THREE MADD
THREE
MADD
I didn't think about what happened yesterday.
That was the decision I'd made somewhere between putting my face in my hands and snatching a few minutes of sleep. If I didn’t think about it, it wouldn’t bother me.
Instead, I was going to focus on practical things like the guards, the rotation schedule I'd been keeping track of, and how many days before Flint sent people. Or more likely came himself. I was part of his extended family, and the Durands of La Luna Noir looked after their own.
Those were the tasks I set myself based on what I’d been taught. I ignored how my wolf had gone silent last night and why he still wasn’t talking. He’d made up his mind about something, and he wasn't interested in discussing it.
The guards moved me mid-morning with no explanation.
The other one, the Evander copy, had said they had a new room prepared.
The guards weren’t the chatty type as they walked me along two corridors and up half a flight of stairs.
I tried to figure out what was wrong with my former room and decided because I could catch a glimpse of the road from the window, they thought I’d signal to someone going past?
It seemed unlikely, but I didn’t think like dragons.
The new room was larger and south-facing, with a large window that overlooked the back garden and on to the high fence that separated the property from the forest beyond. As well as the bed, the room contained an armchair and a small bookcase with well-thumbed books.
But why were they making me more comfortable? Nothing made sense.
There was a bigger issue I couldn’t figure out and that was how did La Luna Noir not know that the dragon patriarch had identical twin sons? Flint insisted on detailed assessments of all the mafia packs, clans, dens, and flights. And yet this major detail didn’t come up?
But that was me thinking about the thing I’d said I wouldn’t do.
So I forced myself to study my surroundings.
The window was also barred, as expected.
There was one door, and I had my own bathroom again.
It was more comfortable than the first one, so were they planning on keeping me here long-term?
I was a minion in La Luna Noir, and I wasn’t privy to finances or security issues.
I moved to the bookcase and ran a finger along the book spines, looking for anything useful. There were maps of the world and technical manuals for obsolete vacuum cleaners and a coffee maker. But most of the well-read books were fiction, a couple of histories, and one battered atlas.
Someone chose these for you, my wolf told me.
But why? Nothing here resembled what was on my to-read list. I pulled out a history of piracy on the high seas which was either going to be fascinating or more effective than a sleeping pill.
I was already yawning as I flipped through a murder mystery when the knock came. It had to be Evander. He came in with my food and placed it on the table. He moved precisely, almost as if he'd done this before, and I wondered how many other prisoners had stayed here and read these books.
“Do you like your new room?”
“It has a better view.” I nodded at the window. “The bars obstruct the pretty scene, but at least there's something to look at.”
He glanced at the book in my lap. “Are you interested in pirate history?”
“I thought it might give me pointers on my current situation.” I took a sip of coffee and raised my cup to him as if I was going to make a toast. “Kudos to the chef. If the coffee wasn’t this good, I’d be filing a complaint with the powers that be.”
He snorted and slapped a hand over his mouth before walking to the window. Today he must have had a purpose, because instead of just delivering my food and leaving, he was hanging around.
“I don’t have any juicy gossip to share because, you know.” I put my wrists together mimicking handcuffs. “But if you’d like to tell me what’s happening in the outside world, I’ll forget the swashbuckling pirates.”
“Nothing of interest.”
Resisting the temptation to stand beside him, I continued trying to draw him into the conversation.
“Your grandfather built this place.” I'd read enough about the family to know that, though I was still irritated we missed the identical twins.
“Great-grandfather originally. My grandfather expanded it.” He paused. “Your family also has a long history.”
“My grandfather’s brother founded La Luna Noir, but the grudge between our two families predates that.”
I had to be careful because both Grandpa’s brother and his son—Flint, Ranger, and Hunter’s father—were assassinated. I hadn’t been taught enough of the history to know if the dragons had had a hand in that.
He didn’t move from the window, and I was hungry, so I ate. It was the most normal twenty minutes I'd had since being bundled into a car and driven into the countryside.
“Evander.” Me saying his name had him turning toward me. “I met a man yesterday who I assume is your brother, your identical twin.”
He stiffened and drew his brows together. They were less bristly than his brother’s, whose slanted brows were classic villain style.
“Mmmm. I heard he’d visited you.”
Judging by his reaction, I sensed Evander and his brother weren’t as close as Treyton and me.
Or he might consider his twin weak and was worried I’d manipulate him, though I doubted anyone did that to his brother unless he wanted it.
And whoever was the older twin might get to inherit the organization.
That was old-school, though it still happened.
“And who’s older?”
“Me.” That one word was delivered with more force than anything he’d ever said to me previously. “By four minutes.”
Ouch. Most people would have said me and left it at that, but he pointed out how much older he was.
He counted not only those minutes but also the seconds, I’d bet.
Did he lord it over his brother when they were kids?
Oh yeah. And to his family, those four minutes were as wide and long as the universe.
Before we could discuss him or his brother further, my wolf sprang up and closed a hand around my ribcage.
He picked up footsteps seconds before I did.
I’d never heard Evander approaching; he'd always announced himself by knocking.
This newcomer slowed at my door. My heart sped up, but whoever it was kept on going.
You know who it is.
The twin. Perhaps he’d been about to come in but scented his brother, who smelled almost the same as him. And they didn’t just share a similar scent, their DNA was identical.
But as the footsteps faded, I caught Evander staring at me. I tried to arrange my features into, what? Nonchalance, perhaps.
“I should go.”
“Thanks for lunch.”
He closed the door with barely a sound, and I moved to where he’d been standing at the window.
Evander knocked and he’d chosen books for me.
His scent was welcoming. Like me, he worked for a mafia organization and had probably killed people.
We came from similar backgrounds, though he’d been raised in his and my folks had fled and lived a life away from La Luna Noir.
I’d only come into the business in the last few years.
His brother, though, made my hands shake and I ground my teeth. If we had to battle one another, he could probably slit my throat before I blinked.
I grabbed the pirate book and read the same paragraph four times without remembering a single word. I was disappointed it hadn’t sparked any ideas on getting out of here.
Outside in the corridor, everything was quiet, but there was a noise in my head that I couldn’t turn off, and it wasn’t my wolf. He was asleep.
Until now, life hadn’t been complicated. Sure, I worked undercover for a mafia wolf pack, but I was good at it. I enjoyed being someone else and getting information from unsuspecting civilians. I went in, played a role and came home, leaving that persona dead and buried.
I thought of my own failures and being so careless that I was outsmarted by a bunch of dragon shifters. Evander was working me somehow, I just wasn’t sure how he was doing it and why.
I needed to up my game and not treat this as a vacation I’d won in a raffle.
What would Flint do? Or Ranger or Hunter or even Grandpa? Putting aside my unnerving reactions to twin dragons, I had to think like the wolf shifter I was.
But loud footsteps echoed in the corridor. These didn’t belong to either brother but to the guards, and it sounded like a posse.
“The patriarch wishes to see you.”