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“Enough, Lieutenant.” I slapped my hands on the desk. “I’m not a kid anymore. You will treat me as the Kral crown prince, which means while my father’s away, I’m your goddamned boss—or you can get the fuck out of my office, and the building.”
A flush suffused Tomas’s square face. He straightened to his full height. “Karoly has ordered me to guide you.”
I showed my fangs. This day had been coming for a long time. At heart, Tomas was a follower, the perfect second to my father. But he was also a vampire, and like a wolf pack, vampires craved a clear hierarchy, with the baddest, most ruthless on top. If I didn’t establish dominance over Tomas now, I’d forever be the third in the Syndicate behind him and my father.
“But he left me in charge, which means you take your orders from me. Is that understood?”
The burly lieutenant dropped his eyes. “Yes,” he muttered. “My apologies, sir.”
I retook my seat. “Sit,” I said in a hard voice.
Tomas sat.
I leaned back in my leather chair, pretending a calm I didn’t feel. “Now, what do you have for me tonight?”
“I have been looking into who could have kidnapped Zaquiel. On Karoly’s orders,” he added.
I inclined my head. “And?”
“It could be any enforcer, of course. They are all dominant vampires.”
“Agreed.” Coups were a fact of life in the vampire world—within the covens themselves, and within the syndicates the various covens had formed. Again, like a wolf pack, the dominant vampires were continually jockeying for position.
“But,” he continued, “the enforcers are all handpicked by your father, with my input. We give them the piece of the pie, allow to them more freedom than the other syndicates. So, I believe that they are loyal. It’s the kapitáns that worry me. There are two or three who are perhaps…unhappy.”
The kapitáns were the coven heads. They reported directly to my father or Tomas, and paid a tithe to the Syndicate. Within their own covens, though, the kapitán was an absolute ruler.
“Who?” I demanded.
Tomas hesitated, and then reluctantly shared the names. “Desiree and Travis Johnson. And Yolanda.”
The Johnsons were a mated couple who served as joint kapitáns of the Virginia-Carolina Coven, and Yolanda (no last name) headed the Florida Coven. All three were powerful vampires who’d been turned around the same time as my father. They could easily be planning a coup, either together or singly.
“Anyone else?”
He shook his head. “The Johnsons were in America when Zaq landed in Paris,” he added, “but Yolanda was in Spain. She could’ve been directing things from there, but I don’t believe any of them would work with the slayers. However…” He moved his shoulders in a European shrug. “I could be wrong. I will be happy to look into this.”
I nodded. “All right. Let me know what you find.”
“Of course.”
I steepled my fingers beneath my chin in unconscious imitation of my father. “Have you tied his kidnapping to Slayers, Inc.?”
The elite group of hunters had long been tolerated by the vampire syndicates because they culled the worst of us, the vampires who’d gone so bad they were nothing but cold-blooded killers preying on humans. But in recent years, Slayers, Inc. had gone rogue, and the number of vampires being sent to their final grave had shot up.
Very few people knew this, but my father had been working behind the scenes to wrest Slayers, Inc., back under control. They were staking vampires for money and power now—and that couldn’t be allowed.
Tomas’s look was approving. “Your father asked this as well. I have looked into a possible connection, but I can find nothing.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re not behind this.”
“Agreed,” said Tomas. “I have run the new checks on all your people.”
“They’re clean.” I’d had them vetted by two different organizations.
“It seems so, yes. But be careful.”
“I will.” I stood up, walked the lieutenant to my office door. “Keep working any angle you can find. I’ll be going back to the beach house tonight. We can talk tomorrow night at our usual time.”
