by Maria Luis
There’s no stemming the tears that bleed to the surface, not when Isla stops in front of me, less than an arm’s length away, and murmurs, “You’ll fight for him.”
I don’t need to ask who she means.
Always, always Damien.
Monster.
Villain.
The man who is more a hero than anyone I’ve ever met.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Would you die for him?”
I’m no longer the girl who once went wherever her father pointed, not even the spy who spent a night at Buckingham Palace in the hopes of saving a queen. In her place is a woman who has been to hell and back, whose beauty is scarred by fire but driven forward by courage.
Slowly, I allow my gaze to meet Isla’s. “My heart died the second that he fell, and I don’t think it will beat again until he stands at my side.”
She cocks her head. “You love him.”
Throat as dry as sandpaper, my hands tremble as I press them to my stomach.
Love, the king told Damien, is carnage. It must be true. I descended the metal steps to the Bascule Chambers with hope brimming in my heart and an unfamiliar lightness in my soul, only to emerge from the wreckage shattered and bruised.
Each minute that Damien succumbs to the inevitable threatens the very fiber of my being. Each moment where I don’t hear his silken voice promises to leave me permanently gutted. I ache in a way that I never have and burn so hot that not even the flames of a fire could compare.
He breathes and I mourn for him.
He lives and I don’t know whether to grieve or go full steam ahead, my heart raw and my soul screaming, to save him from the abyss.
We are tethered, Damien and I, bound, for better or worse.
And if I don’t . . . if I can’t pull this off . . .
“I love him too much,” I tell Isla on a broken whisper.
“That’s really not possible.”
“It is,” I allow, “if I can’t save him.”
Isla’s gaze falls to my trouser leg, as if she knows exactly what I’ve slipped under the hem. “You have a plan, don’t you?”
A risky one.
The sort of high-risk move that I haven’t indulged in for years, ever since I—unbeknownst to me—hired Damien to build me a forum to sell the secrets of England’s politicians to anyone with the steepest bank account. And there’s only one man I can think of who would possibly know the manufacturer of the poison that Hugh used on Damien tonight.
Or be the manufacturer, at any rate.
“There’s someone . . .” Pressing my lips together, I battle with how to reveal. Isla and I may have found common ground with our connection to the Priest brothers, but we aren’t exactly friends. In the end, I admit, painfully, “There was an MP, many years ago, that my father sought to woo to his corner. I was the . . . wooer.”
Isla’s brows lower. “And he dabbles in poisons?”
“He inherited the largest pharmaceutical company in all of England when his father died. On the side, he often . . . dabbled.” More like he had a bizarre fascination with toxic animals from all around the world. An entire wing of his London mansion was once dedicated to storing everything from frogs to snakes. “He may know of the antidote.”
“Or have one.”
I nod.
Isla folds her arms over his chest. “I’ll go with you.”
“Not necessary.”
“It is, and I will.”
“Why?” I demand. “You owe me nothing and I don’t—”
“It’s honestly easier to accept that this is happening than to fight me on it. Don’t worry, I’m particularly handy when it comes to combat, and, lucky for you, I have only one stipulation.”
Warily, I ask, “Which is?”
“Saxon comes with us.”
45
Rowena
Saxon Priest is a grenade without a safety pin.
As he throws his car into park on King Street, I keep my mouth shut lest he actually explode. His movements are rigid, his raspy voice tapped with a rage that would sound more at home coming from Damien. If it weren’t for Isla sitting in the passenger seat, there’s a pretty good chance that he would have whipped the car right back around to murder his older brother.
Nearly eight months since Father had Damien poisoned, and Saxon was never told.
Afternoon sun slants through the windscreen, highlighting the furious lines of his scarred profile. With one hand on the steering wheel and the other nestled firmly over Isla’s thigh, I watch as he draws a deep breath into his lungs. On the exhale, he asks me, “Do you have enough?”
The heavy backpack in my lap could knock out an unsuspecting soul. “If he won’t hand over the antidote for one-hundred-K, then we go for Plan B.”
“Which is?”
“Revealing to the public what Mr. Keely does in his spare time. I’m sure his constituents would be only too happy to learn about their elected MP’s extracurricular activities.”
“Diabolical,” Isla murmurs, her blue eyes shifting to meet mine in the mirror, “I like it.”
“Somehow,” I mutter, “that doesn’t surprise me.”
With the backpack cradled to my chest, I push open the car door and step out into the heart of St. James’s. Before the Westminster Riots, this neighborhood would have been jam-packed with visitors peering into all the posh art galleries. Today, it’s empty. Bay windows are boarded up and the doors latched shut. The once pristine pavement is now home to abandoned rubbish that I kick to the side.
While I feel for the shops, which have long since closed, a twisted, vengeful corner of my soul takes solace in the fact that Quentin Keely can no longer lord it over everyone he meets that his corner of London remains untouched by civil unrest.
It’s been twelve years since I saw him last—since I found myself in his brick mansion on Ryder Street—but my feet carry me there as if it’s been only days.
You are not that girl anymore, Rowan.
Although Saxon doesn’t ask me how I’ve come to know about Keely’s hobbies, the concerned glance he sends me tells me that Isla filled him in. Her shoulder brushes mine now as though she senses the wild tangle of emotion beneath my skin. Under her breath, she says, “Just say the word and we’ll take it from here.”
“You won’t even get inside.”
Her lips tug upward. “You don’t know me very well, but I have feeling that you will.”
And, with that, she pulls back to walk beside Saxon.
Clutching the backpack tight, I slow before the bold red door of 3 Ryder Street. Quentin Keely’s two-story mansion is by far the most elaborate on the block. Arched windows sit against a backdrop of stately brick. One upward glance reveals a stone balcony that spans the width of the first floor while the second boasts a series of matching Juliet-style balconies. The property screams wealth and prestige. For me, it’s a step in the past toward a never-forgotten feeling of self-loathing that’s haunted me for years.
For Damien, I rap the iron knocker.
For Damien, I slip a smile onto my face and wait for Keely’s butler to answer.
Sure enough, when the red door swings open thirty seconds later, the face peering back at me is one that I distantly recognize. The butler’s rheumy blue eyes shift from me to Isla and Saxon. “I believe you have the wrong address,” he huffs, already retreating to shut the door.
I slam a palm against the red-painted wood. “I wouldn’t do that.”
Unease skits across his weathered features. “If you persist in loitering on the doorstep, I’ll be ringing the police, and I’ll warn you that Mr. Keely is a personal friend of the commissioner.”
The man now dead and buried beneath Tower Bridge.
Lovely.
Splaying my fingers wide against the wood, I tilt my head back and meet those watery blue eyes. “Mr. Keely wouldn’t appreciate you turning away a client.”
“Mr. Keely is not home.”
Just as the door comes sw
inging closed for a second time, I blurt, “The yellow daffodils are a nice touch,” and it stalls, just like my heart.
The butler’s balding head finds the narrow gap between the door and its frame. “What did you say?”
My strained rib sings as I point to the matching window boxes on the ground level. Both hold only yellow daffodils—a sign, to those who know what to look for, that Quentin Kelly is open for business. Some things never change.
Pressing my shoulder to the door, I angle my body so that there’s no chance of being shut out. “I can only imagine what Mr. Keely will think when he learns you’ve taken a good deal of green out of his pocket.”
The butler lets his narrowed gaze drift to Saxon and Isla again. “What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t give one, but I think Mr. Keely would call me an old . . . friend.”
His gnarled fingers tighten on the door, as if he’s internally debating the repercussions of letting us inside, and then he steps back.
The entry hall hasn’t changed in twelve years.
Busts of Zeus and Hera face each other from opposite sides of the room. Plum-colored wallpaper spans from floor to ceiling. Beneath our feet, the glossy marble floor features a circular mosaic with Helios riding his chariot through a wash of turquoise skies—a priceless antique from Greece that Keely once bragged about commandeering from a museum that had gone bankrupt years ago. The MP has a habit of taking what doesn’t belong to him. Women, included.
I step over the Greek god.
As the butler leads us deeper into the Victorian mansion, I’m careful to keep my attention trained forward and not on Saxon or Isla behind me. We pass the wide entry to a parlor with mint-green walls and a WC that reeks of perfumed soap, only to be deposited in a sitting room with glossy dark furniture and three sash windows along the far wall that allow for an abundance of light.
The butler remains by the door, one hand perched on the knob. “Mr. Keely will be down momentarily.”
As soon as he’s out of sight, Saxon cuts over to me. His green eyes scan the room while his head lowers to mine. “Let him come in with an offer or he’ll drive up the price just to push you.”
I set the backpack down beside an armchair. “Since I didn’t come alone, it’ll go high no matter what. He won’t like it that I’ve brought the two of you.”
“Then we take it as it comes. Damien would never—” Fisting the back of the chair, Saxon ducks his head and growls, “He won’t forgive me if I let something happen to you.”
Heart lurching, my eyes snap up to meet unearthly green. “Saxon, we have to—”
“Miss Carrigan and . . . company—to what do I owe the pleasure?”
All it takes is the sound of Keely’s voice to hurl me back to my early twenties.
Rough, sweaty hands. Fragile skin pinched between greedy fingers. Bruised thighs. Numb, so damned numb—mind, body, and soul—that even now, all these years later, perspiration dampens my palms at the sickening memory.
I’ve stood in this house before, been ruined here before, and all I want to do is run.
It’s for Damien that I sidestep Saxon’s large frame to catch my first glimpse of Quentin Keely in over a decade. He looks the same, albeit older. Heavier. Wrinkles crease his forehead and jowls soften a once hard jawline. A lifetime of dipping his fingers into his own medicinal buffet has chipped away at smooth skin to reveal pink, splotchy patches. Unsurprisingly, he has the gall to give me a thorough onceover with a condescending lift of his brows. “You’ve gone for a new . . . look.”
I smile, thinly. “And you haven’t changed a bit.”
He’s still the same greasy bastard that I once scrubbed from my skin, and he preens now like I’ve given him high praise.
Then his gaze skates right past me and Saxon to land on Isla.
Like the yellow daffodils planted in his window boxes, it seems not much else has changed. Quentin Keely lives in a bubble that no one has ever dared to pop, completely ignoring the infamous anti-loyalist standing in his home in favor of checking out a pretty woman. His lips turn up at the corners, revealing teeth stained from countless cigars, and he pushes his hips forward to saunter toward her—only to be cut off by a quick-moving Saxon, who angles his big body neatly in front of Isla’s. His expression promises murder and, sensing immediate danger, Keely snaps back around like a naughty dog caught pissing on a rug.
Without invitation, I sit in the armchair and cross my right leg over my left. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”
“We missed you . . .” His hands land on the back of the closest chair. “For a little while, at least.”
The implication is clear: he and his mates enjoyed the use of my body before moving on to newer, fresher meat.
Bile rises swiftly in my throat and I struggle to battle it down, to smash it to smithereens and hold my head up high.
I am not Young Rowena.
And even if I was—even if I am—I’m not at fault for the misdeeds of men. They dehumanized me, stripped me of my womanhood until I wanted only to crawl out of my skin—but they do not own me. They don’t even own a piece of me. Keely’s power comes only from what I allow him to take, and the days of breaking off fragments of my soul at Father’s demand are long over.
You are strong.
Clinging to the memory of Damien’s velvet baritone, my nails bite into the armrests. “It occurred to me,” I murmur, keeping my voice deliberately light, “that when I last visited, I noticed the most fascinating collection of yours.”
Predictably, Keely puffs his chest out.
Just as predictably, he darts another glance toward Isla. “I do own the largest assortment of Hellenic-era busts—outside of the British Museum, naturally.”
I sink back into the armchair. “Naturally.”
“Did you come here for a little look-see?” Face reddening, he sinks one finger into the starched collar of his shirt. “It’s not up for public viewing but for a friend I might consider—”
“I think we both know that I’m not talking about some Greek bust.”
“And I’m not sure that I know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?” Carefully, I hook my foot around the backpack to drag it before me like bait. “Because I remember stumbling from your room, a long time ago, and when I couldn’t find my way back, I distinctly recall discovering an entire wing dedicated to . . . toxins.”
“Miss Carrigan—”
“Back around the time you weren’t missing me, I couldn’t stop thinking about you.” My lips curve in a smile that tastes of gritty satisfaction. “Only, it wasn’t your prick I was missing, Mr. Keely. Instead, I spent a ridiculous amount of time wondering if the authorities knew about your collection. Considering the padlock on the door, I’m guessing your pets have always been a dirty, little secret.”
His shoulders heave with a sharp inhalation. “Are you . . . are you blackmailing me?”
“Not at all.”
“Then what—”
“You have something that I want.”
“I’ll repeat this again for you,” he clips out, “in case you didn’t hear me the first time around: are you blackmailing—”
“Rowena, move!”
There’s no time to obey Saxon’s order.
No time to duck or weave out of the way when the cold muzzle of a pistol is already pressed to the back of my head. Like prey found lurking in the woods, a jolt of awareness ripples down my spine.
Slowly, I lift my gaze to Saxon.
His handgun is raised, his expression set like stone. A façade that reveals absolutely nothing, not recognition, not even the smallest dose of fear. Meanwhile dread is a poison that crawls through my veins, swift and debilitating. A hard breath escapes me as I make brief eye contact with Isla.
This cannot be the end.
The heels of my palms grind against the armrests as I bow my head. “It’s a wonder you have any repeat customers,” I say to Keely, gritting my teeth
against a surge of hate, “when you threaten them with death at every corner.”
Only, it’s not the MP who answers.
The pistol’s muzzle follows me forward, the air fairly crackling with tension, and then a figure drops down on my right side. I feel warmth on my neck, and inhale the scent of sandalwood and evergreen, but see nothing aside from the dark streaks of shadow that hug my peripheral.
“Tell them, Keely.”
Dark. Sinister. The voice of the devil himself.
The gravel-pitched baritone punches through the brightly lit room like a death knell, and I snap my gaze to Quentin. “Tell us what?”
That one finger returns to his collar to pull the fabric away from his neck. “Don’t shoot.”
Except that the shakily issued command isn’t directed at the man behind me but to Saxon, who growls, “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t blow his fucking brains out.”
“Because—”
“Louder, Keely.”
“Because,” the MP hastily repeats, raising his voice to acquiesce the order, “I don’t . . . I don’t—” His eyes squeeze shut, and he creeps backward, hands leaving the chair to pass over his thinning hair. “Fuck.”
The pistol moves.
Its muzzle rounds my skull and skims the shell of my ear; it teases my cheekbone and dances south to find the line of my jaw. Then it cuts under to the hollowed notch beneath my chin, and terror becomes a sparked flint within my soul as the hand gripping the gun forces me to turn my head.
Sooty lashes frame eyes so black, so bottomless, that there’s no telling where the pupil ends and the iris begins. I feel a chill like I’ve stepped into the North Sea in the coldest grips of winter, but his gaze is no match for the timbre of his voice, which rakes ice-taloned claws down the length of my spine:
“Everything that he is, everything that he’s ever been, belongs to me, Miss Carrigan—and if you’re not careful, so will you.”