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“Please, Zoe. I’m just asking you to look into it for me.”
“No. I’m sorry about your brother, but I can’t help you.” Zoe’s mask was firmly in place again. “You’re asking too much. Even if I believed my mother was involved, I wouldn’t help you. You’d just take anything I told you back to your father.”
I stared at her. “You saw that photo of Zaq and you can still ask why you should help?”
Her throat worked. But she shook her head.
I shoved my hands into my pockets, mind churning. Desperately searching for the right words, the ones that would convince her to help me.
“What if I swear that any information you give me, I’ll follow it up myself? That no one but us two will know you helped me?”
“There’s no information to find,” she said between gritted teeth. “Your father’s wrong. Go back to New York and tell him that Victorine’s not the one behind your brother’s kidnapping.”
“Okay.” I switched gears. “Say you’re right, and Victorine’s hands are clean. What about Étan? Maybe he’s doing this to suck up to your mother.” Or to seal the deal for Zoe, but I didn’t say that aloud.
“Étan doesn’t need to suck up,” Zoe said flatly. “She already treats him like a son.”
The son she’d never have, because a vampire-vampire mating produced just one spawn. Zoe was it for Victorine.
An unwelcome sympathy for Zoe twisted through me. My brothers and I might be the half-bloods, the dhampirs whose father had had to fight to have accepted as his heirs, but being Victorine’s only spawn had to be worse. Karoly Kral might be a ruthless S.O.B., but I’d always known he’d loved me.
“Suppose it was Étan?” I asked. “How would you go about finding out?”
She moved a shoulder. “He’s smart—he’d cover his tracks. The best way would be to fly to Paris and see for myself what’s up.”
“You’d do that?”
She held up a hand. “Hold it right there. That was a hypothetical answer to a hypothetical question. I amnotgoing to Paris.”
I fisted my hands in my pockets. Out of arguments, but unable to make myself leave.
I’d learned enough in the past week to believe Father might be right. Something about Zaq’s abduction smelled fishy, including the fake messages to me.
Zoe was my only way in. Victorine trusted her. No one else close to the Tremblay Prima would help me, that was for damn sure.
“Please,” I said. “We both know what your mother is capable of. She was forced to sign that treaty. My father gave your mother an ultimatum. Either she signed the treaty, or he’d keep coming after you.”
Her mouth turned down. “Sounds like Karoly.”
I set my teeth. “It goes both ways. Victorine sent assassins after me and my brothers, too—multiple times. But that’s not the point. The point is, forming an alliance with Slayers, Inc. would be the perfect way for Victorine to eliminate me and my brothers without appearing to break the treaty.”
Zoe blew out a breath. “Rafe. I can’t.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“Can’t and won’t. I’m a Tremblay, Rafe. And you’re a Kral. In the end, that’s all that matters.”
We stared at each other. She looked away first.
Disappointment hollowed out my chest. This was it, my last chance to find out something that could help Zaq. I’d have to return to New York emptyhanded.
Like hell.
I moved closer. Words hadn’t worked. I might as well try seduction. What did I have to lose?
“Are you sure?” I wrapped my hand around her nape and brushed my lips over hers.
It was manipulative as fuck. But my cock still stirred and began to harden.
