Gerard’s eyebrows screwed together. “Pardon?”
“She came and interrupted your brooding session and raked you over the coals.” Samson’s gaze slid over to meet mine, twinkling as he shook Gerard’s hand.
After I stuffed my heart back into my chest where it belonged, I regained the ability to breathe. How he managed to survive this long without someone getting irritated and killing him was beyond me.
“Ah.” Gerard chuckled. “Sisters, am I right?”
So hilarious. Sisters were so annoying.
“Father is looking for you.” I put my hands on my hips.
“I figure he is.” Gerard cleared his throat. “Guess I’ll get this over with. I’ll tell Milton I’m changing everything about his business right after the announcement.”
That hadn’t been what I meant, but whatever.
Samson hung back as Gerard turned to leave the room. He slipped his hand into mine again, and the knot of anticipation that hung between my shoulder blades eased.
It’s not him. Samson’s voice coated my entire being like a warm blanket. Gerard didn’t buy my contract. A shaky breath left me as Samson rubbed his thumb against the back of my hand.
But if Gerard hadn’t been a party to the contract, then the only lead we had left was Blair, and she’d been missing for days.
“Goddamn it.” Gerard’s voice broke through my thoughts of murder. “I’m coming. I didn’t think Milton would send the entire party out looking for me.”
Standing in the doorway, almost filling the slender doorframe shoulder to shoulder, stood Hudson.
I hadn’t taken the time to really look at my oldest brother since my father’s plans for the Ashby Corporation had been read last weekend. I’d been too scared. Nervous. Along with Gerard and I, Hudson had also expected to inherit the company. He had been our father’s favorite for years. Everyone knew it. I’d become intimately familiar with Milton Ashby’s brand of heartbreak, and I didn’t want to see it on Hudson’s face too.
No grief lingered on his features now. Only rage.
Hudson seized a handful of Gerard’s shirt and tie, mouth twisted into a snarl. White teeth capped with porcelain and straighter than a razor’s edge were now threatening instead of decorative. Dangerous.
“You’ve ruined everything!” Hudson pulled back a fist.
Before I could cry out in protest, his fist shot forward. A bone-chilling crack echoed along the walls. Blood dumped from Gerard’s nose, splattering against the marble floor in a line of droplets and rolling over Hudson’s leather oxfords.
Hudson punched again. Gerard’s glasses clattered to the floor.
“It was mine. All of it was mine!”
Gerard shoved Hudson back. The frames of Gerard’s glasses snapped beneath his own heel.
“I didn’t want it!” Gerard wiped his bloodied nose with his jacket sleeve. “I didn’t ask for it!”
“Sure you didn’t.” Hudson lunged. Missed. “You bitched and moaned for decades just to stay around someone you wanted nothing from.”
“Hudson! Stop it!” I ran forward to stop them, but Samson wouldn’t let go of my hand. He jerked me toward his chest. What was he doing? We had to stop this! “Let go of me!”
“You’re not getting involved in that,” Samson said, breath hot beside along the shell of my ear as he crushed me close. I wanted to be angry, but I was paying him to protect me. He was doing just that.
Hudson rolled his head along his shoulders, inching closer to Gerard as the soft piano notes drifted from the speaker embedded in the ceiling. His eyes were bloodshot, and he stumbled along the wood floor as he bounced around. Was he drunk?
“It was all a fucking act,” Hudson growled and cursed under his breath. “That bitch was wrong.”
My heart dropped. Wrong? Who was wrong?
And wrong about what?
“If I can’t have what was promised to me, then no one can!” Hudson lunged again, this time snagging the lapel of Gerard’s jacket and jerking him close. He slammed his forehead into Gerard’s face, dropping him to the ground in a motionless lump on top of his broken glasses. Gerard’s lighter and cigarettes flew from his jacket pocket and slid across the wood floor. Hudson straddled him in seconds, wasting no time in beating his nose in with his fist. “I’ll burn that bitch down before I let you have it!”
“Hudson! Stop it!” My cries fell on deaf ears. I looked up to Samson and squeezed one of his hands holding me close. Please. Please stop it.
Samson let go of me and stood at Hudson’s back, gripped the collar of his jacket, and threw him back a couple feet with little effort. I didn’t see or care about Hudson after that though. My focus was only on Gerard, and I couldn’t get to him fast enough.
I knelt next to his bloody body.
He wasn’t moving.
“No.” I pulled him onto my lap. Pulse? I needed a pulse. Surely he had one. My fingers slipped along the blood covering his throat as I fervently searched for a heartbeat. Where was it?
“Tilly.” Samson’s voice almost missed me entirely despite it being the first time he ever used my name. “Pay attention.”
My hand stilled along Gerard’s jaw. Only one thing could prompt instructions like that. Another person eclipsed the doorframe, and it wasn’t someone I’d expected: Edgar Jones.
He wore a black suit and tie, hair coiffed the same overgelled way it had been for decades, yet there was something almost feral about the way he stood. His fingers twitched at his sides, eyes narrowing in on Gerard’s bloodied face.
“What’s going on here?” Edgar asked, gaze still latched onto Gerard.
Hudson recovered from being tossed and now stood on two feet again. His eyes, wide and darting between Edgar and I, finally settled on me. His chest rose with a long breath.
The corner of his mouth twisted along his jaw, and he stepped toward the door.
“Hudson?” He took two more steps as I stared and waited for him to respond. Warm blood ran from Gerard’s mouth and nose onto my dress and legs.
Movement pulled my attention away from Hudson. Edgar, mouth agape and pupils constricted to pinpoints, stumbled toward us. He stepped forward again, staggering on leather shoes and falling to the floor on his hands and knees.
“Mr. Jones?” Edgar didn’t respond. His shoulders heaved as he focused on Gerard’s bloody body. He crawled forward. Hand. Knee. Hand. Knee.
“Tilly.” Samson’s voice shook the room. A loud clack followed, gun drawn, ready to fire, and trained on Edgar’s face. “Tilly—get away from your brother.”
Only one person would make Samson pull out his gun here.
Only one person would be staring at Gerard like he’s breakfast.
Edgar closed the distance between us in a breath. One second he was a heaving mass, and the next he gripped Gerard’s face between his palms. He dragged his tongue along Gerard’s jaw, licking up the blood nestled in the hollow of his throat.
“Humans are delicious.” Edgar’s eyes, now edged in yellow, weren’t the ones of the man I’d known my whole life. “I bet you’ll be delicious too.”
That wasn’t Edgar.
It was Rolf.
The crack of a gun shattered the hold Rolf had on me. He recoiled, black ooze running down his face.
Watching a man I’d known since childhood get shot between the eyes sent a flood of disbelief coursing through my limbs. Rolf had retained Edgar’s body, but the hole in his forehead accompanied by continued movement proved it wasn’t Edgar. Rolf’s impersonating him likely meant the real Edgar Jones was long gone—and had probably been eaten.
Edgar collapsed to the ground, still breathing. Writhing. Bullets wouldn’t kill him. It just bought us a little time.
“Get out of here!” Samson leapt over Gerard’s legs toward Rolf and ripped a knife from behind his jacket.
Gerard, still an unconscious, bloody mass on the cold marble floor, made me pause. I didn’t want to leave him there for Rolf to eat! Rolf pushed himself to
his knees.
“Hudson—” The words I hoped to say died the moment I found my oldest brother grinning as Rolf shook off the shot to his forehead and leapt toward Samson.
His Ashby-brown eyes, the ones we shared, weren’t afraid. They weren’t sad or horrified or shocked. Hudson was relieved. Triumphant.
The eyes of a man who’d bought a million-dollar contract soon to be fulfilled.
He reached for the doorknob, and my stomach sank.
“Hudson,” I said as he jerked the door open. I staggered to my feet and sprinted toward him. “Hudson!”
He took a few steps back into the room—enough to reach the manual fire alarm. Hudson pulled the activation lever, and once the alarm’s shriek rattled the walls, water dumped from the overhead sprinklers, twisting down my skin in tiny rivulets.
“Hudson, stop it!” I reached forward and grabbed the back of his suit jacket. Surely this wasn’t happening. He wouldn’t really go through with this! He whipped around, eyes wide. “What are you doing? Help me get Gerard out of here!”
Hudson wrapped his hands around my biceps and leaned forward, mouth inches from my forehead. “No.”
Cold swept across my skin and sank into my veins. Hudson’s grip tightened, and before I could protest again, he pushed. The bite of the floor hitting my knees and shaking up from my palms and into my wrists had nothing on the shot of remorse wrapping my heart in a vise.
My brother truly wanted me dead.
Hudson fled from the room and slammed the door behind him, never looking back as the alarm howled. Not only did he damn us there, but he made it so no one else at the party would come help us either. First responders would be our only hope, and by then it might be too late.
Rolf had begun to change from his Edgar disguise into his true self. His skin, a deep, muddied green like moss on wet stone, twisted around his jaw as it stretched up to his ears. It hung open like a bear trap, sharp teeth lining the inside of his maw.
I threw myself into the door. The old, crystal knob shook in my hands as I turned it, and while it moved, the door didn’t open. I pushed on the door again. It budged, but barely.
Hudson blocked the door.
My face, hot with fear and rage, morphed into an entirely different thing as I beat my hands against the polished wood. “Hudson! Open this damn door!”
Water from the overhead sprinklers continued to trickle down my cheeks, and my hair stuck to my face. Hudson. Insufferable, spoiled ass!
“Move!”
Samson’s voice prompted me to bolt to the left. Rolf barreled past me and smacked into the door, shaking it open enough for me to see Hudson trying his best to bar us inside.
When Rolf tackled Samson to the ground, I decided to stop being a liability.
Rolf was similar to the last fae in that he was tall and lanky, but different in that his mouth operated like a hinge. Samson gripped Rolf’s neck, preventing the fae’s somewhat beakish mouth from snapping his head clean off.
“Get off him!” I dived onto Rolf’s back and hugged his neck, pulling him back by dropping all my weight to the floor. Rolf twisted and contorted, snapping his mouth toward the ceiling.
“Filthy humans.” Rolf arched his back and twisted out of my grip. “You’re going to be delicious.”
Pain shot up my arm and into my back before I realized what had happened,
Rolf’s mouth of slender teeth latched onto my shoulder.
Blood trickled down my chest as flesh shredded beneath the pressure, ripping skin from muscle. A scream tore from my throat, and while only seconds were spent between his jaws, it felt like an eternity as he gnawed.
Samson swung one of his fae-killing knives right into the center of Rolf’s head. His jaws popped open, and I collapsed to the floor less than a yard away from Gerard. My heart beat inside the gouges in my skin. Blood leaked down my arm.
“Frank’s spawn.” Rolf didn’t remove the knife. It stuck straight up in his scalp. “I know what you can do, cambion scum.”
Samson had another knife at the ready, hilt tucked in his fist and a wicked sliver of iron glinting in the moon beneath the skylight. Water matted his hair down to his forehead.
“Your daddy warned me about all your tricks. All your filthy tricks.” Rolf’s long, slender tongue slipped out of his mouth, and he licked at the blood on his lips. My blood. He slid on his back foot, away from Samson. My heart sank as his words wrapped around my being in a cold embrace. “He said I could eat you if I wanted, but I don’t like ash.”
Sirens outside the building ripped through the night. Rolf snarled at the window. Red-and-blue lights flickered across his skin.
“Hm.” Rolf growled at Samson. “Next time, you won’t be so fortunate.”
Rolf ran toward the back window and launched himself out of the pane and into the alley. Glass shattered with him, and the water dumping from the spouts overhead immediately soaked the shards that lingered on the floor.
The fire alarm continued to sound as we watched the now broken window. I gripped Rolf’s bite beneath my palm, and while it hurt, it had nothing on the fresh pain lingering deep in my chest.
Hudson, my oldest brother, was the one trying to have me killed. Gerard might be dead. And on top of all that, my only ally had been lying to me.
My shoulder screamed in fresh agony, but a different pain settled into my bones. Frank’s spawn. Cambion scum. While I didn’t know what a cambion was, I did know the definition of spawn.
Samson, who I’d grown to think of as a friend if nothing else, was the son of Frank, a demon, who was sending people to have me killed.
Thirty-Six
I hadn’t been inside a hospital since my mother died, but the smell of latex and hand sanitizer took me back to the familiar scene at her bedside. She had just passed on. The monitors were off and the leads removed, dangling from their respective machines to the floor. All that was left was saying good-bye.
My father hadn’t stood beside us as we stared at her cold, dead body. He’d stayed by the door as we looked her over with bated breath, hoping she’d regain a pulse and open her eyes. My brothers and I stood like that for a long while until our father made us leave. I never said anything to her. I just stared and cried.
My face likely looked something similar now as it did then. Silent stupor. Tears everywhere.
The pain splintering through my shoulder was nothing compared to the anguish tearing away at my insides.
Hudson wanted me dead. Gerard fought for his life in an operating room.
Samson had lied to me.
After Rolf’s departure, everything moved quickly. Samson had crouched down beside me, inspected my bite, and tried to get me to talk. I hadn’t responded. I’d been so unbelievably angry and hurt that words couldn’t come out of my mouth. He’d placed a hand on my cheek and tried to make me look at him, but I dropped my gaze to the floor instead.
I hadn’t seen him since. And quite honestly, I was fine with that. He’d disappeared when first responders arrived since he couldn’t have people asking him questions. It would only take a police officer entering one of his fake IDs to know Samson wasn’t who he claimed to be.
My chest ached, and I forced myself to breathe. It seemed to be a lifetime ago that we’d made our deal in the safe house, and my conditions for our deal had included honesty and transparency. I asked if he was a demon the last time we went to The Den, and he said no. We’d talked about his father and Frank more times than I cared to count, and he never mentioned they were the same person. Not once.
He’d had plenty of opportunities to be honest with me, and he hadn’t taken them.
The cold of the hospital sent a chill up my arms. Was I that bad? Was I so unbearable he couldn’t tell me the truth? I had accepted most of his supernatural weirdness without a second thought. Why couldn’t he be honest about the one thing that probably mattered most?
Code Blue in OR thirteen. Code Blue in OR thirteen.
Maybe it wasn’t either of th
ose things.
Maybe I was just a job.
Anesthesia ninety-nine…anesthesia ninety-nine…the codes continued to echo overhead. Hopefully they weren’t for Gerard, but his surgeons were trying to remove a hematoma in his brain, and there weren’t many surgeries going on at eleven at night.
“Matilda.”
I’d been buried in my thoughts so long there was no telling how long my father had been sitting beside me. The waiting room, empty except for us, chilled me to the core. Gerard might not make it off the table, and we were the only ones here? No one else could be bothered to come to his side?
“How are you holding up?”
I ground my teeth together. “How do you think?”
Milton watched me, intent. “Not well.”
“That’s an understatement.”
The tape holding the gauze over my stitches pulled at the skin on my collarbone and neck. The bite hadn’t been too deep, but it still hurt. The police and doctors both had asked what happened to my shoulder, but I never told them. I didn’t want to talk. Still didn’t. They wouldn’t believe me anyway.
“Are you sure it was Hudson?”
The question pierced my heart with the precision of a surgical scalpel.
“Positive.” I bit my lip for a moment, but only for a moment. “One of your siblings trying to kill you isn’t something you forget.”
Milton looked pointedly at my shoulder. Blood had already started to leak from the stitches and stain the bandages. “How did you get that injury?”
“An evil fairy bit me.”
“Matilda Jane.” My father’s voice hardened, but I kept my gaze on him. “This isn’t a joke.”
“Of anyone in this hospital, aside from maybe Gerard, I think I’d know what the situation is.”
My father clenched his hands into fists on top of his knees. “Do you understand how catastrophic this is? The damage that’s going to be done? Our stock is going to plummet when Hudson hits the news desks in the morning, and the new CEO is currently up to his ears in hydromorphone—”
“Shut up.” The words left my mouth before I could properly bridle them. However, the familiar tang of regret was nowhere to be found on my tongue. “Just shut up!”
The Family Cross Page 23