Page 52 of Outcast’s Vow

I can imagine him in his rocking chair at his mansion, gloating like a toad.

“I’ve just heard what you’ve done,” I reply.

Like the air out here, I’m cold. There’s no emotion in my voice.

“This isn’t going to pass.”

“What can I do to help make you reconsider, senator? Tell me.”

The phone is hot in my hand while my breath fogs in the freezing temperatures.

I’m fighting for my life here.

“If you’re asking to compete with other cybersecurity firms, I have to tell you, Mr. Tremblay, that it isn’t them who made me block your contract.”

I frown. I look out at the ski slopes.

“Then who is it?”

“I was recommended to block the contract because of a dear friend of mine,” the senator explains. “Do you know Leopold Anguish? He sends his regards.”

And then the senator hangs up without giving me a chance to reply. And I am left gripping my phone in the dark and cold.

Fuck.

I grit my teeth, the pain a reminder of weakness. Leopold fucking Anguish?

I look down at the device in my hand. I want to throw it as far as I can off the balcony into the darkness. I want all this failure gone.

But instead, I slide the phone back into my pocket and lean against the balcony railing, letting my head drop.

Leopold deliberately did this to spite me. Clement was so correct when he said the Anguish Elder viewed me as a rival, but the asshole has actually already started his puppeteering. Maybe I was naive, but I would never have believed he was capable of something like this.

I can’t go against an Elder, even in a professional capacity, or I risk banishment from the Castaways. Leopold understands that completely.

“Baptiste?”

The sweet sound of my wife’s voice cuts through the air. Someone alive. Someone I haven’t failed yet. The one person I somehow feel like I can open up to.

How does her voice do that to me? We’re still practically strangers.

I don’t look back at Sylvie Tremblay.

“I’m coming. One moment.”

For a heartbeat, I want to tell her everything, but I swallow the truth and lock it down. She can’t hear this.

I glance up at the stars. The world suddenly feels very small.

It’d take a miracle to fix this.

I need to act, and soon. I have so little time to salvage what remains. I can’t let Sylvie see me crumble. I can’t bring doubt into our life together. I promised I’d protect her, even from my own failings. And I will. Somehow.

Somehow, the senator must reconsider the contract. Somehow, he must pass it through the committee.

Somehow.

That’s the word, isn’t it? The impossible word.