LEMME JUST SIGN HIS DEATH WARRANT, I’LL BRB
FORTY-TWO
LEMME JUST SIGN HIS DEATH WARRANT, I’LL brB
One step into the windy street, and that’s when I notice the man in the expensive suit is sitting on a park bench opposite the restaurant.
What does that make him? Our minder?
“Just wait here for me,” I inform Wynter and Jerry before crossing the street.
The stranger flicks a disinterested look at me then returns to the paper. “If you were supposed to approach me, I’d have approached you first.”
I perch on the bench and primly tuck my hands into my gloves. “Are Veronians branded?”
He stiffens. “Excuse me?”
I tut. “You heard me perfectly well.”
When he turns to me, it registers that I’m looking at the living embodiment of what authors call a stony expression. His eyes gleam with a wild light that would be disconcerting if I hadn’t been receiving body parts from my beau since I was a teenager.
“A crown?” I tap my forearm where I spotted Dyers's. “Just here?”
“How?” he barks.
And at the back of my mind, that persistent itch finally gets scratched.
Seeing Dyers's branding mattered.
And Alec never mentioned it to the society.
“I saw it on Derek Dyers's wrist in Dopie’s Diner. On full display.”
The stranger’s lips purse. “Nulla poena, nullum crimen*.” He gets to his feet and strides off at a clipped pace in his hand-tooled Oxfords.
Perplexed by the quote, I watch him go until Wynter calls out, “Victoria?”
Shaking off that bizarre encounter, I stand then rush across the road to rejoin them.
“What was that about?”
“Just testing a theory.”
“What kind of theory?”
“I won’t know until I know.”
Or if Dyers disappears…
Or…
“You being cryptic for the fun of it?”
“Of course.” I smile brightly at Jerry. “Let’s get you a new suit.”
* Latin: No crime, no punishment