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Ileft Mila in the capable hands of Jessa, my young and scarily efficient Manhattan housekeeper, and headed back down the elevator. As I reached the parking garage, my burner phone buzzed. A string of nonsense letters and numbers preceded the message, identifying it as from my father.
Have evidence S.I. is holding Z.
Fuck. So he’d confirmed that Slayers, Inc. was involved.
I stared at the screen. Why hadn’t my father sprung Zaq? But I’d barely absorbed that when I received a second text.
Get rid of the woman.
My fingers clamped on the plastic case. Tomas had been busy.
I was about to return the phone to my pocket when a third text flashed onto the screen.
Or the deal is off.
The hell it was.A crimson-tinged fog clouded my vision. Blood hammered in my ears.
Because of my dad’s interference, I’d spent three years without Mila. Not only that, she’d almost died because I wasn’t there to protect her. It might even have been Father who’d sicced the vampires on her, although that wasn’t his style. No, he’d have killed her instead and buried the body so deep I’d never have found her.
Still, it was his fault that Mila had been hunted like a goddamn animal. And now he had the balls to order me to get rid of her?
I dropped my head back, stared at the elevator ceiling.
Disobey Father, and I could kiss goodbye any chance of ever being Primus. Obey, and I’d lose Mila.
It wasn’t even a choice. As the elevator door slid open, I jabbed out a text and hitsend.
She stays.
I shoved the phone into my pocket and strode to my car.
* * *
Tomas and a small band of some of our best men were waiting under the trees in Central Park across from the building. Like me, they were dressed for action in dark T-shirts and tactical pants. Tomas stood at their center, watching me approach through mirrored sunglasses, his customary smile playing on his lips. His sensitive skin was shaded by a black fedora. Even his hands were protected by leather gloves.
My molars ground together. At that moment, I could’ve easily staked Tomas and walked away grinning. But I needed him to get Joey out. The lieutenant was a smart, no-holds-barred fighter and the men trusted him. Hell, I did, too—at least in this. Other than my brothers, there was no one I’d rather have at my back during a fight.
With him were two vampire enforcers who, like Tomas, were old and powerful enough to resist the day sleep. He’d also called in three dhampir soldiers and a couple of human grunts who did duty as chauffeurs.
George Fagan had texted me the building plans, and I’d forwarded them to Tomas. Meanwhile, Tomas had ordered one of the grunts to pose as a deliveryman to distract the doorman. An enforcer had slipped into the building with him, concealed in the shadow dimension, and raced through the building at lightning speed.
The grunt was reporting back as I arrived. He hadn’t been past the foyer, but he confirmed that the doorman was a dhampir. “I saw his fangs.”
“How many men are on duty in the foyer?” I asked.
“All I saw was a doorman. But he does duty as security—a big dude with scary eyes. No human would mess with him.”
The vampire enforcer returned at that point. Tomas dismissed both grunts to wait with the cars, saying, “Be ready to leave on a moment’s notice.”
The men nodded and jogged off.
The enforcer was bulked-up for a vampire, with hard black eyes in a broad face and a head shaved smooth as a billiard ball. He’d had to stick to the hall and the few rooms which happened to be open. Even in the shadow dimension, we have a physical form something like thick smoke, and can’t walk through walls.
“But as far as I can tell,” he said, “the apartments on the lower level are given to thralls.”
“Their favorites,” said Tomas.
“Or maybe it’s a brothel for blood slaves,” I said.
