Wired (Skinned, Book 3) Read Online Free PDF

renting. (The owner was hemorrhaging enough credit to be willing to sacrifice the abandoned hovel at the fringe of his property, at least on a month-by-month basis.) He thought I said no because the apartment was beneath me. I couldn't convince him otherwise, because I couldn't tell him the truth. It was too fragile to say out loud.
    Truth: My father would only have blackmailed me into coming home if he wanted me back.
    My mother could barely look at me without crying, and Zo was Zo. But my father wanted me. Even though I was the machine that had replaced his dead daughter, even though he'd once dropped to his knees and begged a god he didn't believe in to give him another chance, to go back in time and let me die.
    My father didn't want her, the original Lia. He wanted me, his skinner daughter, under his roof. I couldn't run away.
    "Come with me," I said.
    "To your house ? For dinner ?" He said it like I'd suggested
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    he join me in ritual suicide. "Your father would love that."
    "He'll deal."
    "You really want me to?"
    Actually, I was already starting to regret the idea. But something in his voice made me wonder how long he'd been waiting for the invitation.
    "Really."
    "And then after ..."
    "Then after, we can talk," I agreed, dreading it.
    "I'm not talking about talking."
    "Sneak preview?" I suggested, and closed my eyes.
    It wasn't a perfect kiss.
    But it was close enough.
    "Oh," my mother said, when she opened the door for us. She didn't speak again until halfway through the second course. Unfailingly polite, she nodded and smiled and even conceded to shake Riley's hand, paling only slightly at his touch. But she kept her thin lips pressed together and her eyes on the table and clearly longed for the good old days when she could have disappeared into the kitchen for the rest of the night. Not that there had ever been much cooking to be done--the smartstove and the rest of the smartchipped appliances had been taking care of that since long before I was born. But she would have been able to monitor them, offering directives about what to heat and when. Now we had an AI all-in-one
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    to take care of that, which left my mother bereft of distractions.
    "I see you brought a friend," my father said flatly, when we stepped into the living room. Riley, who had been holding my hand, let go. My father didn't offer to shake. "Welcome to our home," he said. "Riley, I assume?"
    Riley nodded.
    "You should have told your mother you were bringing a guest," my father said.
    My mother trilled a fake giggle and swept a hand through the air, dismissing the issue. It's not fine, but I'll say it's fine, she said, without saying anything.
    Suddenly I was tempted to grab Riley and drag him out of there before he had a chance to take in the imported marble, the networked walls, the way the priceless antique breakfront matched the silverware matched the gold-plated wall hangings. I didn't want him to see that the four of us lived in a space large enough for a hundred--at least a hundred people willing to live the way he'd lived in the city--walled off from the likes of him by elaborate alarms, lockdown rooms, and bulletproof glass, waited on hand and foot by a flotilla of mechanical serving machines. Not that Riley had never seen a big house before. Quinn's estate was three or four times the size of ours, a mansion fit for a queen, where ours was barely suitable for a low-ranking duke and duchess. But this was different, because this house--despite the fact that I had no control over anything in it--was mine. It might as
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    well have been an extension of me, and now that he'd seen it, he would see it every time he looked at me.
    "At least we won't need any extra food, right?" I said. Mechs don't eat.
    My father ignored the lame joke. "Your sister's in her room," he said. Zo was always in her room. Less chance of running into any of us there, I figured. I'd never thanked her for helping me break into the Brotherhood's temple to rescue my