Chapter 5
CIARAN
Twenty-four hours later, the smell of sweat and alcohol welcomes me back to the Undercrypt, the fight ring buried beneath the Black Chapel.
We like hanging out here and watching other people get beaten to a pulp. So? Call me a sadist, I don’t care. Sometimes I’m the reason the floor needs cleaning.
Most people know the Black Chapel for the cards, the liquor, and the kind of money that changes hands without anyone raising their voice. The Undercrypt is where those evenings end when somebody loses.
The crowd is already pressed against the rail when I get downstairs. Rafe is in the pit, living out his lifelong love affair with violence while everyone keeps calling me the psycho.
I stop at the edge of the marked stone, press my shoulder against the iron rail, and look down just as he slips a hit that should’ve taken his jaw off.
“Five says he drops him in under thirty.” I glance sideways at Lucan.
“Speaking of bad decisions, how did that poor guy escape your clutches last night?”
Lucan snorts into his drink. “Fuck off. His name is Damaris.”
I look at him, and the second he notices the expression on my face, he mutters a curse. “That serious?”
“Shut up.”
I grin. “Should I ask Dad if Damaris needs an extra pair of eyes too?”
Lucan glares at me for a second. Then a slow smile spreads across his face. “Ooh, that’s why Rowan got the VIP treatment.” His grin widens. “So did you. I heard you had him playing all to yourself.”
“Careful now. You might be my cousin, but—”
“Your dad put you on Rowan, didn’t he?”
I don’t bother answering. The look on Lucan’s face says he’s already connected the assignment, the invitation, and the fact that I cleared a room just to hear Rowan play.
The annoying thing is that he’s right. Rowan might’ve gotten the VIP treatment, but I’m the one who got the private concert.
The memory slips back anyway. Not the concert, exactly. Him. The shivers that chased across his skin when I stood too close. Those soft, surprised breaths he thought stayed private.
Something about him has gotten under my skin. Not just his face, though that’s more than enough to keep a man entertained. It’s the way he looks all nerves and softness right up until he opens his mouth and decides he’d rather bite.
If he ends up on his knees for me, I won’t complain. But it’s the defiance that keeps ruining every reasonable explanation I come up with. That, and the way he plays the Noctis.
And most of all, Dad won’t tell me why he wants my eyes on Rowan.
Now I can’t get them off him.
I should’ve left him alone that first night. I chased him instead. Cornered him against a wall, felt his pulse slam beneath my hand while he snarled at me through it. That should’ve been where I walked away. Somehow it was where I stopped being able to.
One stupid chase, and now every time somebody says his name, I listen.
That never happens.
A burst of laughter jerks me out of my thoughts, and I look up to find Marius at the far side of the rail with two girls hanging on his every word. One of them steals a sip from his glass while he says something in that dry, quiet voice of his, and both of them dissolve into giggles.
They’re probably hoping to end the night on one of our laps. Shame, really. Marius is the sort of pretty boy who leaves a trail of broken hearts behind him and never even realizes he’s doing it.
Pretty sure neither of them is his type.
Rafe, meanwhile, is having the time of his life. If any of my cousins is an unhinged motherfucker, it’s him.
The other guy is big and clearly stupid for agreeing to fight my cousin. He’s game, charging in with more confidence than sense, but he’s no match for Rafe.
My cousin slips the first hit, takes the second on the ribs, and answers with one brutal shot to the mouth. It snaps the guy’s head back hard enough to wake the whole room.
“Come on, baby, fight me,” he sings.
The crowd roars when the guy gets back on his feet, wipes the sweat from his face, and squares up again.
“Fucking suicide,” Lucan mumbles next to me, lifting his empty glass for a refill. “Must have deserved it.”
He’s not wrong. Nobody ends up in the pit because they’re having a good night upstairs.
Rafe shoves him back into the wall, says something low in his ear, then lets him swing wild. Catching the wrist, he yanks him forward and drives a knee straight into his face.
The bell sounds, and the floor men are already moving before the loser fully tips sideways.
A few girls peel away from Marius’s side the second the floor clears, hopping off their stools with bright eyes. Rafe’s climbing off the stone grinning, the man he split open already forgotten.
One catches his arm before he’s fully through the gate, another already touching his shoulder, calling dibs. He laughs, says something that makes them both giggle, and lets them hang on him like they’ve won a prize.
Of course he does.
Lucan finishes his beer as I flick my cigarette to the floor and grind it out beneath my heel. “Let’s go upstairs.”
The Black Chapel is packed tonight, same as always. By the time we make it back upstairs, every card table is full, chips clicking over green felt beneath low gold light. Music rolls low across the floor, soft and dirty enough to make everything feel a little looser.
Most of the decorations from the floor show are gone by now, but a few black ribbons still hang near the balcony rail, glitter catching in corners nobody bothered to clean properly.
A couple of people nod when they see us. I lift a hand toward the bartender, and he already knows to start pouring.
My gaze drifts over the tables, but somehow I end up back at the same question.
Rowan was here the night of the floor show. Most people don’t walk into Black Chapel by accident. So what the hell was he looking for?
A few of Dad’s men work the floor tonight too, standing where they can see everything without getting in anyone’s way.
Most people probably don’t notice them, but of course I do.
I notice everything, including the tall fuckhead I’ve liked less by the minute ever since he interrupted me with Rowan at the canteen.
“Adrian Voss again?” Lucan asks, following my gaze. “That asshole keeps turning up with the wrong people in the wrong places. Guess they haven’t figured out they’re fallen yet. Adrian least of all.”
He’s sitting at one of the tables, dark hair all over the place and his mouth set tight, throwing down cards, willing the deck to start feeling sorry for him.
Someone is sitting beside him, and Lucan sees it at the same moment I do, his mouth pausing around the rim of his glass before he lowers it. “Well, well. Isn’t that Damaris?”
There’s something almost pleased in the way he says it.
I let my gaze move over the rest of the table, half paying attention. No sign of Rowan, which is strange considering the two of them have been practically attached at the hip on campus.
The one person who started as an assignment is somehow becoming a distraction.
Which is probably stupid.
Before I can think much more about it, the hand ends. Cards turn over. Chips slide across the felt while a few men nearby make the low noises of people watching closely enough to care.
Adrian just stares at the table for a second, drags a hand through his hair, then leans forward hard enough to rattle the chips. “That’s bullshit.”
Someone at the next table laughs under their breath. Another answers with a quiet murmur, already sensing where this is going.
“Sir, if you’d like, I can call the hand again,” the dealer says.
Adrian snorts and shoves back in his chair. “Call it again? You think that’s the problem?”
“Voss again,” somebody mutters at the next table. “Family gets dragged through hell and the idiot decides to make it everybody else’s problem.”
A few people near the table start shifting back. Lucan is already moving, handing off his glass and stepping in with that easy look he gets right before he starts enjoying himself. “Is there a problem, gentlemen?”
Adrian jerks his head up, only just realizing someone else is speaking to him, and the second he sees Lucan, something in his expression turns mean. “This doesn’t concern you,” he says, the words already starting to slur at the edges. “Mind your own business.”
The dealer looks ready to disappear into the floor when he realizes who’s standing at his table now, straightening so fast it’s almost painful. Poor guy deserves a drink later.
“Sir, I can handle it.”
Lucan talks straight past him. “I’m sure you can. And yet here we are.”
Adrian pushes himself up too fast, the chair legs scraping hard against the floor. “I said mind your own fucking business.”
Conversations around the table begin to falter, the space opening a little wider as people start deciding they don’t want front-row seats to whatever happens next.
Lucan just stands there, easy as ever, unbothered that Adrian is one bad second from making himself everybody else’s problem. “Hard to do that when you’re shouting across my family’s floor.”
While Adrian keeps glaring at Lucan, as though that’s going to help him, Damaris is already gathering up his winnings with quick hands. He pulls them closer, a man who knows exactly how fast money can disappear when tempers start to go.
The glass of water sitting by his elbow is still nearly full, and Damaris starts making a lot more sense.
Rowan didn’t touch much alcohol at the party either, sticking to the cheap stuff while everyone else drank like money didn’t exist.
So Adrian’s drinking for both of them, and judging by the look on Damaris’s face, he’s the one who’ll be dealing with the consequences when the idiot sobers up.
The dealer stays where he is, but I can see the tension in him now, one hand resting near the tray. Adrian keeps losing chips, losing face, and still hasn’t settled the drinks he’s been throwing back since he sat down.
Adrian either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. Honestly, I’m not sure which is dumber.
The dealer clears his throat. “Sir, I understand you’re upset, but the hand stands, and your tab is still open.”
“What did you just say to me?” Adrian is out of his chair so fast it nearly tips backward. One hand fists in the front of the dealer’s shirt, dragging him halfway over the table before anyone can blink.
The chips go scattering again. The dealer makes a choked sound, hands coming up on instinct. Damaris goes rigid, his chair scraping back as he looks from Adrian to Lucan to the guards already closing in.
I had a feeling this night was heading in exactly this direction.
I catch the eye of one of Dad’s men and jerk my chin toward the table. He starts moving before I even look away.
Yup, Adrian managed to turn a bad hand into a security problem in under five minutes, which is honestly almost impressive.
I know. I’m a terrible person.
Around us, people are already backing away from the table, the crowd shifting with that collective instinct that tells you trouble is about to get worse before it gets better.
Lucan, meanwhile, writes Adrian off entirely. He steps closer, smooth as fucking ever, and turns his attention toward Damaris, already decided who matters more here. He holds out a hand and murmurs, “Come on. Let me get you out of this.”
Damaris freezes, staring at Lucan’s hand, caught between taking it and running. “I’m fine.”
But even from where I’m standing, I can hear the strain in it.
Adrian finally seems to notice Lucan holding out a hand to Damaris, offering him an escape route, and goes red so fast I’m half impressed. “Get your fucking hands off him,” he snaps, still half bent over the table. “He’s with me.”
Lucan meets Adrian’s glare without flinching. The smug bastard knows exactly what he’s doing. “No. He isn’t.”
Adrian shoves the dealer away hard enough to make him stumble and straightens up too fast. Breathing through his mouth now, drunk and angry and stupid enough to think this is going to go well for him.
Jabbing a finger into Lucan’s chest, he snarls, “Say that again. Go on. Say it again.”
Lucan glances down at the hand on him, then back up, and the look on his face makes me think this is about to get entertaining. “With pleasure—”
“Gentlemen, let’s not make this any more complicated than it already is. I handle matters for Mr. Voss.”
A man steps in from the side, timed to the exact second this crossed from embarrassing into dangerous. He’s tall and composed, dressed well enough that he doesn’t need to announce what he is to anybody paying attention.
Lucan looks him over. “Complicated enough that you need to come collect him personally?”
“He’s had too much to drink.” The man tightens his grip when Adrian tries to jerk away. “I’ll take them both home and make sure the bill is settled.”
Between Adrian trying to start a fight, Lucan looking ready to start a second one, and Damaris standing there, wishing himself literally anywhere else, the whole thing is honestly better than the fights downstairs.
Since Lucan looks about to declare war, I step forward and offer the man my hand. “Ciaran Virel. Please do.” I flash him a smile. “And since my cousin seems unusually invested in Mr. Voss’s friend, we’ll save you the extra trip.”
For a second, nobody says anything.
Then Lucan barks out a laugh. “Oh, you brilliant motherfucker.”
“Right?” I grin as Adrian gets steered toward the door by the Voss fixer and two of our guards. “You owe me one, cous. Don’t worry. I’ll collect when the time is right.”
“This is bullshit,” Adrian spits, still trying to twist out of the other man’s grip. “Get off me. I said get the fuck off me—”
“Careful,” I call after him, still smiling. “You’ve already made enough of a scene.”
That earns me a look promising absolutely nothing good, and fuck me if I don’t hope somebody caught the whole thing on camera.
Damaris watches Adrian go with a look of absolute horror on his face. “Should I—”
“Don’t worry, baby boy.” Lucan tosses his bike keys into the air and catches them again. “I’ll take you home.”
“I don’t need a ride from a stranger.” Damaris pockets the last of his winnings, chin up. “I have a bike.”
“You have a friend being folded into a car by the Voss family’s cleanup man, and no way to follow.” Lucan’s grin holds. “Consider me an upgrade.”
Damaris opens his mouth, finds nothing to argue with, and closes it again.
Lucan looks ridiculously pleased with himself as Damaris blinks at him.
Cocky bastard.
I can still hear Adrian shouting after the door closes behind him. Judging by the scene he just made, tonight’s only going to get worse for him.
And I plan on enjoying every second of it.