CHAPTER 7 ROHAN
ROHAN
Rohan wouldn’t have pegged Savannah Grayson as a person who slept on planes, let alone one who slept with her head on her sister’s shoulder.
He wouldn’t have thought her capable of it.
There was a vulnerability in sleep, one that had Rohan imagining Savannah sleeping curled into him, her head on his chest, their limbs not the least bit entangled.
No passion, only warmth.
Even just entertaining the possibility had a song rising in the depths of the labyrinth that was Rohan’s mind: a lullaby, gently hummed. A warning.
“You don’t sleep in front of other people, do you?” a perky voice asked.
Gigi Grayson was as different from her sister as Rohan could possibly imagine a person being: smaller, smiley, and wider-eyed, with seemingly no filter—the type of person whom it would be easy to use and hard to discard.
“He doesn’t sleep in public, either,” Gigi continued, nodding at a close-eyed Knox. “He’s a total faker who’s faking it, probably because he doesn’t want me making conversation, probably because I’d make him tell me when his birthday is, and then I could do his star chart.”
Rohan’s lips twitched slightly. “You don’t believe in astrology, Ms. Grayson.”
“Correct!” Gigi beamed at Rohan like he’d just passed a test. “I believe in science and the fundamental goodness of humankind. And also in the powers of persistence and positive thinking. I have no problem whatsoever sleeping in front of people, but as you might have noticed, this jet has an espresso machine, and I am flying.” Gigi glanced out the nearest window.
“Literally and metaphorically. Metaliterally! Litaphorically?”
“If you’re waiting for her to stop,” Knox told Rohan without opening his eyes, “you could be waiting a while.”
“Patience is a virtue,” Rohan replied. “One of my very few.”
Gigi’s eyes lit up. “Let me guess: an end justifies the means kind of guy? Just out of curiosity, would that make my sister the end or the means?”
“He’d slit her throat for the right payout.” That was Knox again, eyes still closed.
“Hush, you,” Gigi scolded.
“I’m not a villain.” Rohan had never before felt compelled to clarify that. “More of a moral nihilist, really.”
“But not an actual nihilist,” Gigi said, her big doe eyes searching Rohan’s. “Because the things that matter to you matter deeply.”
There is only one thing that matters to me. Rohan shouldn’t have had any trouble believing that. He certainly never had before.
“Guy’s not your friend,” Knox told Gigi. “Or your sister’s.”
Rohan took no offense. He’d never had friends per se. He’d learned young that people were tools to be used, the connections between them little more than levers to be pulled.
“I’m a right bastard,” Rohan agreed, “which raises a question.” He deployed his most charming smile at Gigi. “If I told you I was irredeemable, how badly would you want to help your sister find a way to redeem me?”
Knox scowled, his eyes still closed.
“Don’t mind the way his fingers are curling into fists,” Gigi told Rohan. “Knox is a teddy bear, really.”
“Metaliterally or litaphorically?” Rohan replied.
Gigi grinned. “Oh, I like you.”
Rohan was not accustomed to being liked. “You shouldn’t,” he told Gigi, just as two other voices spoke the same piece of advice in his unison with him: Knox… and Savannah.
Savannah Grayson might have been the kind of person to sleep on a plane and even the kind to allow her head to list onto her sister’s shoulder as she slept, but she did not disappoint when it came to waking up.
She was fully cognizant, fully herself, and fully capable of pinning Rohan with a look the moment she opened her eyes.
“I assume we’ll be landing soon.” Savannah was not one for questions. “If there’s anything we should know about our destination, Mr. Landry, now would be the time to share.”
Knox ignored the command inherent in those words. Fortunately, Rohan excelled at making himself difficult to ignore.
“Will we find Brady Daniels at his mother’s house on Cedarbend Court, I wonder, or out in the bayou?” Rohan fixed his gaze on Knox. “Stargazing, perhaps?”
And just like that, Knox’s eyes opened.
Hit a nerve, did I? “I always make it a habit to know my competition,” Rohan told Knox. “I’d run deep background on the top ten finalists in last year’s game long before this year’s commenced. I’m well acquainted with both you and Mr. Daniels.”
And yet, when it came to the fact that the duchess had approached Brady, recruited him… Rohan had somehow missed it.
What else am I missing? That was what Rohan was going to find out.
Tonight. But for now, he kept his focus—and his sights—on Knox.
“For what it’s worth, you weren’t Orion Thorp’s only player in this year’s game, Mr. Landry, merely the only one to successfully locate a golden ticket.
” Rohan had dispatched at least one of Thorp’s men himself.
“I’m well aware that I’m nothing to a man like Orion Thorp.” As much as Knox tried to sound like he’d stepped right off Wall Street, every so often, Rohan could hear a telltale bit of twang in his voice, rising up like a snake just barely lifting its head above the grass.
“As for our destination…” Knox reeled his accent back in. “You don’t need to know a damn thing about St. Adelaide Parish. We get in. We find Brady. We get out. And we leave Brady’s mama out of this.”
“The bayou, then?” Rohan concluded. “Ah, memories.” Yours, not mine, Mr. Landry.
Sometimes strategy dictated putting others at ease, and sometimes it called for the opposite.
Rohan wanted Knox on the warpath, primed to make this search as quick as possible.
“You might be nothing to Orion Thorp,” Rohan continued, poking at the bear just a little bit more, “but out in the bayou, you weren’t nothing to his daughter. ” To Calla. “Were you?”
And there it is—a clench of the jaw.
“I take it back,” Gigi told Rohan. “I don’t like you.” She turned to Savannah. “I don’t like him.”
“Neither,” Savannah replied, “do I.”
“We’re all in agreement, then.” Rohan smirked. “I’m detestable and easy on the eyes.”
“What do you want with Brady?” Knox stared Rohan down like he’d never even heard the word blink. “Or is it Calla you really want?”
“If your lost love shows herself, I wouldn’t object, but I’ll settle for a chat with Mr. Daniels.” That was a lie. Rohan did not settle, and he hadn’t expended his own limited resources to charter a plane to Louisiana with the goal of picking Brady’s brain.
Rohan was far more interested in the tattoo on the scholar’s arm.
If, as he suspected, Zella had been forbidden from interfering with the Grandest Game, that tattoo was leverage. How terribly inconvenient for you, duchess, that Brady Daniels is living, walking proof that you broke the rules.
And how terribly convenient for me.