by Katee Robert
She looked up. Her eyes widened the tiniest bit, the only tell she’d allow, even with him. “What happened?”
“I fucked up.”
Amarante pushed to her feet and pointed at the chair she’d just vacated. “Sit. Now.”
“Te—”
“Sit down before you fall down.” She strode behind him to the door and closed it softly. Once he stumbled to the chair and sank onto it, she crouched in front of him. “You went to the club again.”
Of course she knew where he went when he disappeared from the hub. Amarante knew everything that went down on the island. “It’s the only place I can think.”
She chose not to comment on that, which he appreciated. Instead she sat back on her heels and studied him. “Tell me.”
“She touched me.”
Understanding flared in Amarante’s dark eyes. “Ah.” She hesitated the briefest of seconds. “How badly did you hurt her?”
He should feel grateful that his sister understood. Ryu didn’t feel grateful. He felt like the biggest piece of shit in existence. Amarante hadn’t hesitated. She obviously trusted his control just as little as he did. “Bruises, I think. I snapped out of it quickly.”
“Ah,” she said again. Amarante pushed to her feet. “I’ll take care of it.”
Knowing her, that could mean a medic—or a coroner. “Te.”
She stopped by the door. “Yes?”
“It wasn’t her fault.”
“Did you ask her to touch you?”
So deadly, his sister. He took a breath and forced the shake out of his tone. Amarante rose to meet any perceived threat to their little family with a viciousness that was the main reason their legend had grown at an exponential rate in the last five years. Of course she wouldn’t see this as a sin on Ryu’s shoulders. He hurt Delilah, but she broke the rules and caused him distress in the process.
Amarante would squash her like a bug.
“It wasn’t her fault,” he repeated. “I don’t want her punished for my …” What to even call it? His fractured soul. The baggage he carried around the same way Atlas carried the world. If he asked his other sister, she’d be able to rattle off half a dozen amusing terms without pausing to think. Quippy shit had never been Ryu’s strong suit. He didn’t need pretty words to define his issues. They existed, and that was enough.
Again, something in his sister softened the tiniest bit. “You like her.”
Just like that, his feet were on steady ground again. If there was anything worse than Amarante on a warpath, it was her deciding to meddle. He pushed slowly to his feet and took a breath. “It doesn’t matter. You know that better than most. Even if we didn’t have all this shit bearing down on us, that kind of thing is off limits for me.”
“Kenzie and Luca found people.”
“It’s different for them and you know it.” When Kenzie arrived in that camp, Ryu and Amarante had already been there five years. By the time they escaped, the clock showed an entire decade. A decade of abuse and horror and the kind of damage adults didn’t bounce back from.
Ryu was five when they were stolen from their family.
He almost laughed at the thought. Stolen from their family. The lie he always believed, what they’d both believed. The narrative he’d clung to for twenty-five years no longer held water. Impossible to be stolen from your family when your father ran the organization responsible. He closed his eyes. Maybe there would come a day when that truth didn’t knife him in the gut, but it wouldn’t happen while that bastard walked this earth. “We have to kill him.”
“By all rights, we should burn our bloodline to ash and scatter it to the wind.”
He opened his eyes. “Te, the Zhao bloodline numbers in the hundreds when you take in the extended family tree.”
She shrugged. “How many of them are receiving funds drenched in the blood of children?”
“Seventy-two.” He knew because he’d tracked the money. Child’s play once they had a target to focus on. Ryu spent two weeks straight confirming that Fai Zhao was, in fact, responsible. Two weeks of digging through their father’s finances, of finding shell corporations within shell corporations, before he finally tugged on the right string and it led him to the truth. In the seven days since then, he’d dug deep to find out how far the rot spread.
The whole family was tainted by benefit. The question remained how many of them were tainted by knowledge. “We would have those funds, too, if we were still there.”
“We’re not. He made sure of that.” Cold fury rolled off Amarante in waves. “And if we had stayed, then we’d deserve to be punished, too.”
He ran his hands over his face. “We have the evidence. We know where he is. Why aren’t we moving on him?”
“He’s too well protected. I haven’t found a way in yet.” The same thing his sister had said the last dozen times he asked her. “When I do, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Te—”
“This isn’t easy for me, either.” She glanced at the door. “I haven’t … I don’t know how we’re going to play this, yet. He’s got everything locked up so tightly, it’s creating some difficult challenges.”
Something there beneath her surface, something deeper than grappling with the fact their father was the kind of monster only found in horror stories. Amarante didn’t falter, and she didn’t waffle. Not once she’d set herself on a course of action. Every plan put into place, every step they’d taken to work their way closer and closer to the truth … She never once showed the hesitation now written in her eyes.
He frowned. “What else is going on?”
“I’m not ready to talk about it.” Confirmation enough that something else was going on. She gave him a pained smile. “We’ll get through this, just like we’ve gotten through everything. Together.”
In the end, that’s all he could ask for. His blood might be tainted, but the only family that truly mattered was the four of them. Ryu just had to hold to that truth, no matter how shaky the foundation beneath his feet. He matched her pained smile. “Together.”
CHAPTER 2
Delilah didn’t miscalculate. Too many times in the past, her very life had depended on the ability to read another person and react accordingly. Her sister’s life had depended on it.
She grimaced at the bruises blossoming under the skin of her wrist. A mistake, and a costly one. She tentatively opened and closed her hand. Nothing was damaged, but she needed all her strength to accomplish the pole moves in her routine. Plus, the fantasy the stage created didn’t include bruised and damaged women. The manager told her to take a week off, and it wasn’t a suggestion. A freaking week.
All because she couldn’t keep her hands to herself.
You know why.
Her gaze tracked to the phone she wasn’t supposed to have. The Island of Ys—the Horsemen—had strict rules for their employees. In return, they paid out an absurd amount in payroll and protected their people. Not to mention the added bonus of living and working in paradise. Except these days, it didn’t feel much like paradise for Delilah.
It felt like a trap clamped around her thigh.
The phone had appeared in her room a week ago, and the memory of the first call still had her breaking out in a cold sweat. A man who delivered threats as easily as breathing, never once raising his voice. Threatening Esther if Delilah didn’t follow his exact instructions. When Delilah called his bluff … the pictures of her sister started pinging through.
Esther in class at Columbia.
Esther studying while she ate dinner at the little restaurant she loved so much.
Esther sleeping in her bed.
The last one convinced Delilah that the threats were anything but empty. He could get to her baby sister, and he could do it whenever he wanted. She had no choice but to agree to his terms.
Find out everything she could about the Horsemen who rule the Island of Ys. An impossible task.
In the two years she’d worked here, she’d personally
interacted with exactly two of them. War handled her interview and then got her set up in both work and housing. Delilah liked the blond woman, liked her brazen, flirty nature, even though the promise of violence beneath the surface left her wary of getting too close.
And the other?
Pestilence.
She gingerly touched her wrist. All the Horsemen were dangerous. It was a fact of life on the island. They might reward loyalty to a truly absurd financial degree, but when people stepped out of line, the response was quick and brutal.
Impossible to see what happened in the private room as anything but that. A punishment. She broke the rules, and he’d responded in kind. She should probably consider herself lucky. Word was that people who pissed Pestilence off woke up the next day with no bank account and no social security number. He didn’t have to kill them to make them disappear, and his way almost seemed more cruel.
Now she’d gone and pissed him off. She gave a hoarse laugh. “A mistake.” One she couldn’t afford to make.
A knock on her door had her scrambling to shove the phone beneath her mattress. She didn’t know what would happen if they found it in her room. Expulsion from the island, minimum. If they found out what the person on the other end of the line demanded Delilah do?
Worse.
So much worse.
She pushed to her feet on wobbly legs and tied her robe more firmly around her waist. Just breathe. You know how to do this. It’s just pretend, just for a little while. She took one final breath, smoothed out her frown into a neutral expression, and opened the door.
Death stood on the other side.
Rumor had it the Horsemen were siblings, but Death and Pestilence were the only ones who looked related by blood. They were both Chinese, remote, and painfully beautiful. Death wore a simple suit tonight—if a person didn’t know enough about expensive clothing to know better. It was gray and fitted her lean body perfectly. Her black hair hung in a curtain, and her make-up was, as always, on point. Subtle eyes and bold red lips.
She studied Delilah for a few moments. “Let me see.”
No point in pretending to misunderstand. Pestilence had harmed her, now Death was here to judge the situation. The fact it was Death and not War … No use thinking about that. Not if she wanted to maintain her composure.
Delilah tentatively held out her arm. “I shouldn’t have touched him.”
“He lost control.” Death took her hand and gently explored the bruise. “But you’re right—you shouldn’t have touched him. It’s against the rules, Delilah.”
The way Death said her name sounded like a threat. She swallowed hard. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Have you seen the doctor on staff?”
“No.” She fought the urge to yank her hand out of Death’s grasp. “If it had been someone else … But I didn’t want to cause problems.” She didn’t even tell her manager who had done it, though Laura wasn’t stupid. She knew that Delilah had gone into a private room with Pestilence and had come out with a bruised wrist. She also knew better than to press the issue. The Horsemen signed all their checks and all but owned their souls. Laura couldn’t treat Pestilence like she could some customer who was out of line. That was the sole reason Delilah was still getting paid for the week off. Not her tips, of course, but her hourly rate.
She still hadn’t wanted to see a doctor, hadn’t wanted news of this incident to spread. The staff on the island might not break the veil of silence with outsiders, but they gossiped among themselves to a truly ridiculous degree. Delilah couldn’t afford for the truth to get out.
Not when she had to keep her little sister safe.
Death stared at her for a long moment. “How long have you worked for us here on the island?”
“Two years.” As if the woman had no idea. The Horsemen weren’t people who left anything to chance, and that included their staff. To the best of Delilah’s knowledge, they kept track not only of the people who actually worked for them, but also their families and close friends. It wasn’t anything overt, but in her time working there, she’d heard more than a few offhand comments about debts being picked up and ultimatums being delivered. They allowed no influence but their own. No influence like the kind of threat currently leveled at Delilah’s sister.
Death knows.
It took everything she had to keep her expression even under the other woman’s stare. Death might be scarier than Delilah’s father, but Delilah had learned to lie from birth.
Finally, Death nodded slowly. “I’ll send the doctor.” She turned for the door, but paused to glance over her shoulder. “When my brother comes around to apologize, try not to cower. It will make him feel guilty.”
She cleared her throat. “I understand.” No mistaking Death’s priorities. If Pestilence was another man who’d hurt her, they would have made an example of him and then banished him from the island. Obviously, that wasn’t an option with one of the four owners.
Her legs held her just long enough for the door to click behind Death. Then her knees morphed into jelly and Delilah sank to the floor. She’d just blown her only chance to get close to the Horsemen. Death had no interest in the club, Famine only came around when there were security issues and even then he only talked to Laura and the bouncers, not the dancers. War had spent the last few weeks occupied elsewhere, and that showed no sign of changing anytime soon.
Pestilence was her only option and she’d played her hand too soon.
Damn it, but she studied people as a matter of survival. She should have known that his tension wasn’t desire. It was something significantly darker. No matter what Death thought, Pestilence wouldn’t come around to apologize. Being a Horseman meant he held a near-godlike presence, and apologizing for anything would undermine that. Not to mention how scarily blank his expression had gone, as if he barely held himself back from doing worse.
Her gaze tracked to her bed, to the phone currently tucked under the mattress. She couldn’t let Esther pay for her mistake. There had to be a way to fix this, and to do it fast. She just had to think. Maybe there was a way she could salvage this?
Another knock on her door had her heart leaping into her throat. Delilah hurried to answer, arranging her expression into one of peace. Her relief at seeing the doctor on retainer for the staff nearly had her toppling over. The only time this man came into the club was to help with small sprains and injuries the dancers suffered from time to time. He was a nice older guy with salt and pepper hair, dark brown skin, and kind eyes that always sought to put his patients at ease. He smiled. “Can I come in?”
Not one of the Horsemen at all. Just the promised medical attention. Since Death sent him, turning him away wasn’t an option. She couldn’t beg off by explaining she just suffered from a crippling case of bad impulse control. Delilah fought down her impatience and smiled. “Of course.”
Twenty minutes later, she had a brace on her wrist and strict instructions not to do anything to strain it further for the next few days. Which meant no dancing … Which meant no tips. Not that either was an option with Laura sentencing her to rest and recover for the next seven days.
Alone again, she pressed her hands to her face. Maybe the answer wasn’t on the island. Maybe leaving and flying back to New York to wade into Esther’s mess in person was the better option. Her sister didn’t make a habit of getting into big trouble—not like this—but there had been small shit that popped up from time to time as she went through high school. Little rebellions Delilah tried not to take too personally.
This was something else altogether. She couldn’t write a check to beg Esther out of this trouble. Couldn’t put on a sweet smile and charm her way through it. Couldn’t do anything but dance on this high wire. One wrong step and both she and Esther would suffer.
As if summoned by her thoughts, the mattress buzzed beneath her.
They were calling again.
She rushed to the door to throw the deadbolt and then back to the bed to dig out the phone. Sure eno
ugh, the same number as before scrolled across the screen. It was too much to hope that they were calling to say this was all a horrible joke and everything was fine with Esther.
Delilah took a breath and then another. By the time she answered, she sounded calm and unruffled. “Hello?”
The man on the other end tsked. “Delilah, Delilah, Delilah. I never pegged you for someone who’d make such a marked misstep.”
They knew. “What are you talking about?”
“We told you to get information on the Horsemen. Not to get mauled by one of them.”
Cold rushed through her, the kind of fear she’d lived with day in and day out for eighteen long years. She looked at the fresh brace on her wrist. Barely two hours had passed since Pestilence grabbed her. It happened in a private room, and she’d only seen a handful of people between then and now. And somehow these people knew already.
The facts lined up in a nice little row, leading her to the only conclusion possible. They had others on the island. People reporting in on her and the Horsemen’s movements.
She sank onto the bed. “I’m trying to do what you asked.”
“You’re fucking up.” He sounded almost sympathetic, which was so much worse than any screaming threat. “It’s really unfortunate. Your sister seems like a nice kid. It’s a shame what’s going to happen to her because you can’t hold up your end of the bargain.”
“Wait!” Delilah took a short breath and modulated her tone. “I’m doing the best I can.”
“Come on, now. You know that’s not good enough.”
“Then have someone else on the island do it!”
Silence for a beat. Two. “You’re the one we want, Delilah.” His voice deepened, becoming coaxing and almost playful. “You’re the exotic dancer who’s caught the eye of someone important. It’s like something out of a movie, a book, a fairytale. Once he gets a taste, he’ll fall hopelessly in love with you. You’ve hooked him. Don’t fuck it up in reeling him in.”
Reeling him in?
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’re talking in riddles. You said I fucked it up and now you’re saying that I’ve hooked him? Which is it?”