.”

I got into the limousine and set my backpack and sword down on the seat across from me, and as I hated myself but didn’t want to die in an accident, I buckled in. It hurt, I muttered curses at the straps, and I hoped to hell we wouldn’t end up in the car for hours. Sandro’s mother snorted, reached into the vehicle, unbuckled my seatbelt, and clucked her tongue at me.

I blinked at her.

“I’d rather not clean blood out of the car tonight, and if I let you bleed everywhere because of some damned seatbelt, my asshole of a husband will stand there and watch while I scrub. No blood in the limo. He doesn’t make rules often, but this is one of the rules we just don’t break. I do not want to scrub blood out of this damned limousine!”

I’d been purchased by a madwoman. As the middle seat had a lap belt, I scooted over, buckled into that instead, and questioned how I’d been dragged into an insane world filled with crazy rich people.

“You don’t have to wear a seatbelt, Jade.”

“Like hell I don’t.” I pointed towards the front of the vehicle. “Do you know what happens if this thing hits something else?” I pointed at the seatbelt, and I tightened it out of spite and a healthy desire to not go flying through the barrier dividing the front of the limousine from the back. “Blood. A lot of blood. And glass shards through the face. And possibly a close introduction with fire and the engine.”

Sandro’s mother blinked. “Darling, Theo is a very good driver. He hasn’t had an accident in years, and even then, it was a minor one that wasn’t his fault. You have nothing to worry about. Do all residents of the Alley fear cars?”

I turned my ears back, remembered crossing my arms over my chest would hurt like hell, and refused to look her in the eyes. In truth, the first time I’d seen a twister fling a car through a house and the resulting carnage, I’d given vehicles of all types a wide berth. I appreciated not remembering much of the train trip. Had I been coherent, I likely would have spent the entire time before reaching the boundary concocting ways a tornado might mangle the train with me in it.

“Goodness. Next she’ll have me wearing one of the damned things.” Heaving a sigh, the woman shut the door.