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My Viking shrugs, his eyes dancing with mischief.
“Tell me what?” I bite out.
She makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “It’s best if I show you.”
As this bombshell before me turns around, I see her face light up like a ray of goddamn sunshine. Walking toward us from across the room—and the source of her visible swooning—is a carbon copy of Thorne.
What the actual fuck?
“Haven’t you got shit to be doing, fuckface?” The Calliano-doppelganger scowls at Ky, and holy shit, he even sounds like Thorne.
“I’m running point for Fox this evening.” Ky smirks. “Foxglove Noire, meet Hawke Calliano.”
“Twins.” The girl named Poe gives me an apologetic look.
Oh my god. My face takes all of a second to turn beetroot red, and I’m more than a little stunned.
I’m also relieved.
Though we’re not examining the reason for that right now.
“Miss Noire.” Hawke extends a hand that looks so much like Thorne’s it’s a little freaky. But as I take his palm in my own and give him a firm handshake, I notice the watch on his wrist is completely different. Then there’s the tiniest scar beside his left eye. However, at a glance or from a distance, when you’re being a jealous psychopath, they are exact replicas of each other. The likeness is more than a little eerie, to say the least.
He’s also studying me with that same brand of wary indifference that Thorne has when he looks at me. I’m guessing his motives for revenge against my father align with his brother’s. Which, by extension, means that he has no trust in me either.
“Come with me, Fox.” Poe has glued herself to my hip. “I have an idea for a way that we can teach Thorne Calliano a thing or two about learning to communicate.”
The little woman named Poe, whose full name is rather endearingly Posey, is a force to be reckoned with. She managed to efficiently dispose of Ky and has taken me through to the auction staging area out the back of the hall, going through the rear entrance to neatly avoid the entire crowd.
There’s a burlesque show going on to warm them up prior to the bidding, so we’re able to talk as she fusses over some of the final details.
“You run the club with Hawke?” I’m seated on a chair beside a makeup mirror and a row of large bulb lights, surrounded by gorgeous women who are all dressed in outfits that leave next to nothing to the imagination.
Some are only in lingerie and heels.
Others wear what might be loosely termed as dresses, but they’re made of latex and feature tight bodices and matching collars.
Poe is evidently in her element, ensuring all these gorgeous women are suitably ready for their turn onstage.
It’s odd to see someone feel so at home here when I lived under this roof for years and couldn’t wait to escape.
“We do, and our relationship includes our two other partners, Grey and Angel, who we are also with. But Hawke isn’t bi like his brother, he’s only with me—Grey and Angel are both bi, though.” She huffs a stray curl out of her face. “God, it gets so fucking complicated trying to explain the whole thing, but I know you understand.”
I warm to her quickly, even though I’m still a little turned inside out by the whole twin-reveal thing.
“And you all run the club side of operations at Noire House?” I’m watching her as she checks off her list of girls for the auction, giving them various sets of instructions verbally as she goes.
“That’s our role.” She gives me a knowing look over one shoulder. One that says she knows what I know about Thorne Calliano’s plans for the Anguis and my father’s legacy.
“And you play your part in that.” I finish for her, and she nods. We both are aware of what can and can’t be said in places like this where the walls have ears.
“Your mother was Giana?” Dark eyes turn somber as she ticks off something from a run sheet.
Lump forming in my throat, all I manage is another nod in place of a reply.
Poe twists her lips. “I never met her, I only came to Noire House for the first time a little over a year ago and she’d been gone a long time before that. Well, that’s what I’ve been told, anyway.”
She doesn’t offer apologies or condolences or any of that meaningless shit that won’t bring my mother back. Which is a relief, to say the least.
