credited with the amount the night of the auction. And that’s post taxes. I’m both disgusted and proud of you for having taken steps to secure your fox. You suckered me out of a fortune!”
“You’re pure evil, Mother.”
Sandro’s brothers snickered, and unable to help myself, I grinned at his disgusted tone.
“It was a little evil of me,” his mother agreed. “But I can see why you spent so long hunting for her. She’s adorable, patient, and smart. I bet she’s slippery, too, seeing how long it took you to catch up with her and coerce her into signing papers in the Alley. And she’s making you spend two years trying to convince her you’re worth her while. You’ve lost, little boy.”
According to Sandro’s expression, he longed for someone to put him out of his misery. “And you set this up why?”
“Would you have come home otherwise?”
“Considering you have Jade, yes.”
Sandro’s mother frowned. “This was more entertaining for me.”
“Whereas I’ve been spending the past few days about ready to have a damned heart attack because of you. A million and a half, Mother! I’ve been spending the entire time wondering how the hell I’d be able to buy out this contract. I was going to have to ask you for help, because while I’ve done fairly well for myself, I haven’t done that well. Not with the mandatory three million I’d have to pay Jade alone to override this contract with your terms.”
Wait. What? “What do you mean a mandatory three million?”
“She set that as part of the terms for your sale prior to any marriage. The potential buyer would have to pay a minimum of double your sale value to even be considered. And then my mother would be paid that much. She set a minimum to even consider sale, and your cut would be three million.”
“She’s worth it, and I wasn’t going to let just anyone buy her contract off me. If someone else had wanted her, they would have had to pay a lot more for her. You can afford whatever fees you paid in the Alley, especially now.”
“Well, yes, with a million and a half, I’m certainly not concerned about paying the base registration fees. However, it would have been nice if Jade had gotten a say in this.”
“I bought out the other bounty in full so there won’t be problems on that front. She was going to be sold no matter who did the buying and selling, and with me being the buyer, she at least gets a lot more options. I upgraded her to an uncontested courtesan. Before, she was going to be passed around to the highest bidder, with those wretches who dare call themselves her parents getting a percentage of every sale.”
I stilled, my ears twisting back before I could control myself. The reality of my situation didn’t surprise me.
My parents would do just that if they thought they could get ahead in the world.
“Mother,” Sandro snapped.
“Perhaps I should have been a little less callous about saying that. I’m sorry, Jade. They make me so damned angry!”
“I’m not surprised,” I said, careful when I shrugged to minimize how much it hurt. “I figured the first bounty was set by my parents, because I could see them doing something like that to at least make my existence worth their while. I don’t know what this is about buying out the bounty, but I appreciate that, especially if it mitigated how much they earned off me from this sale.”
“They earned nothing off you from this sale,” Sandro’s mother replied. “I paid them forty thousand to revoke all claims and rights to you, which was what they asked when I approached them about taking over the bounty. I made sure they would never be able to make another penny from you. There were a few other bounty contenders, but I made it clear I had legal rights to you, courtesy of your parents. Honestly, acquiring you has been quite the legal battle. And to fully gain legal rights to your person, I needed to do the auction, which temporarily released your rights to the auction house. But I had the family’s attorneys go over your paperwork. It’s unassailable now. You’re a Moretti, and you get to claim the family name immediately despite the boy not having fully earned you yet. And if he doesn’t, well, I get a daughter, and you can lure a man you do like into your lair. Personally, I think the boy