“He took the blame for it,” Niall retorted.
Stepping past his brother, Adair hung on to the unspoken admission his brother was too blinded by hatred to hear. Words that suggested Killoran knew. “Who is responsible, then?”
Killoran’s features screwed up in a pained mask.
“Who is the owner of the dagger?” Adair prodded, and Niall removed the blade in question from his boot, brandishing it for Killoran’s inspection. “Who—” He stared unblinking at the glittering tear-shaped stones. His heart beat to a slow halt, then picked up a frantic rhythm.
“Adair?”
Ignoring the worry in Calum’s voice, he stalked over to his brother and grabbed the dagger. He turned it over, inspecting the familiar symbol upon that hilt. His stomach dipped. The blade was a replication done in different stones of Cleopatra’s. “Whose is this?” he demanded, hoarsely, not truly wanting an answer. For it could only be someone who mattered to Cleopatra.
After she . . . was gone, I took over caring for me and my family . . .
And you’ve been taking care of them ever since.
He briefly closed his eyes. And she’d of course known as soon as she’d read the file. Her quaking fingers and ashen skin had revealed as much. “Whose is it?” he asked thickly.
Killoran gave his head a slight shake, a pleading one.
The door flew open, and a golden-haired child stumbled inside. Unmindful of the pistols turned on him, he tripped over himself in his haste to reach Killoran. “Oi did something bad,” he rasped, falling into him.
Killoran caught the boy as he collapsed against him. “Stephen—”
Stephen. Cleopatra’s youngest sibling, a brother of nine.
“Not now,” he said quietly, with more tenderness than Adair had believed him capable of.
“Y-you d-don’t understand,” the boy cried as Killoran all but dragged him to the door. “Oi set a fire at the Hell and Sin.” Cleopatra’s brother stopped in his tracks.
That admission sucked the life from the room.
Stephen yanked his arm from his brother’s. “And Cleopatra is inside.”
Silence met that pronouncement, and then the room exploded in an incoherent cacophony of noise and sound. Adair stood numb; the boy’s frantic admission plunged him into hell. With jerky movements, he rushed over and grabbed the soot-stained child by the shoulders, bringing him up on his tiptoes.
Stephen squeaked.
“Where is she?”
“An office above the mews.”
“Calum’s office,” Ryker said quietly.
Adair quickly released Cleopatra’s brother and dragged shaking fingers through his hair. Turning on his heel, he staggered away and then raced from the room.
Cleopatra.
“Adair, wait.”
He ignored Calum’s shouts and raced through the corridors, past confused guards, and out into the busy gaming hell.
A sob caught in his throat. How damned important it had all seemed. He and his brothers had carried on as though nothing mattered more in the whole bloody world than the rivalry between their club and the Devil’s Den. What had any of it mattered? He shoved past the guards at the front and spilled out into the street.
Quickly locating the street lad holding his horse, he bolted over and ripped the reins from his hands. With calls for another promised purse trailing behind, he kicked his mount into a hard gallop.
She’d known.
She’d known it was her youngest brother, and knowing her as Adair did, she’d intended to stop the boy from doing any more damage.
None of it matters, Cleopatra. None of it . . . It could all burn.
All of it could be replaced, rebuilt, and restored . . . but not her—the only person who mattered. The only woman he loved or would ever love.
Time continued in a peculiar pace where it alternated between rolling together in rapidly passing moments and dragging at a never-ending pace. With every cobblestone that brought him closer to his club, the burning sting of smoke grew, until it permeated the air, thick as death. It was the same demon that had destroyed his parents and sister and then crippled his club.
His pulse pounding loud in his ears, he urged Hercules on. The mount whinnied nervously, but the loyal creature galloped ahead.
Adair brought him to a stop three buildings away. Hercules pawed and scratched at the air before settling his feet upon the earth. Adair jumped down, dimly registering one of the builders coming forward to gather the reins.
Oh, God.
Panic clogging his brain, Adair did a circle, scanning the crowds of people lining the streets of St. Giles for just one. One bespectacled spitfire whose life had come to mean more than his own. “Cleopatra,” he shouted hoarsely, the conflagration that ravaged the entire front facade of the club muffling that plea. Good God, where is she . . . ?
Phippen rushed over. “. . . it’s spread to all floors, Mr. Thorne. The fire brigade’s been unable to . . .”
Half-mad, Adair stared at the other man’s mouth as it moved, unable to put together those words. For one endless moment, he was plunged back into the hell of his past. The scorching heat of the flames destroying his family’s bakery, consuming his parents and sister. A tortured moan spilled from his lips as he was reduced to the boy he’d been: helpless, frozen in fear and horror.
“. . . no one inside will have ever survived that . . .”
The world whirred back to the present. He gave his head a hard shake. She is in there. Adair took several lurching steps toward the burning buildings. He’d not lose her as he’d lost his family.
Two pairs of strong arms immediately dragged him back.
“Let me go, ya rotted bastards,” he thundered, wrestling against their hold.
“Ya cannot go in there,” Ryker’s graveled voice shouted into his ear.
His brothers had arrived.
“If she’s in there, she didn’t—”
Adair wrenched free and, whipping around, punched his brother in the chin; the force of that blow sent his brother’s head whipping back.
“Don’t you say it,” he rasped. “She is not dead.” He’d know it. For if she’d been killed by those flames, his heart would have died along with her. He shoved his way through the throng of builders and onlookers, past the fire brigade—
When a shout went up.
Several strangers pointed.
Adair followed the frantic gesturing to the small figure at the top of the burning hell.
“Cleopatra,” he breathed.
Flames licked at the corners of the building, slowly eating away the edges of the roof. Adair tossed his jacket off and, breaking through the crowd, raced to the bakery, as of yet untouched by the conflagration. Blood roared through his veins, fueling him. She’d not perish as his parents had. Not even God himself could take her from him.
She is alive. She is alive. It was a litany inside his mind that drove his every step, until he’d reached the top of bakery. Dragging himself out the window, the thick heat dampened his skin. He cursed, wishing for the first time in the whole of his life that he wore gloves. Swiftly dusting his palms along the sides of his pants, he pulled himself up and onto the rooftop. As soon as his feet found purchase, he went racing. Adair leapt the three feet and came down hard on the next roof. He was up again and running, his heart knocking around his rib cage and his breath coming hard and fast.
Adair skidded to a stop. “Cleopatra,” he thundered over the din of the blaze.
Searching the grounds below, she pitched forward slightly.
His heart jumped into his throat.
Cleopatra shot her arms out, steadying herself, and then searched about—ultimately finding him. At the sight of her—cheeks covered in ash, her garments singed, and her brown hair hanging haphazardly about her small shoulders—relief coursed through him.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. “Come to me.” Holding his arms open, Adair urged her on.
Cleopatra limped around
the perimeter of the building, stopping only when she was directly across from him. “The f-fire has weakened the roof,” she cried, her voice cracking and rough from the smoke.
As if the blaze sought to demonstrate her point, the far-left corner crumpled, and crimson flames jumped high to consume the remnants.
Cleopatra closed her eyes.
“Don’t you dare go weak on me now, Cleopatra Killoran,” he thundered. Her ghosts were his. He’d not allow either of them to be defeated by fire.
Her throat moved. “I can’t,” she shouted into the noise.
“You can do—”
Cleopatra angled her body, displaying her leg.
His muscles knotted. No.
The large angry-red burn at the juncture where her ankle met her foot would make any movements difficult. Christ.
A tear slid down her cheek, and that single expression of her grief and regret ravaged him worse than the fire raging below.
Cursing, Adair charged forward and jumped over the three-foot space dividing them, to Cleopatra’s protestations. He caught himself, landing on his haunches, and then straightened. Cleopatra stumbled forward and launched herself into his arms. “You foolish, foolish, man. Why would you do that?” she cried, grabbing his face between her hands. “Why?”
He gathered her soot-stained digits, raising her knuckles to his mouth one at a time. “Do you trust me?” Not awaiting an answer, he scooped her into his arms and, sucking in a fortifying breath, raced forward.
He gasped as his heels collided with the satisfying feel of purchase. The weight of her in his arms sent him pitching forward, and he came down hard on his knees. Adair swiftly rolled onto his back, so Cleopatra lay sprawled over him.
He tightened his hold on Cleopatra, absorbing the slight, reassuring feel of her against him. Alive. She is alive.
“You c-came,” she whispered, her voice ragged against his ear.
Had she truly believed he wouldn’t? That he wouldn’t scale whatever building, regardless of height, to have her in his arms?
“Adair!” The frantic shouting from below brought him to.
“Come.” He stood, sweeping her into his arms. “This is truly the last roof either of us will ever climb,” he vowed.
At his back, the roof of the Hell and Sin dissolved, swallowing the building in a fiery conflagration, and with the only dream he’d allowed himself from the earliest years of his life gone, and the only hope he had for the future in his arms, he made for the edge and the path to safety.
Chapter 22
“You were saved by one of Black’s men.”
Sprawled in her bed, with her burned leg now treated, bandaged, and propped up, Cleopatra stared at the trio of young women at her bedside.
Reggie jammed an elbow into Ophelia’s side.
“Oomph. What?” her sister groused. “We were all thinking it, and someone really should have said it . . . long before now.”
“I believe Cleopatra knows very well who saved her,” Gertrude said with her usual pragmatism. “She wasn’t unconscious, just . . .” Burned and weak from the smoke inhalation. But she’d always known who’d braved a burning building and saved her. Not one of Black’s men. Not a rival, nor a member of Black’s gang. Not even her brother, who’d come to the base of the burning Hell and Sin. Rather, Adair Thorne, who’d lost his family to fire and risked that same torturous fate—for her.
And it had been her youngest brother who’d destroyed everything Adair had loved.
Tears filled her eyes. Only it was Stephen, not the brother everyone had believed was guilty.
Ophelia patted her hand. “There is no shame in being saved by a Black. We’re just happy you are alive.”
Cleopatra blinked slowly. Is that what her sisters believed accounted for her misery? That Cleopatra’s hatred was so great that she lay here—ashamed for having been rescued by Adair?
As her sisters spoke over one another, she stared blankly back, feeling like an outsider in a foreign world. That is who I was, too. Judgmental and guided so much by hatred that she couldn’t see they were all defined not by their kin . . . but by who they were on the inside.
Adair had shown her that. That she was so very much more than Diggory.
Cleopatra turned her face away.
And my family repaid that gift by torching that which he loved most.
Removing the spare pair of spectacles she’d donned since hers had been lost, Cleopatra brushed back the tears streaking down her cheeks.
Clearing her throat, Ophelia quietly spoke. “I trust it will not leave too bad a scar.”
“Do you know me so little you believe I care about the scars?” Cleopatra cried, that hoarse shout ushering in another wave of thick silence. The puckered, blistered flesh just above her ankle was excruciating by its own right, and stung with the same vicious pain as when Diggory had branded her. And yet . . . her heart crumpled. “There are altogether different types of suffering,” she said tiredly.
“Oh, dear. You are. . . crying.”
And if she weren’t so bloody miserable and hurting inside, she’d have found amusement at the horror wrapped in Ophelia’s tone, and the scolding administered once again by Reggie.
“She is entitled to a good cry,” Reggie said softly. “She’s endured more than most these four weeks.”
They of course assumed she’d been silently suffering in Black’s residence, and her near death atop a burning building was the cause of her moroseness.
“Oi can’t do it.” The admission ripped from her still raw throat, and the three women looked at her like she’d descended into the final depth of madness. “Oi can’t marry a nob to make Broderick his connections.” Odd that it should be easier to speak about her decision than the uncertain fate of her brother. The crime of burning down a nobleman’s club would only be met with a fate of Newgate. Of course, given Stephen’s treachery against him and his family, there could never, ever be anything more with Adair . . . she still couldn’t sell herself in marriage. Not when her heart would only belong to him.
Cleopatra sucked in a shuddery breath through her teeth, grateful that they’d never been a family to pry and probe. Their silence allowed her to gather her thoughts. She lifted her gaze from the floral coverlet and met her sisters’ gazes. “Oi thought I could . . .” And then for the first time in the whole of her existence, she uttered words she never before had . . . and certainly never thought to give to her sisters. “But I can’t. I cannot marry a nob.” Not any gentleman. Not even to save her siblings.
Silence enveloped the room.
“I love him.”
Ophelia cocked her head and did a search of the room with her gaze. “Love who?” she blurted, startling a painful laugh from Cleopatra.
She buried her face in her palms. “Adair Thorne.”
“Thorne? You love one of Black’s . . . oomph.” Ophelia cursed. “Would you stop hitting me, Reggie?”
“Let your sister talk,” Reggie chided.
Biting her lower lip, Cleopatra managed a shaky nod. “I love him.” She breathed that aloud inside the Devil’s Den, in this room she’d slept in since she’d been a girl, schooled on all the reasons to hate Adair Thorne and his family. “He’s a good man. He became my friend.” Once she would have cringed at uttering that admission aloud, feeling weak for it. “We talked about everything, and he never sought to change me but solicited my opinion and teased with me and didn’t think me silly for wanting to dance—”
“You . . . want to dance?” Ophelia squawked. “You, who mocked me for enjoying Monsieur La Frange’s lessons, all of a sudden like oomph . . . by God, if you jab me one more time, Reggie—”
“And he danced with me,” Cleopatra whispered. And he’d made love to her. “And . . .” I want it all with him. I want to be his wife and partner in every way. Unable to share those intimate truths with even her sisters, she fell silent. “And it cannot be, any longer.”
“Because of Stephen,” Gertrude supplied.
/> She nodded once. Because despite all her assurances to the contrary, her family was responsible for the very crime she’d so adamantly insisted against from the very start. Reggie stuck a kerchief under her nose, and Cleopatra took it and blew her nose noisily into the fabric. “I cannot marry a lord,” she looked to her sisters. “Not even for you.”
“Is that what you believe?” Gertrude demanded, hurt lending a tremor to her voice. “That we’d ever expect you to sacrifice your happiness . . . for us?”
“Happiness,” she echoed, a tear escaping from behind her lashes. She furiously swatted at it. There can be no future with Adair in it, and as such, there could be none of the happiness her sister spoke of.
When Gertrude made to speak, Reggie held a hand up. “May I speak to Cleo, alone?”
Gertrude and Ophelia hesitated, then reluctantly made their leave.
“They’re listening at the door,” Cleopatra whispered as soon as they’d gone.
Reggie settled into the chair beside Cleopatra’s bed. “Then we’ll have to speak more quietly.” She gathered Cleopatra’s hands and gave them a firm squeeze. “Your brother, as long as I have known him, has been relentless in whatever goal he’s set.” A wistful smile hovered on the crimson-haired woman’s lips. “If he wanted noblemen as patrons inside of the most dangerous hell in London, he merely decided on a number and that happened.” A little laugh bubbled past her lips, clear and bell-like. “I often said he could convince rain to cede control of the English sun over the sky.” Her smile dipped as a melancholy darkened her blue-green gaze. “I never knew there was a man such as him.”
Frowning, Cleopatra studied the other woman’s reaction, truly listening to Reggie. My God . . . “You care for him,” she blurted.
Crimson color chased away every last freckle on Reggie’s face. “What . . . ?” she squawked, slapping a hand to her chest. “No. I . . . you don’t . . .” She stammered. “You misunderstand what I was . . . am trying to say. Your brother . . .” Reggie scrunched her mouth up.
Her brother, whom Reggie very clearly had feelings for. Mayhap Cleopatra saw it now because her own heart had been so opened.
The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers Book 1) Page 27