“I suspected.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you are getting while you look like you might put your fist through another wall.”
I step into the office and close the door behind me.“What is it?”
Aldron moves behind his desk, but he doesn’t sit.“A mark used by a blood-ring that has operated under different names for at least seventy years.They specialize in rare blood, coerced donors, illegal bindings, addiction draughts, and private auctions for creatures wealthy enough to believe morality is for the poor.”
The room narrows, and my breathing turns slow.Dangerously slow.
“Who runs it?”
“That’s the problem.”Aldron picks up the glass dish and studies the wax through it.“For the last decade, I thought they had been reduced to scattered cells.Petty predators.Opportunists.The group that took Briana shouldn’t have had resources, protection, or enough organization to acquire this seal.”
“Who runs it?”I ask again.
Aldron looks up.Something cold moves behind his eyes.
“They used to answer to Lucius.”
The name hits like a match dropped into oil.Aldron’s brother.
A vampire older, crueler, and far less interested in pretending monsters can be anything but monsters.Lucius has been a shadow over The Gin Room since before I started working here.Not always present.Not always named.But there.In Aldron’s rules.In the protections around the building.In the way old vampires lower their voices when certain debts come up.
I stare at the seal.Briana saw that mark while chained and bleeding.Lucius’s people touched my mate.The beast rises so hard my horns press beneath my skin.
Aldron’s voice sharpens.“Control yourself.”
My laugh comes out wrong.“Control?”
“Yes.That thing you are currently losing.”
“He touched her.”
“We don’t know that.”
“His people did.”
“Possibly.”
I slam my hand onto the desk, and the thick wood cracks beneath my palm.
Aldron doesn’t move, but the air in the room goes colder.
“Careful,” he says softly.
I lean over the desk.“Don’t ask me to be careful about this.”
“I am not asking.”His fangs slide down.“I am telling you.Because if you tear through Brooklyn tonight following a scent trail that may not exist, you will alert every creature involved.They’ll scatter.They’ll hide.And if Briana is still a target, your fury will put her in more danger, not less.”
The truth of it cuts through me, and I hate him for that.
I step back, chest heaving.Blood from the claw marks trails down my stomach and drips onto Aldron’s old rug.
He glances at it.“That rug survived the Civil War.”
“I don’t care.”
