Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
Across from him, Dagger drew a blade halfway from its sheath, then slid it back. Over and over. A bad sign. Dagger only played with his knives when he was thinking very hard about where next to sink them.
Knight leaned forward, forearms braced on the table, hands clasped so tightly the scars across his arms stood out pale.
His face was carved from stone, jaw locked, eyes fixed on nothing at all.
Saint, beside him, mirrored the stillness, but where Knight radiated barely contained violence, Saint’s grim expression carried something colder.
Drake sighed. They didn’t trust easily. None of them did. He didn’t know if their code would survive that blond haired deceiver. He almost felt pity for the man. “Perhaps he has a good—”
Deveraux has a part to play. He played it.
“—reason.”
“What is it?” Maxen asked softly.
Drake bit down on his jaw. “Something Sirius said when he met.” He repeated the words. “I thought he’d already played his part before he switched loyalty to us, but he never did switch.”
Maxen did not utter a single word, his gaze glacial and unblinking. Even Reaper, the most vocal of them all, said nothing.
Drake drew a slow breath and shifted his gaze to his red-haired flame.
His beacon of light and fire. She had declared they would protect one another.
He would honor that as far as it was possible.
But Sirius and Deveraux would never reach her.
Not while he still drew breath. Not while he still had blood left to spill.
“He was in my house,” Maxen said steely. “I won’t stand for his betrayal.”
Drake felt a chill beneath his spine.
Dagger’s hand froze on the hilt, the blade caught halfway from its sheath before he drew it free and set it flat against the table. “Agreed.”
“We might need to call in favors.” Big favors. “The Duke of Mortimer owes us one.”
“You mean his brother-in-law owes us one, who is still a pup.”
Drake shrugged. “He’ll step in for the boy. There’s also his friend, Miles or something, and our dear duke brother, Blake, and his duke friend, Bishop.”
“And your cousin,” Knight said.
Drake nodded.
“So we have dukes and earls at our disposal,” Dagger said darkly. “That won’t help find Sirius.”
“Whether it helps or whether it doesn’t, it’s still more eyes outside Brighton.”
Maxen gave a single nod.
“Why did he even bother with those ledgers?” Dagger asked. “It’s written in code. They’ll have a tough time deciphering the things. Each ledger has a different code system.”
But if they did decipher them all, which was only a matter of time, they’d have a map to their empire. Which holdings relied on which men. Which territories required constant presence to remain theirs. Which payments, if delayed once, would start a quiet mutiny.
“They wouldn’t need to bring the whole thing down,” Knight said quietly, as though he’d followed the same line of thought. “Just enough to make our hold look weak.”
“And weakness invites challengers,” Saint added. “Every cutthroat with ambitions will smell it.”
Reaper’s mouth twisted. “Once the streets start choosing sides, it won’t stop at coin.”
Drake’s gaze slid to Violet again. To Calliope beside her. To everything soft and hard-won that now existed because of the order they had carved out of chaos.
“If those ledgers are fully read,” Drake said slowly, “they won’t come for us all at once.”
Maxen’s voice was iron. “They’ll take us apart.”
Silence fell heavy at the table.
Drake felt it settle into his bones. Those ledgers weren’t numbers and names. They were leverage. Lifelines. Graves waiting to be filled.
“He won’t run far,” Serpent said. “He stole to be useful. He’ll surface again.”
“He’ll surface where it’s useful to be seen,” Saint added.
“Ah, yes.” Reaper’s coin appeared, meaning the man’s fury had calmed down some. “They take pleasure in being under our noses and we are not able to find them.”
Maxen’s cold eyes flicked up. “We tighten the ship and go hunting.”
Drake nodded. “We take it back.”
A dagger buried into the table. “With interest.”
Violet appeared beside him, Calliope moving for Maxen’s lap. Drake pulled her onto his.
“Not to intrude,” she murmured. “But I sent word to my friends about my brother and your feud . . .”
Drake stilled. And that she was leaving was what she did not say.
“They’ll want to help,” she offered. “Their husbands, that is. If you are looking for more aid.”
“Thank you,” Drake murmured, hugging her tightly to him. “We’ll need all the eyes and ears we can get.”
She rubbed the arm securing her to him. “We are all in this together, are we not? Besides, as you said, we still have two earls that might prove useful.”
Reaper snorted. “And just how useful might two cocks be?”
Violet glanced at him expectantly.
Drake shrugged, then smiled. “I thought they might be of interest to the Duke of Mortimer.”
“How?” Maxen commanded.
“You know, holding two earls of the Crown hostage and all that. Might be more of an incentive to help us if he’s unwilling. Could sell them, ransom them, there are as many options as the stars in the sky.”
“Oh, lord,” Violet muttered.
“What, little flame? Having second thoughts of handing them over to my gentle care?”
She shook her head. “No. I was simply imagining all the other ways they might prove useful.”
Drake barked a short laugh before he could stop himself. “Careful, little flame. You’ll have them thinking you were born to this.”
She grinned at him. “I was born exactly for this, love.”
Oh, Christ. And Drake knew, with a certainty that steadied him to the bone, that whatever came next, whatever Deveraux and his uncle believed they had set in motion, this time, they had underestimated the wrong woman.
The tavern door slammed open.
Drake gathered Violet close as his brothers leaped to their feet. What the devil now? He didn’t have to wonder long. Four familiar faces piled into the tap room.
Damn it. No.
Violet’s friends. She scrambled from his arms and he let her go, giving a long-suffering sigh at the sight of their faces. Of all the bloody moments . . .
Would he ever bloody get married now?
His eyes met the two big behemoths following her friends. His nefarious family may have underestimated his woman, but Drake may just have underestimated her friends.
He shot them a cocky grin.
He’d take his chances anyway. What was life without a little trouble?