Chapter 13 #2
Yes, they had an agreement where Sarang was concerned, but his older brother surprisingly took his job as Dominus seriously. He wouldn’t like it if Shiloh kidnapped his underboss and didn’t have a plan on how to keep the Eumia running in his absence.
“Elixir isn’t cheap,” he said absently, watching the way a particularly thick droplet of blood rolled down the edge of the blade as he turned it. “I doubt someone like you was able to afford this much product up front. That means you’ve got a backer. Care to share?”
The alpha currently kneeling on the dirty, blood and dirt-stained floor, knew better than to talk back, but that didn’t stop him from glaring.
Shiloh couldn’t fault him for his hatred toward him.
The man was currently surrounded by a dozen of his fallen friends and co-operators. There was crimson smeared on the walls, a few fingers oozing on the ground, and drenching the green felt of a poker table with wobbly legs.
Bai Crate, the apparent ringleader of this operation, wasn’t the only person who’d been caught off guard this night.
Since the jig was up, and he needed a strong show of power to convince the mafia not to question Sarang “putting him in charge”, Shiloh had opted to handle this himself.
He’d brought along eight lower-level members and Tullius, an alpha general who was part of the Hierarchy, ordering the lot of them not to interfere.
Thirteen against one meant Shiloh had taken a few hits, but his split lip and left eyebrow barely hurt at all, and the adrenaline rush from the fight still had him buzzing.
He’d gone in hot, wielding dual blades, slashing his way through the group meeting.
Their intel said the gang, known as Lady Luck—which was the dumbest gang name ever, by the way—would be gathering tonight to discuss their botched attempt to take out the weak omega Eumia prince.
Bet none of them thought Shiloh was weak now.
“Here’s the thing,” Shiloh kept his tone conversational, “I’m no genius, but what I lack in intelligence, I more than make up for in…
other ways.” He leaned forward and dragged the tip of the blade from the rise of Bai’s right cheek down to his chin, slicing such a fine line, that blood didn’t immediately well until seconds later.
The alpha trembled with rage and fear, but didn’t pull away.
Credit for holding his shit together in the face of death.
“Not willing to talk?” Shiloh hummed. “I get it. All your friends are dead. Your operation is in shambles. What’s there to live for, really.”
“They weren’t my friends,” Bai surprised him by stating tersely. “And the operation was already about to be busted. All you did was speed things up.”
“Prince.” Tullius, who’d been searching through Bai’s multi-slate, scowled. “He’s I.P.F.”
“No shit?” Shiloh chuckled. “Well, this just got more interesting. What’s an Intergalactic Police Force agent doing on Glyph?” He waved the dagger at the room. “Don’t tell me you were working a drug case? Seems kind of beneath you.”
The I.P.F were a universal agency that protected the galaxies and helped uphold Intergalactic Conference law. If one of them had been sent here and instructed to infiltrate a minor gang like Lady Luck, there was clearly something bigger going on that Shiloh wasn’t aware of.
And, frankly, had no interest in.
He sighed. “I’m assuming you’re after the supplier?”
“A shipment of elixir heading to the Crystal Sea galaxy was pirated six months ago,” Bai replied, shocking Shiloh yet again by suddenly being so forthcoming. “Small time dealers just like this one have been cropping up all over. I’m just one of several sent to try and get answers.”
“Find any?”
“Yeah, but that’s my business.”
“Did this pirate have anything to do with that stunt two weeks ago?”
“No, that was Ricky’s plan.”
“Who?”
Bai chucked his chin toward a body in the corner, his mouth tipping upward slightly.
“Ah. Not a fan?”
“Ricky was the real leader of the gang,” Bai said. “He was using me as a cover after things went south with you.”
“Why you?”
“I’m the newest member.”
Made sense.
“Why was he after the prince?” Tullius demanded to know.
“The Eumia controls the main city. He wanted to negotiate and start dealing at some of the clubs. His bright idea was to leverage the Dominus’ brother. At first, his idiot followers got the wrong one, so—”
“Wait.” Shiloh held up a hand. “Are you referring to Elm Erskine?”
“The artist.” He nodded. “Yeah.”
Kian would be happy to hear that that little part of the mystery had been solved.
“What’d they do with him once they realized he wasn’t who they were sent for?” As of this morning, there’d been no word that Elm had been rescued, which meant he was still missing.
“I don’t know,” Bai said. “I’ve been trying to find out myself, but Ricky clammed up whenever it was mentioned. He looked scared. The guys who kidnapped the artist never came back either.”
“They brought him to Synastry,” Tullius surmised. They’d tracked Elm to that planet and knew as much. Unfortunately, this didn’t help them any with discovering who held him now.
Considering how easy it was to find this place, Shiloh highly doubted the men who’d mistaken Elm for him and stolen the wrong brother would be able to evade Kian for this long.
No, there had to have been a handoff at some point, with someone terrifying enough to scare Ricky into keeping his identity a secret even from his own people.
“Some agent,” Tullius insulted Bai. “Let a civilian get caught up in this mess and did nothing to stop it.”
“My job is to find the source of the drug leak,” Bai argued.
Shiloh laughed. “Cold. I like it.”
He twirled a finger in the air, silently telling the rest of the Eumia who’d been picking through the wreckage to wrap things up. Now that they knew the person responsible for attacking him and his alpha were dead, there wasn’t any other reason for them to stick around.
“What should we do with him?” Tullius motioned to Bai.
“Let him go,” Shiloh said. “He’s I.P.F. We don’t want to get involved.”
“He witnessed you murder eleven people.”
“Butchered is more like,” Bai stated, but there was only a very thin thread of disgust in his tone.
His eyes shone brightly and didn’t waver when he held Shiloh’s gaze.
“The Eumia isn’t my mission. It’s a simple enough matter to report back that Lady Luck’s members turned on each other.
This was a dead end anyway. No one here knows the identity of the man supplying them the stolen goods. ”
“Looks like I did you a favor. You get to go home early.” Shiloh pulled a cigarette case from his front pocket and moved for the exit. “Wait until the cleanup is done, then you’re free to go, Detective Bai.”
“You really think that’s wise?” Tullius followed him outside, the two of them stopping just beneath the awning to prevent being caught in the light rain.
“He didn’t even get involved when an innocent was kidnapped,” Shiloh pointed out. “He doesn’t care about us. Besides, Kian is friends with the Imperial Heir, remember? We’re untouchable.”
It seemed like Tullius wanted to push the issue, but he ended up letting it go instead.
At thirty, he was one of the older members who’d stuck around after Kian had taken command, traveling with them from Synastry to help build their new homebase here.
Typically, he was the one left in charge of the club, but with most of the others off with Kian searching for Elm, he’d been the best option to tag along with Shiloh.
He, like Diogenes, had known him practically all his life, was in fact the one who’d been sent after him and Sloane one of the times they’d run away from home.
There was a scar that ran the length of his back left leg as recompense, a gift Shiloh had given when they’d been fighting him off. He and Sloane had been outnumbered in the end, but Tull had needed to be carried to the hovercar, which had satisfied Shiloh immensely at the time.
“Done hiding I see.” Tullius pointed to the cigarette between Shiloh’s lips. “And you’re smoking again. Word of advice? Leave that habit behind. It’ll kill you some day.”
Shiloh snorted, picking up that it’d been meant as an ironic joke. “Don’t worry, it’s not sticking. I’m just using it to keep me busy for now.”
“Worried about him?”
“I’m keeping my alpha safe,” he reassured, already sensing the new direction of conversation.
“Sarang is still unconscious?”
“He’s awake, but he needs to rest.”
Tullius glanced over his shoulder, back into the corner building where the others were doing cleanup. “I have to be honest, after meeting them, I’m starting to doubt these people would be capable enough to take down the underboss.”
“They didn’t take him down,” Shiloh growled. “And they got the jump on us.”
“A big enough jump to send him into a coma?”
That was the story Shiloh and Bishop had fed the Eumia to explain Sarang’s sudden absence. Sure, it had holes, considering how skilled at combat Sarang was, but Shiloh was sticking with it.
“You saw the wreckage. They ran us off the road. He hit his head in the crash. Does it look like I’m in the type of mood to play around about my alpha’s safety?” he countered.
Tullius gave him a lengthy look and then shook his head. “No, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t up to something, Prince. You aren’t keeping him at the hospital or at Caelum. Where is he?”
“Safe.”
“I want to see him.”
“Tough shit.”
“Prince. I know you won’t hurt him, but that doesn’t mean—”
“You’ve had four years to be a good friend, Tull,” Shiloh cut him off. “Years where you could have told him who I really was, but you didn’t. Kind of too late to be pretend to have a conscience, don’t you think?”
“It’s never too late to do the right thing.”
Shiloh rolled his eyes and flicked his cigarette onto the wet cobblestone. “Save the dramatics.”
“Where are you going?” he asked when Shiloh stepped out under the light spray and started walking away.
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “To blow off some steam.”
“Take someone with you. You were literally just attacked.”
In response, Shiloh flipped him the bird.