Chapter 21 Blood Oath
TWENTY-ONE
BLOOD OATH
DALLAS
Iknew Loni was good with numbers, but she was spot-on.
When I throw open the door to my office, I count eight different members of the old guard hovering around Jack’s desk like vultures.
Two of them have claimed the visitors chairs.
The other six are huddled, probably shit-talking me since they all clam up when I walk into the room.
The men in this room are smart. Ruthless. Cruel. I’m the youngest by at least twenty years which means they all have at least twenty years of navigating their way through the upper echelons of the secret society on me.
But I have two things they don’t: a killer’s mentality, and a broken man’s apathy about whether he lives or dies if he can’t have the one woman he’s always wanted.
They want to take Lucy away from me. I don’t even know if I still have her, but if it was up to them, I wouldn’t.
I should’ve known that. When the deadline for my so-called wedding came and went, I was expecting them to start their bullshit. They wanted to see the mighty King bow his head. They said take a bride if I wanted the crown, and they expected me to do it.
By invoking Lucy’s name, I’m betting they all know why I haven’t—and, oh, they don’t like it.
Like I give a shit.
I stride into the room, moving around the desk, plopping into the King’s chair, and glare at all of them with all of the malice I have in me.
Every man here served under my father. Every man here thinks he can control me.
Good fucking luck.
Because he’s the one who called this meeting, it’s no surprise that Matthew speaks up first..
“So the girl finally realized what a ticking timebomb you are and ran. Is that so, Dallas?”
The casual cruelty in his voice makes my fists clench.
Add that to the easy way he confesses that he knows, like he has a mole in the Fortress because Lucy sure as hell didn’t share her escape plans with this prick…
plus how he specifically disrespects me by using my name instead of an honorific…
yeah. They’re done, aren’t they? They’re here to do what they’ve been trying to do since I took over for Jack: get rid of me.
Let’s go.
I don’t get up from my casual lean, though I do point a warning finger at him. “You watch your mouth.”
“Oh?” Matthew raises his eyebrows. “I don’t know why you’re so worked-up.
It’s not like we would ever let you Claim her.
Not when she belonged to another Owed. As a mistress…
I don’t see the harm in keeping her around…
but as the queen? No.” He glances at the other members. “We couldn’t have allowed that.”
Not everyone murmurs their agreement, but enough do that it’s obvious that Matthew has the numbers. I try my best to pin who is on his side—Stephen looks uncomfortable, but he’s the only one—and decide it doesn’t matter.
“You say that like I give shit what you will or will not allow. I’m the King, remember?”
“Not necessarily. Not according to the charter. Remember, Dallas. There’s the little matter of you still being thirty and not having a bride.”
I glare at him. “I have one. Her name is Lucy Wright. Not Lucille Fairchild.”
Another man—Kelvin Rourke—clears his throat. “She’s not your wife.”
My finger points at him. “Fuck you, Kelvin.”
He winces, but another man moves to take his place. “We have a duty to the Order to make sure that our leader plays by the rules.”
Matthew takes what the other man says and decides to add his two cents: “We’ve abided by them for two hundred years, young man, under better Kings than you. Kings come and go. The Order remains. You will listen to us on this.”
“Fuck the Order.”
Holy shit. I’m worried, I’m scared, I’m panicked, and, deep down, I’m almost positive that Lucy isn’t coming back but, in the moment of clarity that follows that, I realize something: fuck the Order.
I didn’t want to be King. If I had my choice, I never would’ve joined the secret society, either.
For years, I’ve been jealous of Bas. Of how he could live his life, not caring what any of the Owed think.
He wore his outcast label like a badge of honor while I skulked behind Jack like a trained guard dog, wishing I could snap at him, but always coming to heel.
Jack is dead.
My mom is dead.
Lucy could be dead…
I brace my hands on Jack’s desk, shoving myself to my feet. “Fuck the Order. I’m done. You hear me? I quit.”
Voices erupt in the room, nonsense that I’m not listening to.
God, it feels so good to just wipe my hands of this bullshit and walk away.
That way, when I finally accept that there’s no going back for Lucy, I can take care of what I have to without worrying about close to five hundred members relying on me to lead them as the most powerful man in Harmony Heights.
I never wanted that responsibility. All because I was born into the wrong family… I’m done, and it’s the smallest weight off of my shoulder to announce that, then start to leave.
Matthew moves to stand in front of me. Like Jack, he went to great lengths to take care of himself. In his early fifties, he carries himself more like a man half his age. His hair is a uniformed brown, his face unnaturally flawless, and his eyes show that he’s as broken inside as I am.
This is fanaticism. He believes in the Order of the Owed like it’s his own personal religion. He’s not fighting back against me because he wants to be King. Oh, no. He’s doing this because he can’t understand why I wouldn’t want to keep the title.
“You can’t just walk away from the Order.”
I meet his gaze.
“Watch me.”
All around me, the old guard exchange looks. I push past Matthew, thinking it’s the end of it, when he says coldly, “Grab him.”
It doesn’t matter that they’re older than me or that I spend hours every week in my private gym. There are four, maybe five of them… too many of them… reaching for me, grabbing me, overpowering me. Yeah, I fight back hard, but I’m not invincible.
As one, they slam me down onto the top of the desk, facedown. Before I can buck them off of me, there’s weight on both of my arms, pinning me down.
A pair of hands go through my pockets. I don’t know whose until someone grabs the pocketknife I carry with me religiously in the front one, Matthew’s smug voice saying, “Ah. Thought so.”
He moves around to the other side of the desk so I can’t miss the way he opens my blade, the overhead lights glinting against the metal.
“Joey. His hand.”
“What are you doing?” I growl.
“You want to walk out of there? Fine. But you don’t leave the Order with the brand of the Owed on your skin.” He twirls the knife. “Hope this is sharp enough. You used to be an enforcer, Dallas. Tell me. Did you cut the skin clean off to remove the brand? Or did you just take the whole damn hand?”
You fucker. “You know as well as I do that we don’t bother removing the brand,” I spit out, cheek smashed to the desk as he presses one hand to the side of my head. “The only ex-Owed is a dead Owed.”
Matthew laughs, and at least one of them other men pinning me down echoes the harsh sound. He’s not the only one, either, but it’s Matthew I’m glaring up at as he says, “That’s right. In that case, I’ll guess I’ll have to use this knife to take care of you permanently.”
Fine.
“Go ahead, asshole.”
Matthew pauses, unable to hide his surprise that I’m not begging for my life. I’d bet he’d really get a hard-on if I did.
“Are you sure? You don’t want to reconsider?”
In answer, I do my best to spit at him.
He just manages to dodge it. “Tough guy, huh? You always thought you were, especially when daddy was around to keep you on a tight leash. What? You’re not scared of what I’ll do?”
I think back to the not-so-long ago day when I sat there with the Ruger against my skull, checking to see if I was afraid.
My answer is the same now.
“No.”
Because if Lucy is gone… what’s the point?
Matthew lifts the knife with both hands, freeing my head. Doesn’t matter. I lay there, a lamb to the slaughter. I don’t close my eyes, either, because, well, fuck it. If I’m going to die, I might as well watch it happen.
Only the knife never lands. Before he can figure out where he wants to slice first, the door behind us opens. I hear it, and when the two men pinning me down loosen their hold enough that I can jerk up in time to see who’s joined us.
It’s my cousin, and he looks… not pissed, but annoyed.
Adrian stalks through the open door. He takes one look at the scene in front of him, sighs, and says to no one in particular (but is definitely me), “Why doesn’t anyone follow the plan?”
You could almost forgive the others for thinking that everyone was okay. It was one man, and a glorified accountant at that. But that’s only if you don’t know who Adrian Heller really is—the self-proclaimed Kingmaker, and one of the most dangerous bastards I’ve ever had the fortune to know.
Without another word—but definitely another sigh—he reaches behind him and pulls out his Tomcat.
It’s instant. Knowing what a crackshot he is, it’s no surprise that he aims precisely before the herd mentality of the men gathered in the room can explode into a stampede. Gunshots explode, instead, as he puts a bullet in the chest of the two men surrounding my sides, holding me down.
Each of them jerks violently before collapsing; one on top of me, the other slumping to the floor. Knowing Adrian, they were killshots, or as good as, and he re-aims the gun before he puts a bullet into Matthew Greene’s skull.
My pocketknife falls to the floor a second before his body does.
As I shove one of the dying men off of me—it’s Clark, I recognize, a well-known bruiser with a shit reputation at the Court, so no loss there—Adrian addresses the five frozen men who acts as though they believe they’re his next target and, if they move, he’ll shoot again.
“Get out,” he says in a voice so cold, even I almost have chills. “You better hope that I don’t remember who was in this room and thought it was a good idea to kill the King on their own. Regicide? Really? In this economy?” He gestures with his gun toward the open door. “I said now.”
They scramble for the door before he can change his mind.
Adrian watches them go, and I know damn well he’s cataloging each of their features, matching it up with some lurid detail in the ledges that he keeps, and decided who will be having an unfortunate accident next—or paying handsomely to the Order’s treasury for their attempted coup.
I straighten up. Adrian locks the door behind them with the unhurried air of an Owed member who knows that he won’t lose a wink of sleep—or any bit of his standing—after casually murdering three high-ranked members of the Order.
Wiping the blood spatter from my cheeks, my hands, my shirt, I watch as he assures himself that Matthew, Clark, and one of the old guard I can’t name at the moment are dead. When he does, she scoops up my pocketknife, handing it to me.
He arches an eyebrow. “You were going to let them cut you with your own knife?”
I shrug. “I was going to let them kill me.”
My poor cousin. He takes one look at me, sees the honesty in my face, and closes his eyes. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Fucking hell, man. We gotta get you some help.”
Probably, but if I can’t have Lucy, I’m not too worried about it. Though, now that the suicidal urge has faded enough for me to feel a little bad for just laying there, waiting to die, I figure I should probably give her more than a couple hours of being missing before I give up entirely.
So, completely disregarding what I had almost done, I wave at the corpses and draw his attention to what Adrian has done.
“You know, the rest of the old guard is gonna be pissed. Their numbers are already dwindling. Now there’s three left. Don’t you think they might retaliate against you?”
“I’m not worried. I have a blood oath.”
“Yeah,” I point out. “With Loni.”
Adrian scoffs. “You forget, Dallas. We’re cousins. We’ve had a blood oath since we were born.”
I open my mouth. Close it.
He’s got a point there. Actually, he has more than a point.
A blood oath… in the Order, according the charter, if you swear an oath, pledge it in blood, sign it, and have it notarized by the King, it protects you from any and all repercussions in Harmony Heights as long as you’re using it to avenge or protect the person you’ve sworn to Claim.
Adrian has one with Loni. He signed it when he was eighteen, convincing Jack to notarize it, and used that to get out of any prospective trouble when he shot down Desmond after he tried to force Loni to marry him.
If I… if I have one with Lucy, then I can do whatever it takes to protect her. To save her. To Claim her.
But, first, I have to find her. And with my cousin doing what he does best… cleaning up after the disasters I can’t stop making ever since I’ve become King… I decide that I will do every damn thing I can to stay alive long enough to at least convince her to give me a third chance.
After that? I don’t know.
I… I don’t know.
At least, though, I’ll try.