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“Yes, sir.”
I shut the door and turned back to the wall. For a long moment, I stared down at the broken glass. Rebuilding my composure, one stony block at a time.
A shard of glass had lodged in the back of my hand. I pulled it out and scrubbed the blood off in the bathroom attached to my office.
A janitor had arrived by then. My personal assistant had left for the night, so I waited until he’d swept up the mess before locking the office and heading up to the ground floor along with my bodyguards.
Outside, I climbed into the waiting limo and told the chauffeur to take me to the Syndicate’s Brooklyn speakeasy. Usually, Rafe and I split club duty, but with him in Montreal, it had fallen to me. Karoly Kral believed facetime was the best way of ensuring your people stayed honest, and I agreed.
The club was on the river across from lower Manhattan in the trendy Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. It was packed with a mix of vampires, thralls and hip young creatives, but not a single thrall ventured within a yard of me. Word about me and Mila had clearly shot like a rocket around our small, incestuous world.
A smoky-voiced singer took the stage. As she made love to the microphone, I told my bodyguards to have a drink and wait at a nearby table. I ordered a blood-wine and leaned against the bar, eyeing the nearest vampires. How many of them were part of this?
My brothers and I had had targets painted on our backs from the day we were born. At coven gatherings, we were ridiculed, pushed around. For some unknown reason, a vampire could have only one child with another vampire. After that, if either wanted more offspring, they had to seek out a human or a dhampir.
Most vampires chose to stop at one child. But if they wanted more, they impregnated a dhampir, so that their spawn were three-quarters vampire, giving them higher status in our world.
Only outcasts mated with a human…until my father had fallen in love with Rosemarie Fortier.
Through sheer, brutal will, Karoly Kral had forced first his coven, and then the entire Syndicate to accept his sons as his heirs. But that didn’t stop the other vampires’ spawn from beating the crap out of us behind Father’s back.
My brothers and I had learned to stand up for ourselves, fast. We fought hard and dirty, using tricks we’d learned from my father and his enforcers. We even made up a few of our own. Looking back, the persecution we endured had a bright side. It made us fierce, no-holds-barred fighters, men even the vampire world treated with respect.
And it forged Zaq, Rafe and me into an unbreakable team.
My fingers tightened on the wine glass. Damn, I missed my brothers. I hated being stuck holding down the fort in New York instead of tearing Paris apart looking for Zaq. Or barring that, watching Rafe’s back in Montreal.
But I was the fucking crown prince. The Kral whose chief job was to act as stand-in for my father.
The singer met my eyes. Her lips curved in an inviting smile, her dark skin glistening under the single light, her copper-colored dress flowing over lush curves. Apparently no one had told her about Mila, but then, she was a human hire, not a thrall.
I raised my glass to her and waited until the song ended, then finished my wine and faded back into the shadows.
It was one in the morning, and I was tired of pretending to enjoy myself when I really wanted to be with Mila. I beckoned to my bodyguards and ordered them to inform my helicopter pilot I was returning to Montauk. Meanwhile, I sent Airi a quick text informing her that I was on my way back to the beach house. We took off forty-five minutes later.
The Montauk lighthouse was visible in the distance when my phone buzzed with a text from Rafe.
Dad’s right. We have a mole. Trust no one.
My stomach knotted. In the darkness of the cockpit, I stared at the glowing screen.
It’snotMila. There’s no fucking way she’s a slayer.
But I couldn’t help the ugly suspicions darkening my mind. She might not bewithSlayers, Inc.—and she definitely didn’t have the access to headquarters that the mole apparently had—but as I’d told Tomas, she could be working with the slayers.
Hell, this whole thing with Joey might even be a ruse.
The people behind Slayers, Inc. were smart—and very patient. They studied vampires obsessively, knew all sorts of tricks for inserting a slayer into the heart of a coven. The target never knew until they turned up staked.
As we swooped toward the lit-up helipad, I scowled at the dark ocean, then heaved a breath.
At least Rafe was okay. I typed a response.
Got it. How are things on your end?
A short pause.
I have the situation in hand. Will be in touch.
