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“Look,” I told her. “I’m not going to do anything stupid. Not when my brother’s life is on the line. No one will know I’m there. I’ll get in and get out as fast as I can.”

She growled. “Fine.” A lithe twist of her body and she stood a few feet away, looking down at where I was still crouched over the mattress. The woman was a freaking eel. “You take me with you, and I promise to wait outside the building. But I want a shower too. And food.”

I rose to my feet. “We can get something to eat in the city.”

By the time we got to lower Manhattan and ate lunch, it was after three p.m. I left Ridley at Washington Square Park and slipped into the shadows to walk the last few blocks.

The Kral headquarters were tucked beneath a brownstone in Greenwich Village. I approached the building from the small, well-kept garden at the side.

Headquarters was never empty. There’d be a couple of dhampir or human soldiers on security detail, and the cleaning crew and maintenance men would be doing their thing. But if you wanted to sneak inside—and your father had built a secret underground entrance known only to five people—him, his lieutenant, and his three sons—then mid-afternoon was hands-down the best time. Even the PAs and other administrative staff didn’t arrive until five.

I’d already rejected going directly to Father’s office. It was located three floors below the surface and behind multiple layers of security. Instead I shadowed the cleaning crew—a man and a woman—until they were on the floor above his office where Gabriel and Tomas’s offices were located.

No one else but me and Rafe knew this, but Father, Tomas and Gabriel all had a way to put their security cams on a continuous, repetitive loop so to security, it appeared their offices were empty.

The man went into Gabriel’s office and the woman into Tomas’s. I followed the woman.

Tomas’s office was like an upscale version of a 1940s private eye’s office. Plain mahogany furniture and no computer because he didn’t trust modern tech other than cell phones. He kept his notes in old-fashioned manila folders and stored them in metal filing cabinets.

Father shook his head over it, but Tomas was the Kral Syndicate’s muscle, not the brains. Not that he wasn’t smart, but he was smart like a grizzly bear, preferring brute force over diplomacy. He and my father made a perfect team, their strengths complementing each other.

If anyone knew what had really happened between Gabriel and Andre Redbone, it would be Tomas.

I pressed myself against a wall and waited until the cleaning lady finished and left, locking the door behind her. Then I dropped out of the shadows and hit the button under Tomas’s desk to activate the security cam loop. It was set to erase the last ten seconds so my presence wouldn’t be detected.

At first I couldn’t find any reference to me or my brothers until I realized he referred to us each by code. The code was simple enough. He’d named us One, Two and Three in the order of our birth. The tricky part was he used the Slovak words, not English. Fortunately, I’d picked up enough Slovak from him and my father to figure that out.

After that, locating our three files was easy—and yes, Tomas kept files on all three of us.

No surprise there.

I wasn’t even that surprised at the undercurrent of disdain in his notes on us. Most vampires looked down on half-human dhampirs like me and my brothers.

Unfortunately, most of his notes were written in Slovak except for the occasional memo or clipping in English, and my knowledge of Slovak didn’t extend that far.

I focused on his recent notes about Gabriel. I sorted through them, reading what I could.

I found references to Camila Vittore, including photos of her from the years after she’d left Gabriel. So Tomas had been keeping an eye on her. I wondered if my brother knew that.

I found copies of memos that Gabriel had sent Father, reporting on work he’d done for the syndicate, and suggestions for future business. At times Gabriel’s impatience bled through. He wanted more responsibility, and my father was reluctant to give it to him, even though as crown prince, Gabriel was next in line to take over the syndicate.

I kept looking. Yeah, it was interesting that Tomas had copies of Gabriel’s private correspondence with Father, but I needed more.

I pulled out a handwritten note about Andre Redbone. It was in Slovak, but I could make out a few words, enough to tell me it was a record of Redbone’s passing, and that yes, it had been Gabriel who’d sent him to his final grave.

I turned it over and stared at the scribbled English words on the other side. They were in pencil, like Tomas had been working out what he wanted to say in English before writing a more formal note.

He hadn’t bothered with his code. Instead, he used our initials—G, Z & R.

G, Z & R plotting against you? Feeding intel to SI. All or just G?

My fingers tightened on the piece of paper. I wanted to shred the damn thing, but I forced myself to release it before I crumpled it.

Did Tomas actually believe we were plotting against our own father, or was he simply noting something he’d heard?

And had he passed it on to my father?

I snorted. Of course he had. No way Tomas would’ve kept quiet about something like that.

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