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A quiver ran through my nerves. This could be something big if he was being so cautious about it.
I can manage that,I typed back and considered the demands Mom had made on my time this week.Tomorrow afternoon?
His reply was instant.Perfect. Make sure you’re not followed. I’ll see you then—and fill you in on everything.
TWENTY-FOUR
Luciana
I wovethrough the throng of shoppers that filled the thoroughfare of the huge mall complex. The constant shifting of bodies and the cacophony of voices had my unsettled nerves even more on edge, but I knew the setting was for both my and Beckett’s protection.
As we blended into the mass of ordinary people that flooded the place in the late afternoon, no one was likely to notice our clandestine meeting. We wouldn’t be visible from more than a few feet away.
And it meant neither of us could ambush the other with a larger force. You’d have to be insane to stage an attack with this many witnesses around, before even getting into the logistical problems of fighting amid a gazillion human obstacles.
No doubt Beckett had made the same calculations when he’d suggested this spot. Really, he had even less reason to trust me than I did him. I’d told him outright that my mother was scheming against him, and for all he knew, she might manipulate me into turning on him too.
You didn’t survive long in our world without a healthy sense of caution.
Over the heads of the shoppers around me, I spotted the top of the marble fountain Beckett had mentioned. I made my way over to it and stopped by the tiled wall around the edge of the pool as if I were admiring the abstract sculpture. To my eyes, it looked like a gigantic flower an even more gigantic bird had chomped up and spit out.
Hey, there was no accounting for artistic taste.
The burbling of the water mingled with the voices carrying from all around me. I didn’t hear Beckett’s footsteps, only registered his lanky form and sandy hair ambling over at the edge of my vision.
He stopped a couple of feet away, gazing at the fountain like I was. Nothing about his stance indicated that he knew me or had any interest in talking to me.
“Thanks for meeting me,” he said evenly, only just loud enough to be heard over the noise of the mall.
I matched both his tone and his volume. “I’m glad you reached out. What’s up?”
“I’ll keep this brief and to the point, because the less time we’re together, the safer it is. I have reason to believe that the Deadly Rose has been trying to poach many of my top people.”
I blinked, resisting the urge to peer over at him. “Poach?”
“Get them under her thumb rather than working for me. Thankfully, my employees are loyal, and several of them tipped me off that they’d gotten sudden, huge financial opportunities offered to them… on the condition that they cut ties with me first. Which naturally made them suspicious.”
Mom hadn’t mentioned anything about this to me—but then, she’d been cagey about her exact strategies from before she’d even realized I was collecting evidence against her.
“What kind of opportunities?” I asked.
“High level jobs with extensive benefits at a bunch of different companies, supposedly independent of each other. But obviously having them all come in short succession can’t be a coincidence. I had my tech experts trace the businesses’ operations, and ultimately they all led back to a couple of shell companies. We found significant but not undeniable proof that those shells are part of your mother’s portfolio.”
I made a face. “I don’t need undeniable proof. What you said is enough—I’m sure it’s her. Shit. I’m sorry. I had no idea she was planning anything like that, or I’d have warned you.”
It was awfully similar to what she’d done to the Blood Hunter, only less fatal. Maybe there hadn’t been a good setting to off a bunch of the Storm’s key people all at once, so this had seemed like a reasonable alternative. Or maybe she figured the Storm would be a trickier opponent, and she’d been hoping his people would offer up inside intel once she had them under her sway.
Whatever the case, her ultimate motive was clear. She wanted to weaken the Devil’s Dozen members she planned to move against so that it’d be easier to crush them later on. How many others of her colleagues was she messing with?
Beckett’s lips curled in a slight smile. “You don’t have to apologize. I wouldn’t be here if I thought there was any chance you’re on board with her plans. But you’re in the best position out of anyone to do something about the overall situation.”
“Aren’t you going to take her to task when she went after your people like that?”
“Oh, I’ll create some trouble for her to show the attempt didn’t go unnoticed. But simply trying to win over someone else’s top people would be seen more like reasonable strategy to my colleagues than a violation of our codes.”
He darted the briefest of glances toward me. “You have the key pieces—and coming from one of her own, it’d be clear any accusations weren’t a gambit of our own. If you get an opportunity to take her to task, I want you to have every bit of information available to make that as easy as possible.”
I exhaled raggedly. “Right. Thank you.” It all came down to me—I was the one living with the woman, seeing her every day.
