Splintered by Dean Murray Read Free Book Online Page A

and Alison's safety depended on
it."
    I unwrapped my sandwich to buy time while I
decided exactly how much of what I knew to place on the table. "No,
you did what you did because you enjoyed it and it brought you
power. More importantly, while you may have ended with one-tenth of
our holdings, you started out with somewhere around two percent.
That's astonishing growth by almost any yardstick I can
imagine."
    Sam leaned back, smiling at the
perceived compliment. "That's exactly why you should go ahead and
let me run the Savannah group. I'm good at this kind of
stuff."
    "What's the prime rule of finance?"
    "I don't know; whoever has the gold makes the
rules?"
    "No, the prime rule of finance is that you can
only grow as fast as the rate of return on your capital unless you
have outside funding."
    I thought I detected a slight blip in Sam's
heart rate. A good liar yes, but not a perfect liar
still.
    "In layman's terms, your nest egg didn't double
nearly three times in three years without either someone else
loaning you a whole heap of money or experiencing the kind of
growth that is almost never found in legal endeavors. Probably
both."
    "I don't know what you're talking about. The
Georgia group is completely above board. I ran a lot of the
business, but Brandon kept his hand in some. That's where the real
growth was."
    I slipped my hand under the table,
shifted it over to nine inches plus of retractable claws, and sank
a couple inches into Sam's leg. "You're lying. The so-called
Savannah group isn't even based in Savannah. We tracked Vincent
over to Savannah three times and the round trip time between when
he dropped out of sight and when he resurfaced was perfect for
Charleston."
    Sam was sweating now, very obviously
fighting the urge to squirm, which would just drive my claws
further into his leg. He opened his mouth, likely to lie again, but
I cut him off.
    "The profit we'll turn on the holdings we've
swept up in the last couple of weeks will undoubtedly come in handy
at some future date, but that's not the only reason we've been
interested in Brandon's old activities. Donovan and I have been
hunting down your illegal golden goose."
    When lying didn't work Sam turned to anger. It
was a useful piece of information.
    "I brought a lot to the table when we offered
to join you. We could have gone to any number of different packs
and been treated like royalty based on the amount of money we could
produce. I could still do that. I'm sure the Coun'hij would be very
willing to cough up a million dollars as seed money knowing that I
could double it inside a year."
    I shook my head again. "There's been
a bank error. All of your assets have been frozen. You won't make
it very far, especially if you drag Alison and Jack along with
you."
    I let Sam process that fact. I was pretty sure
he had the odd fifteen grand hidden here and there, but he had to
know most alphas would just torture him for the information and
then discard him once they had it.
    "I want a name and a location, Sam. You've been
running something illegal and it needs to stop."
    Sam sighed, rubbing his wrist where
James had thrown him into a table earlier. "Okay, it's illegal, but
it's not a big deal. The contact distributes marijuana, but those
kinds of deals are always cash at the time the transaction goes
down. Our guy is pretty successful but he likes to spend his
earnings, so every time he looks to expand we're the ones that he
turns to for financing."
    I let the silence radiate out, watched it work
on him. I wasn't surprised when he was the first to break
it.
    "Look, could you please let go of my leg? I
swear I'm telling the truth."
    "Fine, give up your contact and everything will be okay.
Refuse and you're going to find out just how unpleasant I can
get."

Chapter 7
    "Adriana Paige. You can't really think I'm
going to believe that!"
    "It's the truth, Mom. We just
started hanging out together. It's nothing, we're just really good
friends."
    I'd known Mom would freak