by Mara McQueen
Of course she had. She was the Viper.
Enzo collapsed at her feet, mind shutting down.
"What did you do?" he muttered.
She took a sip from her own glass and slashed a cold look down at him. "I struck you down before you could strike me."
Chapter Twenty-One
PATRICE
"Stupid and gullible and naive," Patrice mumbled to herself as she banged the vent closed. She'd installed the toxic gas dispersion system in it earlier in the week, but she'd never thought she and Enzo would actually set it off.
But if she wanted off this island—after she got her answers—she had to use it.
"Stupid!"
"Mistress Duval, you really shouldn't talk like that to yourself," Charles said from behind her, voice shaking. "We can be our own worst enemy, you know."
See? How could she hate someone who talked like that?
Even if, technically, Charles couldn't help but say that because of the truth serum she'd slipped into his tea along with the sleeping draught, the same concoction she'd put into the wine bottle.
The serum loosened the tongue like nothing else could. Two hours of truth, no side effects other than being thirsty for a day or two. Who needed torture when Patrice had chemistry on her side?
She rolled her shoulders and turned, facing Charles, who was tied to a chair in his room.
She wasn't Patrice Duval right now. She wasn't even the Lady of the Brotherhood.
She was the Viper and she meant business.
"Did you plant this?" She held up a stem of the wretched flower. Its white flowers had started to droop, but they still looked deadly.
Charles frowned, knees trembling. He was afraid, but couldn't help but talk. "No. I'm actually insulted you'd think so, that plant looks very sickly. If I had my hands on it, it would've been plump and healthy."
Patrice sighed. Of course he'd be insulted at not growing the perfect killer plant.
"Did you know these grew on the island?"
"Of course," Charles said right away.
Patrice's heart dropped. She really didn't want to kill Charles—or anyone else. "So you know what this is."
Charles nodded. "Ugly."
Patrice pursed her lips. This was going to be more difficult than she'd hoped. She usually had to deal with the most appalling men the world had shat out and they were always in a hurry to spew more bile.
Not Charles. Either the Underworld hadn't corrupted him yet—or he'd been trained really well.
Patrice grabbed the sides of Charles' chair and loomed over him. The poor man was shaking from his muttonchops down to his polished shoes.
"Do I looked like I'm in the mood for jokes?" she asked menacingly low.
"No, you're quite frightening." Charles gulped. "But you do look in the need for some laughter. I bet Master Enzo can solve that. He loves to hear you laugh."
Patrice's heart constricted. She couldn't think about Enzo and the massive lies right now or she'd fall apart.
All those games. All that pretending he wanted to find his uncle's killer when he'd had an entire crop of this deadly plant on his own land.
It was too much of a coincidence and Patrice was done being gullible.
"You're telling me you didn't know this plant produces the same dangerous toxin that was used to lace the wedding bullets?"
Charles' eyes went wide. "No. And, with all due respect, Miss Duval, I think you're mistaken. This is some useless weed that should have been cut or torn out since it began infesting the island."
"When was this?"
"Two, maybe three years ago? It began popping up on the cliffs and slowly made its way toward the house, trying to invade my garden." Charles scoffed.
So someone had planted it a few years ago, which meant the massacre had been planned out for a long, long time.
Why? Who had the finances and the patience for something like that? If someone had really wanted Victor and Raiden dead, why not try a good old assassination attempt?
"If it was so invasive, why didn't you cut it down?" Or set it on fire.
Charles gulped. The corners of his lips shivered, as if he was fighting very hard not to open his mouth.
But Patrice's truth serum was stronger.
"Because Master Enzo wouldn't allow it."
Chapter Twenty-Two
ENZO
For the second time in his life, Enzo woke up groggy, tired, and pissed off because of his fiancée.
Only now he was tied to a chair, smack dab in the middle of the cellar. This might've been his home, but he'd come to think of this place as Patrice's territory.
Apparently, so had she.
Patrice sauntered in front of him, thunder in her eyes, a grimace pulling at her lips.
Enzo used the dregs of strength he had to look up at her. He winked.
"You should've told me you were into being tied up. We could've gotten creative," he said, tongue feeling fuzzy and weird.
He rolled his wrists against the handcuffs' cold metal. His handcuffs, which he knew inside and out.
"Sleeping with you was one of the worst mistakes of my life," she said, and it hurt him like hell.
Enzo's insides constricted.
There were only two options in this scenario. Either Patrice had been playing him for a fool from the start—had agreed to marry him on the Brotherhood's orders, and waited until he let his guard down.
Or she thought he'd been doing the same to her and was protecting herself.
Enzo didn't like either option.
Had their fight scared her so much that she'd think he'd double-cross her? Surely not.
Patrice was Brotherhood Elite, she didn't frighten easily. Something must have happened.
Or she really was on a mission to annihilate him.
She hadn't tied his legs, though, so she couldn't have been that hellbent on killing him...right?
But there was a dangerous glimmer in her eyes that unsettled him.
Gone was the fun, adventurous, blushing Patrice he'd fallen for.
The Viper had come out to bite.
God help him, he liked this menacing side of her, too.
"Where's Charles?"
"Slowly coming to and trembling in his bedroom," she said, voice clipped.
Enzo frowned. "Why did you knock him out, too?"
If she'd wanted to kill Enzo, he would have been dead by now. If she wanted to torture or kidnap him, leaving Charles as a witness didn't make any sense.
The fact that Enzo couldn't figure out what Patrice wanted disturbed him way more than being handcuffed to a chair ever could.
"I didn't know who I was up against," she said, completely devoid of emotion. It was disturbing. "But Charles had some very interesting things to say."
"I doubt that," Enzo said, even though he hadn't meant to.
Charles was loyal to the bone and he didn't have any grand things to reveal. Patrice already knew Enzo was the Phantom and any other secret he might've had didn't affect her. At all. Why would she be angry at him stealing that Picasso and replacing it with a forgery so well-made, it had fooled the greatest auction house in the world? He'd been bored one January week a few years back, that was all.
"You lied to me," Patrice said, sauntering closer.
"Yes," Enzo said, then frowned. What in the…"I don't think Oscar's a beast. I actually do like him."
He shook his head, the fog caging his mind slowly dissipating. That's why his tongue felt weird. Why he kept opening his mouth to say the stupidest shit.
"So it's true. You do have truth serum. And you put it into my wine. I'm never drinking again after this, that's for sure," he said. It wasn't like he could help it. The words tumbled out whether he liked it or not. "I thought all those people you've interrogated were left raving mad after you were done with them. Well played."
"You play with the truth, I discover it." A corner of Patrice's lips ticked up, but it had a vicious edge to it. "If it helps, I had to use more of the s
erum on you than anyone else. I wasn't taking any chances, and you're still fighting it more than most."
"Why, thank you." Enzo leaned back until his back pressed into the wooden chair, hands sliding down. "But you shouldn't have gone through all this trouble. You could've asked me anything, I would've told you the truth."
Not about secret Syndicate business, though. Maybe that's what she was after.
"Really?" She raised her eyebrows.
"Yes," he said, though he didn't need to. Fucking serum.
"Then you won't mind telling me why the toxin used on the bullets at the wedding, which almost killed Mason—your future brother-in-law, by the way—comes from a plant I've only ever seen on your island?"
Enzo froze. "You're insane."
Was she trying to pin the wedding massacre on him? Was that the end goal?
That thought slashed straight through him. The idea of her pretending to like him so she could make him the scapegoat in this godawful mess of a situation gnawed at his insides.
His mind was completely overtaken with the thought. It was too damn powerful to keep inside, no matter how hard he clenched his jaw and bit down on his tongue.
"I thought there was something good between us," he said, the words rushed and mangled.
Fuck. Feelings. They always bubbled to the surface at the worst time.
Patrice's eyes widened for a second, before they narrowed back down into slits. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"You're trying to pin those murders on me." And Enzo wasn't having it. She'd already trampled all over his heart, he wasn't destroying his name.
"Because you are responsible for them." She pointed at a scraggly stem on her desk, placed in a glass box like it was in some kind of flora jail.
"That's a goddamned weed," Enzo spit out. "If you want to get me, you'll have to be more convincing than that."
"Mr. Oscar got scratched by one of those thorny menaces and it almost took him away from me. His blood was boiling, just like Mason's. I studied the samples. It's the same fucking toxin."
Enzo looked up at Patrice. He didn't need any truth serum to know she wasn't lying.
"That's a weed," he said dangerously low, wrists straining against the handcuffs while his mind reeled out of control.
"A dangerous weed, which you forbade Charles from cutting down."
"Because I didn't want all his perfect hedges and pristine rose bushes to take over the entire place. Some parts of the island need to stay untamed."
And he was quite happy when those thorny bushes had started spreading over the cliffs. He'd figured Charles had been experimenting with some new plants and it had gotten out of hand.
He hadn't cared, but then he'd liked the look of it, so he hadn't wanted to change it.
That was the start and end of his involvement.
"You didn't want me telling anyone where this island was," Patrice accused.
"Because I didn't want to wake up with your fucking Prince's katana at my throat," Enzo spit out. "I like my privacy. You should understand, you hide yourself in that cabin of yours for months."
An ugly silence fell over them, crackling with an even grimmer understanding.
But Enzo still refused to believe the truth right in front of him.
"These things are deadly?" he asked, feeling fury slowly bubble up inside him.
Patrice nodded apprehensively. Her cold mask was slowly cracking.
"And Charles didn't plant them?"
Patrice shook her head, brows furrowing. "I thought you did. Or, well, paid for someone to do it."
"I didn't," Enzo said between gritted teeth.
"Then who did?" Patrice asked, urgency in her voice. "This thing's a carefully crafted hybrid, evolution's not to blame here."
"I don't know." Enzo's entire body tensed. He couldn't deny the truth any longer. It was too much of a coincidence that the toxin which had ravaged the Syndicate wedding had come from this island, which very, very few people knew about. "But it must've been someone I invited here."
His family. Because if Charles hadn't done it—which wasn't even an option now that Enzo knew what those thorny bushes were—then it must've been a Caputo. A very, very close one.
Enzo hadn't even allowed builders here. Only Syndicate First Family members. Who he'd trusted. Whom he had protected time and time again. For whom he would've given his own life.
A Caputo was behind the massacre. A Caputo had killed Victor. A Caputo had gone against the very Clan this family had built.
The ground shifted underneath Enzo. He felt his features darkening as a storm brewed inside.
He'd been betrayed. Someone had betrayed them all.
Patrice exhaled loudly; she sounded relieved. "You're telling the truth."
Enzo slashed a look her way. "I couldn't lie even if I wanted to."
"Oh my God," she breathed out, dashing toward him. "Shit. And I thought...and I handcuffed you—I'm so sorry. Let me untie you and—"
Before her hands reached the handcuffs, the cellar blared.
Enzo growled.
Patrice flinched. "What the hell is that?"
"That, darling, is the alarm. Someone's trying very hard to breach the island."
Enzo had deactivated all the traps, but he would've rather cut off his own arm than stop the alarm.
"Friends of yours stopping by for a glass of wine?" Enzo asked. He heard the barely leashed beast in his own voice.
Patrice held her palms up. "I swear I didn't tell anyone about his place. I wanted to get answers before I called anyone here."
If Patrice hadn't called in the deadly Brotherhood cavalry, it meant a small part of her hadn't truly believed Enzo was behind all of this. A small comfort when she'd knocked him out—again—and had tied him to a chair, but by Underworld standards, she'd been tame.
But if the Brotherhood wasn't coming to knock Enzo's door down, then they were dealing with a greater danger.
Clans, even enemy ones, had respect for one another. Runagates did not.
"Then we need to arm up," Enzo said. "The Runagates have come to collect their bounty."
Chapter Twenty-Three
PATRICE
"Shit." Shit, shitty, shit.
Of all the nights to incapacitate her fiancé, Patrice had chosen the absolute worst one.
The island was being attacked. Who knew how many Runagates they'd have to face, and she, Enzo, and Charles had to defend themselves.
But they couldn't while strapped to fucking chairs.
Alarm blaring in her ears, Patrice swooped down again to take off Enzo's handcuffs.
Before she could jam the key in the lock, Enzo rolled his wrists and jumped up to his full, impressive height.
He'd just been humoring Patrice, the bastard. He could've gotten loose anytime he damn well pleased.
The handcuffs dangled from his right index finger as he grimaced down at her. "Even if these hadn't been mine, my uncles taught me how to free myself from chains, ropes, and cuffs when I was thirteen."
Before Patrice could reply—and apologize again, because, wow, had she jumped the gun—Enzo grabbed her shoulders. He turned her around and pinned her to the nearest wall.
His palms circled her wrists, yanking her arms above her head. He leaned over her, trapping her against the wall with his body.
Patrice couldn't have gotten away even if she'd wanted to.
"You are never using any of your concoctions on me again," Enzo whispered against her lips, fury coating each word. "Is that clear?"
Patrice nodded, completely under his spell. Adrenaline rushed through her, igniting every nerve ending. His lips were only a breath away from hers.
Enzo tightened his hold on her. "Say it."
"I promise I'm never knocking you out again."
"No more truth serum, either. If we can't trust each other and keep pulling shit like this, we might as well call the whole marriage thing off now."
Patrice's heart stuttered. "I don't want
to."
"I don't want to, either. And I meant what I said in Paris—what's mine is yours, forever."
"Then no more suspecting I'll reveal your secrets. And you never pull that cable shit again. You don't decide who I get to talk to and when."
"Okay. I promise."
Patrice grinned. "Deal."
"Deal."
The words had barely come out of his mouth when Enzo claimed Patrice's lips in a fiery kiss.
The two of them were mistrustful. Dangerous. Molded by the Underworld. Clan through and through.
They'd been made for each other.
Patrice had always wanted a man who could face everything she could throw at him, and she was no wilting flower.
Enzo Caputo was that man. Her match. Her equal. They could stand by each other's side through this mad life they led and enjoy every second of it.
They kissed like there was no tomorrow.
Maybe there wasn't. The alarm blared louder.
Enzo broke the kiss with a growl. "They're getting closer to the house."
Patrice huffed in annoyance. "They picked the worst time and the worst people to piss off."
Patrice and Enzo exchanged a knowing look and a smile.
Enzo kissed her forehead before they disentangled. "Let's make them sorry for hunting us down."
Chapter Twenty-Four
PATRICE
"I know this isn't the right time, but you're insanely hot right now," Patrice said.
Seriously. Patrice couldn't stop checking Enzo out from the corner of her eye, even as she transferred the last drops of sleeping draught into her custom-made crossbow cylinder. Her prized crossbow, aka The Duchess.
This baby had a twenty-five dart dispenser and automatically imbued each dart with whatever substance she put in the cylinder. Mason had really outdone himself with it.
"You're always hot," Enzo said, not taking his eyes off the control panel which had been hidden in the wall a second ago. All he'd had to do was bang one of the tiles. It had slid to the side and pop—control panel showing the entire island, with small red dots slowly creeping toward the house.