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“And what’s to say I help you get what you want, only for you to turn on me?”
All in good time. “I’m not strong enough to rule on my own. August and Dio need each other more than we need a turf war, especially if Nero refuses to accept defeat. Things could get ugly before we push him out. To seal our agreement, I’ve brought you a gift. A good-faith gesture to show how August and Dio might work together in the future.”
“I’m listening.”
I tell him about Daphne’s father’s faked death and his current Nantucket location. “You’ll be able to collect on that high-profile debt.”
Constantine frowns again. “This is good, but one little collection is not exactly going to win me back soldiers who’ve defected to Nero.”
I suck in a breath. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to use this, that I could save it in my back pocket for the future, but it’s clear that Constantine is demanding more. His position in the Triumvirate might be precarious, but he knows now how much I want Nero out. He thinks he can get more from me for his trouble. Well, his wish might be a double-edged sword.
“I’m a holder of many secrets,” I smile, all sweetness and violence. “I know about the chemical vat. I know you can’t have children, either.”
I suck in a breath as Constantine’s head whips up. Even Noah looks to me in surprise. I hadn’t told him this.
The chemical vat – the secret Livvie revealed to me because I saved her animals. Livvie had access to all the security footage at Nero’s clubs. One day, she was bored so she decided to look back at old content from when Nero had the bright idea to manufacture sex toys. He built a manufacturing plant in a warehouse across town, and one night Julian and Constantine snuck in after hours to teach a disrespectful soldier a lesson. Constantine wanted to drown him in an open vat of chemicals, but the guy struggled and managed to pull both of them into the vat with him. They held him under until he drowned, then crawled to safety. But the exposure to the chemicals left both of them impotent.
You’d have to know about the scientific properties of certain chemicals to make the connection. But Livvie is way smarter than Nero gave her credit for. She saw Constantine’s lack of an heir, and some of the weird details around my birth, and put it all together. She’s known from the very first day I showed up on the scene that I wasn’t biologically related to Julian August.
I’m taking a big risk here. By admitting I know about the vat, I’m also admitting that I’m not Julian August’s true biological daughter. But Constantine’s known all this time, just like Livvie. He could have shut down my claim in an instant, could have insisted on me presenting DNA evidence, but doing so might mean revealing his own impotency. And he couldn’t risk that in front of Nero. That would be handing Nero the sword to stab him with.
But now we’re bound together by our secret.
“Touche, Ice Queen.” Constantine smiles sweetly, the kind of smile that would make tough men quake.
“You have no heir. You have no wife, and you’ve been able to get away with it so long because you can slice the throat of anyone who questions you. But you’re not a young man anymore. You know that Nero has already begun the Chinese whispers – ‘maybe Constantine isn’t man enough to sire a son,’ ‘Perhaps a man who doesn’t think of his legacy isn’t right for the Triumvirate.’ You know what he’s saying. You know that people don’t believe it, yet, but whisper it enough times and they’ll start to see the pattern. The way I see it, we can destroy each other with this secret and let Nero win, or we can help each other.”
“And what help do you think you can offer me?”
“I have a womb. And three lovers who are interested in putting a baby there. And if, IF I decide I want a child, as my husband, you could declare it as your own.”
Beside me, Noah shifts. I can tell he wants to say something, but he can’t risk making me look weak. We didn’t discuss this, because I was hoping I wouldn’t have to use it. There’s a reason I sent Eli into the hallway. If he heard what I planned, he’d have something to say. I can deal with him later, in private.
But Noah… I don’t expect him to react so viscerally. I dare a glance over at him. His eyes remained fixed forward, at some point over Tiberius’ shoulder. He exudes that barely-contained brutality I so love about him, but the slight twitch in the corner of his eye tells me he’s a hair’s breadth away from unleashing that brutality on me.
What’s he so wound up about? It’s the perfect solution to our problems. Yeah, none of us want things to go down this way, but it’s better than being dead in a ditch.
“Galen will fudge whatever medical records we need as evidence. He’s done it before.” I point at my own chest, doing my best to ignore Noah’s shifting demeanor. “This way we’ll both be able to hold on to our empires, to build an alliance between Dio and August that will supersede Nero Lucian’s grand schemes. I’d do the same if you have a child by a mistress, but it’ll be harder to pull off.”
“That’s a big promise you’re making, Ice Queen.” Constantine drums his fingers on his chin. “What do you want in exchange for this boon?”
“It’s pretty simple, really. Protect my family from Nero. Help me take him down for good. It’s time the Triumvirate became an alliance of two.”
Constantine’s eyes glint with interest.
“Oh,” I can’t believe I nearly forgot. “And tell me the price Senator Marlowe paid for Brentwood’s hit on the Malloys.”
Constantine taps his fingers on his arm. “A fuckton of cash.”
“Wrong. I know you wouldn’t waste a bargain with the senator on cash. You asked for a secret. And I want to know what it was.”
Constantine meets my eyes.
“I see your father in you, Claudia August,” he grins. “You were never going to be content to be one of three.”
“Not if it means making nice with Nero Lucian.”
“A woman after my own heart.” He smiles broader. “The senator told us how Malloy was funding his business. The sports supplements were just a front, which from stories splashed all over the papers today, I’m guessing you already know. His real business was performance drugs made to order – if you wanted to be bigger, stronger, faster, and you didn’t want anything to show up in a drug test, you went to Malloy. The kind of work he was doing had to be top secret – scientists, supply chain, chemical manufacturers on the take, all of them only making part of a recipe so they couldn’t steal his formulas. That kind of secrecy requires deep pockets and a fuckton of collateral. That’s why he had a business relationship with your father – Julian could get the materials Malloy needed into the country, and the drugs back out. And he offered something else Malloy couldn’t get anywhere else – collateral.”
