5. Kiera
KIERA
It was the question all of us had been debating in our heads. Leo was just bold enough to ask it.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t figure out how a woman as strong as Vivienne had ended up caged in isolation across the country from her daughter. Worse than that, I couldn’t make sense of how she’d escaped Isaac’s wrath if she had figured out what he was up to.
Viv narrowed her eyes. “Not quite. But that is part of why he wanted me gone.” She let out a dry laugh, one deep from her chest. A laugh I’d heard from Dom a hundred times, one that she didn’t want to come out but forced its way to the surface nonetheless.
Before I could get caught up in comparing just how similar the pair of them looked, Viv got back to her story. “Zeus took off, investors clamored to get in. And Brennan was happy with steady, slow growth. He could take care of his family and the company was a success.
“But Isaac, he was high on the power trip. He got nastier with each passing year. His greed and ambition changed him. It wasn’t long before I barely recognized the man I’d married, taking meetings with shady investors.”
Spencer cut in. “Did you start to suspect something?” She was eager, the crease between her eyebrows growing deeper.
With a shrug, Viv looked out the window. “Maybe. In a way I didn’t understand. I felt like something in the legal paperwork was getting weird, that I was missing meetings. But at first I assumed it was because I was home with Dom more than he was.
“Until I saw the missing money.”
From the wall, Dom scoffs. “Bastard.” Her own father, corrupted by cash.
Or maybe he was always like this and he was just good at pretending.
Even that was hard to accept. I still remembered a version of Isaac who would play tag in the yard, the one who’d crash on the couch with my dad when they had to work late.
Vivienne went on. “I couldn’t find out where the money was going but I knew that Isaac was moving it. Brennan, he was too focused on his next creation and pushing Zeus’ mission forward.”
“And that’s when they showed themselves to me.”
“Who?” Dom took a step forward, finally absorbed in the story.
Sighing, Viv leaned on her knees. “The Oracle.”
Holy shit. This is real.
There was a part of me that believed this was all a ruse, that Vivienne was just hiding from Isaac, that she didn’t really hold the key to this mission.
But the longer we sat in her quiet cabin, chickens clucking outside the window, the more certain I became that Dom’s mother was what we’d been searching for.
“I got an invitation, a black envelope with gold letters.” She rubbed her fingers together. “I can still feel that paper in my hands.”
Shaking herself from the memory, Viv shrugged. “They promised to have answers to all the questions I had. So I went, alone. They brought me to some underground club, told me what to wear and who to look for. Once I met them… my entire being knew what he’d been up to.”
“You met the Pigeons?” Leo laughed.
Viv shook her head. “No, darling. I met the council. All of them.”
My jaw dropped. We’d begged and pleaded to meet with them, desperate for answers and unable to see the path. But for Vivienne, they waltzed into the daylight… or The Station light.
“They confirmed my worst fears — the beginnings of what would become the Zeus sex trafficking ring that has plagued this country for over a decade. And they left me with a choice: close my eyes to what was happening under my own roof to protect the life I’d built for myself...”
Dom’s jaw tensed. “Or?”
Viv met her daughter’s eyes. “Do something that would make the world safer for my kid. For Kiera. For everyone. But in turn, betray the one man I ever really loved.”
“It was a no brainer.” Viv cleared her throat, the choice clearly still haunting her. “I let them in, hired Oracle spies to be house staff, brought them in as assistants and managers inside Zeus. As many as I could get away with.”
A shiver ran down my spine. All of my childhood, The Oracle had been watching. They’d known everything, and let me be brought up to that room anyway. If Dom hadn’t…
I forced myself to ignore the thought. It was over now.
Viv released a breath from the depths of her lungs. “We started to plot a way to neutralize Isaac’s threat.”
But that’s where I lost the thread. And from the looks on everyone’s faces, so had they. “If The Oracle was behind you, how did it go this wrong?”
A wave of disappointment washed over Vivienne as she confessed to all of us. “My own restlessness got in the way.”