BONUS EPILOGUE
Emilio, one week later
T he following epilogue welcomes back some character favorites and introduces new characters for brand new series which are Savage Reign and Villainous Heartthrobs. Happy reading!
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T he room smells of blood and smoke.
Not the kind that lingers in a man’s memory from a deal gone wrong. No. The fresh kind.
Sharp. Metallic. A whisper of violence beneath the marble and steel that make up much of this room’s decor.
I take out a cigarette and light the end, inhaling a long draw of smoke. Stella will kill me when I get back, but it’s better than letting my nerves get the better of me in a group like this.
Killers. Every last fucking swinging dick in here has put bodies in the ground and I have a feeling I’m leaving this room only two ways. A man brought into the fold.
Or a fucking body bag.
Clandestine meetings have a tendency to have no other outcome in my world.
Ares, an old friend from New York, leans his heavy frame against the far wall, gold cufflinks gleaming, gaze sharp as a blade. That fucker doesn’t miss a thing and he doesn’t even have to look your way. His buddy, Reaper, isn’t much different. He’s found a chair at the head of the table positioned in the center of the room and has a shit-kicker propped up on the polished edge with cigar smoke curling around his jaw. Calm. Focused.
But he’s already measured me from the ground up and I’ve only just stepped through the fucking door.
That leaves one of the Genesis men. Harlon Constantine. He doesn’t leave Chicgo much. Not with the shit going on there. He is the only one with his back turned away from all of us. He either trusts every asshole in the room, or he’s stupid.
I don’t think for a minute that man has ever been the latter. He’s on the far side of the room pouring liquid into a black-glass chalice with hands too steady to belong to a man without sins.
Not a word is spoken as I walk deeper into the room.
Then again, no salutations are needed. This isn’t a friendly meeting. The vibes are all wrong for it.
Nah, this isn’t a meeting.
It is a reckoning.
I come to halt in the center of an unlisted sublevel beneath the Gilded Key Society in the heart of Seattle. An empty level known only through whispered deals and blackmail. I should know. I made the purchase deal for the owner of the Society a couple of years back.
“Let’s not all speak at once, assholes.” I toss a black sheet of folded paper on the table. “Got your invite. So, am I being summoned or sentenced. It’s cold as death in here and someone could find a light switch for fuck’s sake.”
To the far right of where Reaper sits, the shadows shimmer with movement. Burning red gleams from the darkness. A hint of cinnamon and dark cherry hits me and I instantly know the devil lurking in the corner.
I drop my cigarette and stomp out the fire, not taking my eyes off his direction. “Lucian Fucking Coasta. What the fuck are you doing here?”
No answer.
The cherry of his thin cigar brightens as he draws on the end. He leans in the shadows, arms crossed, dressed in black-on-black, with a slow-burning smirk and a ring carved with the seal of a snake strangling a rose.
I eye them all. “If this is about the Ritual, I’ve already told you?—”
Reaper cuts me off with a voice like gravel soaked in gasoline. “Your name was found in Ritual’s logs, Emilio.”
Fuck. I scrub my hands down the length of my face. Chicago’s seedy club turned luxury hang out for people with bad ideas and the money to make them happen is the last place a person wants to find their “name in the logs”. Someone is out to ruin me and my brothers. Convincing these men of that will try every level of patience I have and then some. Old habits tend to revive themselves in my line of work and I’m not known for keeping my mouth shut when I’m being called a liar to my face.
“And you know any of this how?”
Lucian takes this moment to step forward. He holds my gaze with midnight eyes as he slides a drive across the table. He jerks his chin toward the piece of red plastic. “Pulled from the wreckage just before the fire consumed Cross’ establishment last night. Don’t trust me, call him yourself. What’s on that is real.”
“And encrypted,” Ares added. “No one has access to it but the men in this room. But it doesn’t change the fact that your name is down as our enemy. Names only end up in the log if Cross puts them there.”
“There are other ways. Nothing is unhackable. I have no entanglements with Chicago.” I look pointedly at Harlon’s back. That’s his city. He allows a few others to work within his territory, but they have to be one of two things. Either blood brothers or key masters.
Let me explain. There is a clandestine society within the Gilded Key Society. I’ve always considered it a front for shady shit. Now that I am a key master myself, I’m in a position to say I was right all along. Being a key master is where the real power is found. Empires rise from the depths of the Society. Thrones are built. And lost. I should know. Mine fell and my brothers and myself are just now rebuilding our empire.
Key masters engage in activities that shape the fate of so many lives. The men before me as all key masters. Rhythm Cross is too. He’s also known as killer, punisher, and widowmaker, the leader of the Lords of Chaos and the brother-in-law to one of Ares’ crew members. The criminal empires we forge are all connected. Think of it like cog in a clock. One break the whole fucking thing stops time until it’s fixed. And for us, that means someone gets offed.
“Cross can hand over a million flash drives with terabytes of data. Still isn’t one hundred percent proof I was involved with anything that goes against the key masters. I made me and my brothers take our oath seriously.”
“Good to know,” is all Reaper says as he raises his chin back and pushes rings into the air like this is just another night in a dark room for him. I’m starting to see how he got his name.
Harlon turns, holding the obsidian chalice now half-filled with a liquid the color of molten night.
I crank a brow up. “Night cap?”I ask in a deadpan tone.
His half grin sends a chill through my bones, but I shrug it off.
“Not quite. King’s Bane,” he offers as an explanation.
My brow furrows. “Never heard of the stuff.”
Reaper stands, the legs of his chair screeching across the marble.
Fucker.
“You think this world ends with your brothers, that sweet little thing you have on your arm and your penthouses littered here and there? Think again. The war that’s coming doesn’t care who you love. Only what and who you’ll bleed for.”
“War.” I repeat the word, the heaviness of a lead weight hitting the pit of my stomach.
Lucian’s voice curls around the edges of the room next. “The Vow of Thorns is the only way out of this room alive, Emilio. You drink, you’re marked. Bound by more than an oath of words. You’re protected, yes—but watched. You feel me? You break the vow…” He lifts a shoulder and pauses. The smile he pushes across his lips says he hopes I fail. “Let’s say you won’t get the chance to regret it.”
I drop my gaze to the chalice in Harlon’s hand. It shimmers faintly—like the liquid inside wasn’t entirely still. Like it breathes.
“What’s in it?”
“Black absinthe aged in bone-charred barrels,” Harlon offers evenly. “Snakeroot. Ground ophidian glass.”
“And a drop of the founder’s blood,” Ares adds. “Reaper’s. Mine. Harlon’s.”
I glance at Reaper, who says nothing. Just offers a look of indifference that says he can fall either way about the outcome of tonight.
Lucian tilts his head. “You refuse to drink, we assume guilt. You drink…” He gestures toward the chalice. “We assume you’re ready to pick our side.”
I don’t hesitate. I take the chalice.
The scent hits first. Bitter. Like burned leaves and crackling lightning.
I bring the rim of the glass to my lips and throw back the liquid.
Fire lights my throat. Ice chases it. My vision fades to darkness for a moment as the glass hits the table. And then it hits.
Pain blooms in my palm like a thorn pressed into flesh.
A mark burns to life—black, sharp, and ancient. I rip the cuff of my shirt open and drag back the length of my sleeve to see fire blazing up my forearm.
“What the fuck!” My roar is guttural and brimming with as much awe as there is pain.
A coil of roses strangled by a serpent etch into me. Lines of fire glow as it burns through flesh. Then from one fiery second to the next my arm returns to normal and the burning twines of roses and serpent vanish beneath my skin.
Ares gives a short nod. “It’s done. He’s bound. A sentry within the key masters.”
Harlon finishes his whiskey. “Now we watch.”
“It’s not me you need to worry about. I’m loyal to my word and I gave it the night I became a key master and I give it again now.”
Lucian steps closer, his smile degrees colder than from a moment ago. “Okay, brother. Then let’s see what kind of devil the Society just initiated. We either fight this war together or we all burn and die.”
Reaper exhales a ribbon of smoke. “Welcome to the war, Sentry. Let the fun begin.”
His words linger in my mind as I return to my brothers and Stella. Let’s hope I didn’t just get us all killed.
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T hank you for reading Gilded Whispers. I hope you enjoyed the entire sultry series! With this epilogue, you know I have so much more planned in the Savage Universe starting with Reaper’s crew in Savage Reign.
You can preorder the first book, his story, now by tapping here .
Lucian also kicks off another brand new series this year with Villainous Heartthrobs! You can preorder his story here .
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T urn the page for a secret…