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I leaned forward to right the photo. For a moment, we all looked at it.
My father stared coolly at the camera as if he’d rather be anywhere else, but he had my pretty, dark-haired mom snugged up close to his side, while she, in turn, had an arm draped over my shoulders. Eleven-year-old Rafe had wormed his way between me and Mom and was flashing his trademark cocky grin, his neck smothered in cheap plastic beads. On my other side was Zaq, an easy smile on his face, his T-shirt sporting powdered sugar from too many beignets, his brown hair streaked from the sun and looking like it hadn’t seen a comb in days.
Fury clamped hot fingers around my throat. Zaq was the good one, the kind-hearted man everyone loved. Hell, he’d given away most of his trust fund to poverty-stricken humans, saying, “They need it more than me.”
He was the one who least deserved to be a pawn between my father and the vampires who wanted to take him down.
I met Father’s eyes. “I’ll leave for Paris tonight.”
“No.” He leaned back in his chair. “You will conduct business as usual. The other syndicates would love to know someone found a hole in my security, and even some of our own people might try to take advantage of it. No one but you and a few of our top men can know Zaquiel’s gone missing.No one.”
I slapped my hands onto the desk’s polished mahogany surface. “With all due respect, I’m not going to sit on my ass here in the States while Zaq is pinned like an insect to a goddamned wall.”
“I’ll go,” inserted Rafe.
“No,” my father and I barked at the same time. Rafe scowled but subsided.
I opened my mouth to argue further but Father held up a hand. “Hear me out.”
I straightened. “Go ahead.”
“They’ll expect me to send you or Rafe to France. They may even be counting on it, which is why you’re staying here. You’ll go out, be seen, handle any routine business. Tomas will be staying in New York to advise you. Here.” He handed me a burner phone. “I’ll contact you on this—it’s secure. But don’t try to contact me. I intend to go completely dark.” His face hardened. “I believe someone here at headquarters is behind this, either working on their own or with another coven.”
“A mole?” Rafe breathed.
“Yes.”
I stared down at the phone, trying to absorb that not only was Zaq a prisoner, my father suspected someone close to us was behind it. “You’re going to Paris?”
Father nodded. “It’s a start. Perhaps I can find something our people in France missed.”
“I see.” My mouth twisted. I knew why Father was going, and not me or Rafe. We were dhampirs. In his eyes, we’d never be strong enough.
My brother stirred. “Take me to Paris. I’m one of the Syndicate’s best trackers.”
Father shook his head. “That’s why I’m sending you to Montreal. I can’t be sure the Tremblay Syndicate isn’t a part of this. Victorine Tremblay would love to take out my sons.”
My fingers constricted on the burner phone. “The blood feud.”Of course.
The blood feud between the Kral and the Tremblay Covens dated back two centuries, although in the past decade, a fragile peace had held.
My father nodded grimly, but Rafe went still as a hunted animal.
“Zoe Tremblay,” he said flatly.
Two summers ago, something had happened between the two of them. Something Rafe refused to talk about, even to me and Zaq.
“Did you think I didn’t know about you two?” Father asked.
My brother lifted a shoulder, let it drop.
“She’s her mother’s second-in-command,” Father continued. “Use her.”
“Bad idea,” Rafe returned. “Victorine Tremblay told me personally that if I ever touch Zoe again—if I even breathe the same goddamn air as her daughter—she’ll consider it a deliberate act of war against the Tremblays and will respond accordingly.”
“So you did touch the daughter,” Father said.
“That’s not the point,” Rafe gritted.
