Chapter 7
SEVEN
“You can’t be serious.”
Nadi studied the elaborate floor plan spread across Raziel’s desk, tracing its winding corridors with her finger.
Braen’s personal jazz club, The Poisoned Serpent, was a testament to both opulence and paranoia—four stories of gambling, entertainment, and private rooms for the metropolis’s elite, all protected by no fewer than thirty armed guards.
While the Rosov family had many clubs in their portfolio, and most of them were managed by Braen himself, apparently this one was his personal favorite. He rented out a suite above it and spent most of his nights there, far away from the estate that was technically his family home.
Many of the private rooms in The Poisoned Serpent were meant for discerning guests and activities that they wished to engage in outside of the home but away from prying eyes.
“He named his club after you?” she remarked, raising an eyebrow at Raziel.
A shadow passed over his face. “Braen’s idea of a joke.”
Right. Either that, or their complicated friendship was perhaps more than a friendship.
“So I’m going in there just to observe? Learn his patterns, find his vulnerabilities?”
“For now.” His voice gave nothing away. “I need to know what he’s hiding. Specifically, what leverage we can use to draw him out for the kill.”
“And how exactly do you propose I get past his security?” She went back to studying the map.
They were alone, so she could at least speak freely about her abilities and their situation.
“Even if I took the place of one of his men, they rotate in pairs. A lone guard would draw questions immediately.”
Raziel leaned back in his chair, toying with one of his gold coins—flipping it over his knuckles in that mesmerizing pattern that had become so familiar to her but no less hypnotizing. “We don’t go in as guards. In fact, I’m not going at all. And you’re going in as the staff.”
“Oh, joy. The help.” Nadi frowned.
“No one notices the staff, after all.” His smile was thin. “And your current face is becoming known in our circles.”
He flipped the coin into the air, catching it with a snap of his wrist. “And you’ve proven to be quite adept at… blending in. I have no fear you will be quite fine on your own.”
She was flattered. More than she should be. He actually was sending her out to do this on her own. Huh. “Bartender, cook, waitress, and so on.”
Raziel got to his feet, moving to stand beside her at the desk. “Different forms, different times of day. We need to understand how Braen’s operation works from the inside before we make our move.”
His proximity sent a flutter through her that she immediately suppressed. This close, she could smell the woodsmoke and sandalwood scent of him, could feel the unnatural heat radiating from his skin. He’d fed recently. Preparing.
“And what will you be doing while I’m risking my skin?” Taking a step to the side, she wanted to put some distance between them.
“Planning.” He tapped the blueprints. “And acquiring resources we’ll need for the operation.”
“Resources?”
“The less you know about that for now, the better.” His smile was wolfish. “Trust me.”
Trust. Such a dangerous word.
“Fine,” she conceded. “When do I start?”
“Tonight. Remember. Observe, don’t engage. We need to understand what Braen is hiding. We need dirt. Not action. Just enough to get him to meet with me in private.”
“Unlike some of us, I know how to follow orders.” She smirked up at him. “But why can’t I just go in and kill him? I am an assassin, after all.”
“Very funny.” He sighed. “And as for why? Braen’s death will raise a great deal of questions over who did the deed and why.
Doing this outside of his club will help us control the variables.
Fewer possibilities of things going wrong.
And if we have dirt on him at that point, something or someone else that his death can be pinned on, all the better. ”
She sighed. It made sense. Find something horrible about Braen so that when he died, the blame could be shifted to that and away from the Nostroms. “This is why I always stayed away from politics.”
“Believe me, I side with you on this.” He smirked at her.
And with that, she was off. For three nights, Nadi transformed into different employees of The Poisoned Serpent.
It almost felt good, having a “normal” job to do. Something that wasn’t caught up in the complexity of whatever was happening between her and Raziel. Something that just involved her, her skills, and the work she had trained herself to do for eighty years.
The first night, she took the form of a young human male—one she’d observed rushing between the club and a nearby bakery earlier that day. Thin, unremarkable, with the kind of forgettable face that made him invisible to the wealthy patrons. It was his night off.
Well, for him. Not for Nadi. He might be confused in two days’ time when people referenced him working the night before, but he’d have a bigger check to show for it, so she figured he wouldn’t give a damn at the end of the day.
Just one of those funny mysteries that people brushed off because there was no logical explanation for it.
The Poisoned Serpent after dark was a different creature entirely from the respectable establishment it appeared to be during daylight hours.
Gas lamps cast flickering shadows across richly appointed rooms while well-dressed vampires and their human companions indulged in pleasures that would have shocked the more conservative members of the metropolis.
Nadi kept her head down and her movements efficient as she cleared tables and replaced ashtrays, her enhanced hearing picking up fragments of conversation that painted a picture of Braen’s operations.
Drug deals disguised as business investments.
Sexual favors of the most depraved kind discussed over bottles of wine that cost more than most automobiles.
But it was the casual mention of “special merchandise” that made her skin crawl and immediately grabbed her interest. Unfortunately, it was only the first night, and there was little that she could do immediately.
Patience was key.
She caught her first glimpse of Braen himself near midnight, when he emerged from a private gambling room accompanied by three vampires she didn’t recognize. She hadn’t tangled much with the Rosovs before. They owned nightclubs and restaurants on the fringes of the metropolis.
But there was no question in her mind that this was him.
Braen was a handsome man with mid-length dark brown hair gelled back in the modern style. His suit was custom-made and from the height of fashion. And his sweet, almost youthful, beautiful features did nothing to hide the hint of malice in his eyes.
The Rosov family was also an older group of vampires—but one that she didn’t know much about. They had always rather kept to themselves. Powerful, but quiet. Her attention—and her wrath—had been pointed squarely at the Nostroms.
“The shipment from the eastern territories should arrive next week,” one of his companions was saying as they passed near her table. “The quality has been exceptional lately.”
“Good,” Braen replied, his voice carrying the faint accent of old vampire nobility. “Our clients are becoming increasingly discerning. We can’t afford to disappoint them.”
As they moved away, Nadi noted the way other patrons deferred to Braen—stepping aside, lowering their voices, watching him with a mixture of respect and fear. This was his domain, and everyone in it knew exactly who held the power.
She spent the rest of the night mapping the club’s layout, noting guard positions and shift changes.
The basement level was off-limits to staff members like the one she was playing as, but she observed several well-dressed guests being escorted downstairs by club security.
Whatever Braen was hiding, it was down there.
It was during that infiltration that she noticed something else odd and out of place. Well, not something, but someone. It was just something about the young woman who was wiping down tables and sweeping the floors that struck Nadi as strange.
Nothing about the otherwise nondescript young woman should have stood out to her. She had shoulder-length dark hair. Medium build. Attractive, but nothing memorable. In fact, it was almost as though she had been purpose-chosen to blend in.
As someone who often designed themselves to do exactly that, it was the first thing that Nadi noticed.
The second was how the young woman moved.
There was just an odd kind of grace in the way she carried herself—subtle, just around the edges, like the hint of an accent that only someone who was from that area could recognize.
The woman was fae. Or at least from the Wild. There was no question in Nadi’s mind. But was she just a transplant who had come up to the surface to make her way in life, not wholly unlike Nadi herself? Or was there something else going on?
She filed the information into the back of her mind and went about her night. She had work to do. And a single stray child from below was not worth threatening her mission over.
For her second infiltration, Nadi took the form of a vampiric woman she’d seen serving tables—someone with enough authority to move freely through the club but not important enough to attract attention from the management.
This time, she was able to access more of the club’s restricted areas, carrying trays of bloodwine to private rooms where the real business was conducted.
In one room, she overheard a conversation about shipping schedules.
In another, a heated discussion about “product quality.” But no other leads and no ways to get down into the basement.
It was in the third-floor private dining room that she saw Zabriel Rosov.