Read Online Kinsmen 01 - Silver Shark by authors_sort - Free Book Online Page A

beautiful. Endless water, brilliant blue, as far as you can see and under the surface fish in every color. The mountains thrust right out of the water, and I'd sit on the rocks and watch the shark dolphins play..."
    She almost said, "You see the bionet as the ocean, don't you, Ven?" but caught herself. Claire Shannon, the secretary, wouldn't know that.
    "My parents loved it so much, they live there now. I always wanted to live on the coast." Ven smiled.
    "So why don't you?"
    "There are very few businesses on the coast. The ocean storms six months out of the year, so little shipping is done by water. The ports are mostly for tourists. Besides, most of the family is here. Our business interests are here. My father and mother have little concern for Guardian. Neither one of them is really the business type. They have the ability, but not the ambition required to grow a business."
    Ven shrugged, leaning back. His face seemed almost melancholic, and then he shook it off.
    "Anyway, back to Castilla. As I grew up, the family realized that I was their most valuable asset. I'm a stronger psycher than my father, but we had very few resources to make use of my talents. De Solis is an old family. A lot of money, a lot of connections, and decades in the bionet business. So, my parents approached the de Solis with a marriage proposal. De Solis would get a powerful psycher and Escana's financial issues would be resolved through the alliance."
    He seemed unperturbed by the idea of his family selling him. "How did you feel about it?"
    Ven drank his wine. "Imagine that you're eighteen years old. On this world eighteen means you are a man, expected to support yourself and your family. You're the golden child; your family expects you to lift them out of misery and solve all their financial problems, and you have no idea how to do that. You have a lot of anxiety about it. Then your father comes to you and says, 'You don't have to go to college and you don't have to worry about finding a job. All you have to do is marry this beautiful girl, make her happy, and work for her family business. They'll train you, they'll teach you to develop your talents, and one day you'll inherit the whole enterprise. You'll never have to worry about a thing.'"
    "Sounds great," she said.
    "I was all about it," Ven said. "Ask any eighteen-year-old boy and he will tell you he'd jump on the chance. And Castilla was gorgeous. She had breasts the size of grapefruits."
    Claire blinked.
    "I'm trying to give you my eighteen-year-old perspective."
    "So her breasts were a large factor in your calculations?"
    "Yes. Sex with a beautiful girl on regular basis, I wasn't going to pass that up." Ven shook his head with self-mocking expression.
    She laughed.
    Ven refilled their glasses.
    "What happened?" Claire asked.
    "It turns out that I knew about the negotiations, but nobody bothered to tell Castilla. She was sixteen at the time and she was a kinsmen princess: expensive clothes, pricy jewelry, endless parties... Anything daddy's money could buy, she bought. She set the scene. She had a crowd of flunkies following her around, egging her on." Ven stirred the coals with a metal poker and set a few more skewers over the fire. "Somehow the rumors of the possible engagement leaked and one of the tabloids cornered her. She was at a party at the time, surrounded by her hangers-on. They asked her what she thought about the engagement."
    He fell silent.
    "What did she say?"
    "She said, 'Well, of course every beggar boy wants to marry a princess, but princesses don't dream of marrying into panhandler families.'"
    Even with her minimal knowledge of Rada, Claire knew the insult to the Escana family was monumental.
    "The tabloid had her on vid, and they ran with it. Her father tried to quash it, but it was too late. The engagement was impossible after that. Castilla's parents were furious with her."
    "Because of the insult to you?"
    "That, but mostly because her conduct was vulgar. It made her