Chapter Fifty-Two
Standing in the entry foyer of Sal’s, Vishous kept his eyes straight ahead, triangulating both Allhan and Denne.
At the same time, his instincts were penetrating deep into the restaurant.
Hundreds of years of fighting experience came to him without asking or ordering, every creak in the facility, each breath the two across from him took, all the different scents that permeated the air, weaving into his mind.
The three of them were alone. For now.
“Yeah,” he said in a low voice. “That’s what I want to hear about. The lesser.”
Allhan cleared his throat. “My father was approached by a slayer some months before he died—”
“Before you murdered him,” V interjected calmly.
“Y-yes. Yes. That’s right.” The male swallowed hard. “The deal that was struck was for my sire to provide the locations of the Audience House and where the King and the Brotherhood live to the enemy in exchange for a fortune.”
“So it can try and kill us all.”
Allhan’s eyes closed. “Yes.”
V was done with the fucking waiting. “So you kill Daddy and decide to make the money yourself, right? If I remember correctly, your sire was having financial difficulties. A case was brought to the King by investors who alleged he’d cheated them out of millions and Wrath required your father to pay everything back. It wiped him out.”
“I didn’t know… why the money dried up. But I guess… that was the reason.”
“And after you stepped into the loafers of your sire, you moved in with us.”
At that moment, Z and Rhage materialized behind Denne. When they nodded in sync, V was aware of a subtle uncoiling. Thanks to the text he’d sent out just before he’d palmed up his guns, the Wheel and the Audience House were both on Level I lockdown, with nobody going in or out.
“Your intent,” V continued, “was to turn over the address of the First Family and the Black Dagger Brotherhood and their families to the enemy.”
“That was my plan, yes,” Allhan admitted. “But in the end I couldn’t do it. I can’t do it. I had… stupid ideas. I was too smart and too dumb at the same time. You can check both my phones—”
“Keep your hands where we can see them,” Rhage interjected in a deep voice.
Allhan and Denne both jumped and twisted around to the new arrivals on scene. When the male turned back, he looked like he was about to hyperventilate.
“She’s not involved in this,” he said. “Let her go. She didn’t know a thing, she doesn’t know anything. And you can look in all my computers, too. In every dealing I had with the lesser, she’s never been involved.”
V kept his eyes right where they were on the middle ground, even though his brothers were on backup. “So what made you decide to come forward with all this now.”
“You told me I wasn’t alone.” Allhan’s voice cracked. “Last night, you told me that you would help me. I have been alone all my life, and I hated my father. And I did kill him and I do not regret it for everything he did.”
“Yeah, the temerity of him losing all your future inheritance—”
“He raped my sister when she was a young. For years.”
At that, V shifted his glance in the male’s direction. The fury in those pale blue eyes could have lit the world on fire.
“It started when she was two years old, and nobody did a fucking thing. So I do not regret what I did to him at all. And I kept dealing with the lesser because it threatened to kill her. All I could do was pray that it didn’t find her—but it did. It took it a while… but it did.”
Allhan covered his face with his hands and went full babble.
“Those males outside the club all died because of me. The lesser tortured those two to try to find Carmen. And yet I knew I couldn’t give the slayer what it wanted.
I couldn’t… betray the only people who ever cared about me.
But I didn’t know what to do and the enemy got impatient. It’s all my fault.”
A shudder went through the male and he dropped his arms in defeat.
“Kill me now. I know that’s what I deserve.
I accept the punishment—just… can you please help my sister?
Get her out of that glass house on the river.
The lesser’s been sending me pictures of her there for the last couple of nights.
She’s not safe, and she’s totally innocent.
Please, let Denne go and save my sister, Carmen.
I deserve everything else you do to me.”
As Allhan lowered his head again, Vishous inhaled and tested the air for scents of stress and falsity. Through Wrath was the real expert at sniffing shit up, he didn’t catch any duplicity. At all.
Nodding at Rhage and Z, he waited until the brothers came forward so they were immediately behind the male and female.
Then V put one of his guns away and held out his gloved hand. “Give me both your phones.”
As Allhan struggled to get into the pockets of his hoodie, he knew without a doubt that if he made one wrong move, he was going to get his head blown off.
The phones all but spilled out of his hands, and as they bounced down the stairs, Vishous put his other gun away and bent to pick them up. The Brother was quick about getting into the official one.
“The password for the burner is fourtwosixnine,” Allhan said.
Time seemed to stop, but only at Sal’s. He was very aware that it was continuing to pass elsewhere in Caldwell. That the lesser was a boiling pot that wasn’t going to stay lidded for much longer. That his sister was all alone.
“Please, just save Carmen,” he repeated numbly. “Kill me here, or out back, or down by the river, but let Denne go and save my—”
Without warning, Denne burst forward and took out her own gun, pointing it at Vishous. “No! You’re not going to kill him! He didn’t do anything—”
“Put that away,” Allhan hissed as he jumped to his feet. “You’re going to get us killed—”
“No, she’s not.” Vishous didn’t bother looking up from the phone, like the only thing he was facing was a whisk from the kitchen.
“Long as her weapon doesn’t get discharged.
If you do pull that trigger, neither one of you is making it out of this alive—which would be pretty fucking stupid considering these texts do seem to corroborate what you’re saying. ”
Those diamond eyes lifted and focused on Denne. “Put down your gun.”
“No, you’re not taking him,” she snarled. “You’re not killing him, I love him!”
The scent of her tears became overwhelming to Allhan, and he put his arms around her. As she collapsed into his chest, he slipped the gun from her hold and tossed it over at Vishous’s feet. Then he just closed his eyes and held his female.
He didn’t know how long they stayed like that, and he was only vaguely aware that there were conversations being conducted around them, and other people arriving.
If he’d thought their goodbye had been set in stone the night before, it was nothing like this.
He was going to be taken out back by the Brotherhood, as he should be, and even though death was going to be an ice-cold bath of an absolute void—or whatever Dhunhd was like—in a way, it was a tremendous relief to have it all out. Off his chest. Over and done with.
He truly had been eaten alive by the lies.
“—han? Allhan.”
He came to and discovered that Vishous had come over to them. The Brother’s face was intense, but that strange frozen mask was gone.
“Tell us where your sister lives.”
“What?” he mumbled. “I’m sorry, I can’t hear right—”
“Tell us where your sister lives. We gotta move quick.”
Repositioning Denne under his arm, he whispered, “It’s the glass house, down on a point, across the river from where the cops discovered the dead human two days ago.”
“That’s Assail’s old crib,” somebody said off to the side.
As Allhan’s brain came back online more fully, he realized that there were many members of the Brotherhood around them. No guns, though. The guns had all been put away.
“We’re going there right now,” Vishous announced.
Before the Brother could turn to leave, Allhan reached out and grabbed for the warrior’s arm. “Wait… what about me? What are you going to do… with me?”
Those diamond eyes searched his face. Then the burner phone was front and center before Allhan’s face.
“This just came through from the enemy.”
The image was of Carmen, tied up and beaten in the middle of the glass house’s perfectly decorated living room. And there was another face in the photograph, a dark one with eyes like dead black marbles, and a smile that promised a wealth of suffering.
“Wait,” Denne said. “Let me see that.”
She tilted the phone screen to herself. “What the hell is t’On doing with your sister?”