by Katee Robert
He hadn’t come back.
She flopped over to stare at the ceiling. Surely with everything going on, she wasn’t stupid enough to get her feelings hurt because she hadn’t seen Tristan since this morning? She knew the score going in. Tristan was the enemy, no matter how gently he touched her or how reverently he spoke in her ear while coaxing her to orgasm. The enemy. Her enemy.
At four, she gave up and got out of bed. A single day left to get to Zhao, and she still didn’t know how to make it work. Poison was the best option, but he didn’t bring any food or drink into the meeting room, and despite the schedule provided at the beginning of this farce, they hadn’t spent many meals together. He was being so fucking careful, and it irritated the hell out of her.
She’d made a mistake.
Amarante stalked to the phone in the room and stared at it. For so many years, the brunt of the responsibility fell on her shoulders and she’d embraced that role entirely. If she was taking care of her siblings, at least she knew they were safe. Even as time passed and they stopped needing her. She’d been so sure that this would be her last sacrifice, the thing that would finally ensure their safety.
She’d been wrong.
With a shaking hand, she picked up the phone and dialed. No one should be up at this hour, but she knew better than to assume anything at this point. Sure enough, the line clicked over and Ryu’s low voice came through. “I’m very angry with you.”
Amarante sat heavily on the chair. “I know.” She sighed. “I won’t say I’m sorry. I did what I thought was right.”
“You made the wrong call, Te. You know it and I know it.”
Instinct demanded she argue, but instinct was what got her into this mess to begin with. The one time her instincts had failed her. Protecting only worked if she had a plan that worked—and the time to admit she didn’t had long since come and gone. “I know.”
He released a pent up breath. “Are you okay?”
“No.” That drew forth a laugh. “I haven’t been okay in a very long time.” She hadn’t been okay ever if she wanted to be perfectly honest. “Do you remember the time after we escaped? When we were in the city and had settled in while you spent all that time learning computer stuff?”
It took him several beats to catch up with the change of subject. “Yeah, of course I remember.”
“I don’t know if I ever said it, but I’m really proud of how quickly you learned. You’re the reason we have the island, and you’re the reason it works.” Her little brother was a bit of a genius where technology came into play. He’d learned faster than she could have dreamed, had hacked his way to a fortune large enough for the initial purchase of the Island of Ys. All the rebuilding and foundational work they did… All of that was because of Ryu’s skills.
“Te, the only reason we survived during those years is because of you. You kept us fed and safe. Without you, there is no us, and there sure as hell isn’t an island.”
“Back then…” Why was the truth so hard? The years should make it easier to slip free, but instead it cemented the words in her throat. She swallowed hard. “It wasn’t just me. Tristan was there. He taught me.” Without him, she would have turned to murder. It was the only skill she had coming out of Bueller. It might have taken awhile to find a guild, to prove herself, but she could have done it. Death was her trade, after all. Tristan offered her a different path, though she still wasn’t sure if it was the right one or not.
More silence. “Tristan… The same man who just threatened Delilah’s little sister in order to blackmail her into getting information on us. The same man who just tried to kidnap me a few days ago.”
Excuses bubbled up, but she refused to give them voice. There were no excuses for what Tristan had done or the choices he’d made. He knew that. She knew that. “Yes.”
“Fuck.”
“That would sum it up, yes.” She rolled her neck, but the movement did nothing to dispel her tension. “I’m going to fail. All the things I’ve put you through, all the sacrifices I’ve demanded, and I’m not going to be able to hold up my end of the bargain.”
“For fuck’s sake, Te.” A hard edge entered his voice. “I love you, I respect the hell out of what you’ve done over the years for this family, but don’t you think it’s time you pulled your head out of your ass?”
Shock made her flinch. “Excuse me?”
“You are not our mother, our guardian, or our god. You’re our sister. Yes, we’ve leaned on you in the past, but every single one of us is a fully fledged adult at this point. So put down the cross and join the rest of us in the mortal world.”
A slow burn of anger fanned through her, a welcome change after spending three days spinning out. “You put me on that pedestal. All three of you. Don’t for a second act like I chose that role. I did what I had to, and when the dust started to settle, we were on different wavelengths. That hasn’t changed in fifteen years, and I’m not the only one responsible.”
He muttered something too low for her to hear and then raised his voice. “I never said you were the only one to blame for the current dynamic.”
“It sure sounds like you are.” What was she doing? The others might have petty squabbles between them, but she never indulged in that kind of thing. She couldn’t afford to. And yet here she was. Squabbling.
“Come home, Te. I said we’d find a way to get to him and we will. It’s not too late to turn back.”
Just like that, the wall she’d spent so long perfecting around herself crumbled a bit more. “I thought it would be easier to get to him. I’ve failed. I can’t do it. The Warren is too well protected.” She cleared her throat. “Though that didn’t stop Zhao from bringing in one of the Typhon Guild to make an attempt on me.”
Ryu whistled. “That’s ballsy.”
“Yes.”
“He’s scared of you. He wouldn’t have put himself at risk, even by proxy, if he wasn’t.”
She nodded slowly. “I think so, too. Though it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t have the ability to get to him here. The Warren will also protect him on the return trip to his compound. Once he’s behind those walls, our chances drop exponentially—and they aren’t currently high to begin with.”
“Come home,” Ryu repeated. “We have nothing but time, Te.”
Tempting to believe that. She closed her eyes, the truth lingering on the back of her tongue. Once she let it loose, there would be no taking it back. “There’s another camp,” she whispered.
“What?”
“He said they set it up immediately upon Bueller’s dissolution. They simply moved operations.”
“But we looked as soon as we set up the Island. We’ve been looking.”
“I know.” Her eyes burned and she squeezed them shut tighter. Of all her failures, this new one stabbed the deepest. “He gave me coordinates. It’s several hours north of where Bueller used to be.”
Ryu cursed. And then he kept cursing, a long string of vicious words that turned her stomach for what they represented. The Horsemen’s failure. How many children had died in the last fifteen years while they were gaining power and influence? How many deaths because they weren’t good enough to find this place?
Finally, he went quiet. “Give me the coordinates.”
She thought about resisting, but he was right. They needed to know. Amarante rattled them off and waited as the line filled with the click of Ryu’s fingers on his computer keyboard. It took him three minutes and then he cursed again. “It’s there. It’s hidden, but it’s there.”
She sagged in her chair. “I wanted it to be a lie.”
“Me, too.” Ryu inhaled audibly. “This changes things.”
“It does and it doesn’t. Zhao still needs to die.” Her stomach felt like it was tied in knots. “But we can’t leave them there, even if it’s a trap. He wouldn’t have passed on this information unless he planned on using it against us.”
“Agreed.”
The slightest of hesitations. “He’s going to mak
e a play for you on the return trip. If not him then another assassin.”
“It’s probable.” She’d never felt so tired in her life and they hadn’t even begun to make a difference yet. They would. There was no other option. “If I can get to him—”
“Te, no. We need you.”
“No, you don’t.” The crux of the matter. They might feel like they needed her, but they truly didn’t. They hadn’t in a long time. It was right and proper. As Ryu had reminded her a little while ago, all her siblings were adults now and more than capable of taking care of themselves and every person who owed allegiance to the Island of Ys. Amarante wasn’t some invulnerable deity. She was human and just as fallible as she felt in that moment. “I will finish out the summit. If I can’t get to him, I will come home at the end of it. If I can…” She took a careful breath. “I love you, Ryu. Give my love to the others, too.”
“Te—”
She hung up.
Amarante stared at her shaking hand for a long moment. For so long, there had been no room for doubt. She had to press forward again and again, often dragging the others behind her. Survival was all that mattered, and doubting herself meant doubting her ability to keep them all alive and safe. So she’d eradicated it.
In this moment, doubt was the only thing she felt.
She went through the motions of getting ready, and took the time to slip her pen into the inside pocket of her jacket. Being clothed with her makeup perfectly in place didn’t make her feel grounded the way it normally did. She was adrift in so many ways right now.
This is unacceptable. Amarante closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing. A slow inhale. An even slower exhale. Again and again until her body stopped shaking and she was able to pack away her messy emotions, one by one. By the time she opened her eyes, she at least appeared more in control, even if she didn’t feel it.
A knock on her door brought her around to face it. Amarante took one step and paused. The last time someone had come unexpectedly, they’d tried to take a shot at her. Nicholai might have a stroke if someone infiltrated his precious walls a second time in as many days. The thought made her lips twist into and almost-smile and she opened the door.
The man himself stood there. Amarante stepped back, holding the door wide, and told herself that she wasn’t disappointed not to find Tristan. “What can I do for you, Nicholai?” She even sounded vaguely disinterested, which was a coup all its own considering how she spent the morning.
He took a bare step into the room and turned to face her. “There’s been a change of plans.”
“Explain.”
Gone was the guy with a sly sense of humor who poked at Tristan in her presence. This man was all business. “Zhao Fai has exited the premises. As such, you will be detained here until he reaches his destination to avoid any unpleasantness.”
“Unpleasantness.” A curious buzzing started in her ears and Amarante moved away from Nicholai. The room wasn’t large enough to put the kind of distance she needed, but she made do. “There is still one day left scheduled in this farce of a summit.”
“I can’t speak to his reasonings. I am simply here to hold up the Warren’s end of the bargain. That includes ensuring all parties’ safety traveling to and from this location.”
Zhao was… gone.
It didn’t make any sense. None of this made any sense. If he’d wanted to kill her, easy enough to contract that same assassin and send him to the Island of Ys. Their security was impressive, but she couldn’t pretend it was significantly better than the Warren’s. If he wanted to bring her back into the fold, then why attempt to murder her? For a man who spent so much of life systematically building up an empire in his part of the world, none of Zhao’s moves in the last week made sense. Even stretching back further, when he sent Tristan to take Ryu, didn’t make sense.
No, something else was going on here, something she was missing.
She turned back to Nicholai. “He broke treaty.”
“I have no proof of that.”
“I’m aware.” She waved that away. “But the fact remains; he broke treaty and I was harmed in the process.”
Nicholai raised his dark brows. “You were in a small scuffle where another party took more of the damage.”
It stood to reason that he’d be difficult. She bit back a sigh and stared him down. “Is the Warren not concerned with balancing out their scales? I wasn’t aware you’d changed the way you operate.”
His mouth went tight. “You’re not going to let this go.”
“Which is precisely why you are going to stop arguing for the sake of arguing and let me have my way.”
“You have something you want from me.”
She wasn’t precisely sure, yet. It was more of a hunch, a feeling permeating her body that nothing was what it seemed. “I would like to review the tapes of where Zhao spent this time when he wasn’t in meetings with me.”
For a moment, she thought Nicholai would continue to argue, but he finally shrugged. “Give me thirty minutes to get it set up and I’ll send Nari for you.” His green eyes hardened. “Use that time to pack. You’ll be leaving today.”
“Understood.” If something didn’t pop out at her reviewing the tapes, she didn’t know what she’d do. Honestly, she wasn’t even sure what she’d be looking for. A hunch was little more than an instinct with no factual base, but Amarante learned a long time ago to trust her instincts.
Zhao hadn’t come to the Warren for her. She was sure of it.
Now all that was left was to figure out why he’d been here in the first place.
Chapter 17
Even though he was expecting it, Tristan still breathed a small sigh of relief when Amarante burst into the bar where he sat nursing a single shot of whiskey. She spotted him immediately and veered in his direction, her dark eyes downright murderous. “Did you know?”
“You’re going to have to be more specific than that.”
She sank into the chair next to him and shot a look around the bar. There was only one other person in the room, an old white man who appeared to be snoring in the corner booth. Amarante still lowered her voice and leaned in. “I will kill you myself if you lie to me.”
She wasn’t bluffing. Amarante never bluffed about shit like this. “Like I said, you’re going to have to be more specific.”
“Zhao left.”
He turned back to his drink. “I heard.”
“You heard.” She went perfectly still. “I find it strange that he collected all his people and snuck out in the night, but somehow forgot to take you along with him.”
“He and I have decided to part ways.”
“You can’t honestly expect me to believe that.”
He wouldn’t in her place. Tristan took the rest of his whiskey as a shot and turned to give her his full attention. “I don’t give a fuck what you believe, Te.” Lie. “It’s the truth.” Mostly. “I am no longer in his employ.” Truth.
She studied him. “He wasn’t here for me.”
“Of course he was here for you. Why else would he put together this meeting in the first place if he wasn’t here for you? There are a dozen different ways to deal with the threat you pose if he didn’t want to talk to you.”
Amarante didn’t move. No, she played the part of the perfect predator, waiting for him to make the wrong move before she pounced and ripped his throat out. “He shared his meals with a different person every time. Nicholai had them watched, of course, but since they weren’t on the official schedule, they didn’t receive the level of scrutiny ours did.”
“If you really believe that, you don’t know Nicholai.”
She nodded slowly. “Which is why I convinced him to let me watch the recordings of those meals.”
So that’s where she’d been for the last few hours. He’d wondered. Nic’s policy was to keep warring parties separated, and that included their arrivals and departures. It would be hours yet before Amarante was cleared to leave the Warren. She wasn’t th
e type to hole up in her room for the duration.
Tristan leaned back. On second glance, she was so tense, she was practically vibrating. His skin prickled in warning. “What was the old bastard up to?”
“Carving alliances.” Her lips quirked but her eyes remained ice cold. “We’ve made more than a few enemies over the years. They were all here. The Russian branch of the Romanov family. The Nakamuras. Even the Prietos. I’d be impressed under different circumstances.”
Those three families spanned the globe and each brought the kind of influence that could bring entire countries to their knees. The prickling in Tristan’s skin ramped up. “That’s impossible.” Before coming here, he’d been confident in his place at Zhao’s side. The man talked to him, planned with him, brought him into important meetings. If he was staging some kind of global event, Tristan would have known about it.
Wouldn’t he?
“It happened.” She didn’t move.
He scrubbed his hands over his face. She had no reason to lie to him about this, not when it’d be easy enough to fact check it with Nic. It happened. That was a fact. He let his hands drop and pushed the mess of emotions in his chest down deep. Even knowing better, being cut out like this stung. Tristan might have chosen to leave on his own, but Zhao had obviously been planning his exodus even before they came to the Warren. The question of why barely registered. He knew why. She was sitting right here in front of him. “He knew.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“Zhao.” He huffed out a bitter laugh. “He knew I’d take one look at you and burn his shit to the ground in an effort to get you back. He planned on it.”
She gave him nothing, still watching him with that eerie stillness. “You honestly expect me to believe that Zhao planned on you choosing me over him, despite all historical evidence supporting the opposite outcome?”
“It’s what happened.” He sounded defensive and he loathed it. “You’re it for me, Te.”
“It’s infuriating how stupid you all seem to think I am.” She spoke coldly, having obviously buried Amarante as deeply as he’d buried his messy feelings. This wasn’t the girl he’d fallen for as a teenager. The woman sitting next to him was Death. She tapped her finger on the bar, a slow and steady beat. It took him several long seconds to realize she was mimicking the beat of his heart. She held his gaze. “I’m leaving the Warren shortly. If you try to follow me, I will kill you. There will be no warning shot, no disabling you, no anything. I will kill you, Tristan.”