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“I know what your family is capable of,” Emil said, meeting each of our eyes. “But with all due respect, you knew the risks of playing with mine. You may be your little town’s waking nightmare, because here you make the rules, but the tactics change when you’re playing with others who have their own game. You good people do not have the fortitude to do what is necessary to hang on to what you have. And it will take a lot. To win.” He thinned his eyes, zoning in on Michael. “How far are you willing to go?”
I shook my head, breaking into a chuckle.
All eyes turned to me.
“We’re not the only ones playing,” I told him. “We’re merely the faces of six families. Against one. What do you really want?”
He had hired hands. We had a dynasty in the making. Was he really here to make enemies of us? We may not take out hits on people, but we had the stomach for this.
But then his gaze turned, settling on the teenage blonde at Michael’s side.
I stopped breathing for a moment, a cool sweat covering my forehead. Victor, Kaiser, Valentin, and Hadrien followed suit, mischief in their eyes as they stared at the pretty girl with two different-colored eyes and her hair in a wild braid.
Eslem remained steady ahead, unchanging, though.
I studied her. The chestnut hair in her own intricate style of braids pulled away from her face. The fitted black coat falling all the way past her knees, and the boots rising up her calves.
She was the only one wearing gloves.
Michael’s hard voice startled me. “You better look away from my child in 3…2….”
Emil just laughed under his breath, dropping his gaze. “She could be the face of the seventh family,” he told Michael. “We like her.”
We like her.
He didn’t want half of the resort. He wanted something much more valuable. A stake for his family in ours forever.
I looked at Eslem again, still staring at the table in front of me with a gleam in her twenty-year-old eyes.
Poised. Calm. And completely aware.
My lungs emptied, the pulse in my neck throbbing.
She was the heir.
She was the one in charge. Not Emil.
“Send her to Deadlow Island tonight to celebrate with us,” Emil told Michael. “We’ll bring her back.”
Michael rose, and we quickly jumped to our feet.
He buttoned his jacket. “We celebrate Devil’s Night in Thunder Bay.”
Deadlow Island wasn’t far off the coast, its lighthouse visible from here, but it was surrounded by a jagged coastline, and couldn’t be easily reached. Especially in the storm brewi
ng.
No one had ever thought to build on it, given its inaccessibility, but somehow they had. Amongst the wild coastline and forest of the island laid a grand house that the Moreaus enjoyed seasonally when they weren’t sleeping upside down by their feet.
Emil stood up, the six members of the Moreau family straightening. “I think you’ll be surprised where the tide takes you tonight, Mr. Fane,” he said.
Then he dipped his chin in a small bow at Michael’s daughter, Valentin and Victor behind him with excitement in their eyes. “Athos,” he said, bidding farewell.
Spinning around, one by one, they all left, the heels of their shoes descending the corridor toward the entrance from where they came.
But Eslem stayed rooted in her spot, remaining in the room.
I watched her watch Athos, the younger woman not shifting an inch under the scrutiny, and giving it back as good as she got.
