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His predecessor had been stabbed in an argument gone wrong at Saffron, one of the smaller casinos the Hail family owned. It’d been messy and sudden, and they’d spent weeks searching for any signs that it’d been a setup and not just a hotheaded gambler momentarily losing his cool.
He’d lost his head later, but that was neither here nor there.
Wren heard Odin coming first, tipping his chin up in his direction without turning. “I hope I didn’t interrupt something important.” It was clear by his tone that was a lie.
He pushed thoughts of Hunter from his mind and descended the metal steps. “From Corbi’s tone, this sounded important. Why the visit?”
“You’ve been holed up here for almost a month,” Wren stated, sending him a wry grin, “people are starting to take notice. It’s unlike you to stay out of the limelight for so long. If you don’t want suspicions to arise, I suggest you show yourself to the public, and soon.”
Odin settled down in the center of the couch across from him and lifted a thin brow. “You came all this way to tell me to stop being a homebody?” He glanced at Vetle. “And you?”
Vetle’s gray eyes shifted over to Wren momentarily before he cleared his throat.
Odin waved his silent concerns off. “You can speak freely in front of him.”
A ten-year partnership, but there was still unease amongst the families, at least those of older generations who remembered what it’d once been like. Before, when the Snow family had held more power than Frost, Wren Shen had been a mere soldier in the Hail family. He’d quickly risen the ranks, and when it’d come time for Bar Hail to name a new underboss, he’d shocked everyone by giving the title to the twenty-year-old Wren.
Less than a year later, Bar was killed in enemy gunfire and Wren took the position as the head of the family. Some were still suspicious about how he’d managed to achieve so much in such a short amount of time.
But not Odin.
Odin couldn’t care less about Wren’s backstory. All that mattered to him was that the man never betrayed him. He’d much rather continue on the way they were, with the two of them running the city on good terms.
“There’s been a setback at the docks,” Vetle said.
Odin’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of setback?”
“One I thought I could handle on my own,” he admitted solemnly, “however, I was mistaken. It appears the issue runs deeper than I initially believed.”
“Stop beating around the bush,” he ordered, “and get to the point.”
“It’s Southwick. He’s been skimming off the top.”
That wasn’t nearly as surprising as it should have been, and some of Odin’s worry faded. There was always going to be someone who thought they could dip their grubby hands deeper into the pot without getting caught. Nothing new there.
“So deal with it,” Odin told him, “that’s what you’re for.”
Vetle helped keep that part of the business under control so that Odin could focus on other things.
Odin Snow hadn’t become a business tycoon within five years by slumming it. There was a balance to things that had to be maintained, no matter how many of the police and government officials they paid to look the other way. Public opinion mattered, and it was with that opinion Odin had managed to rise to his current station.
Keeping himself in their good graces meant leaving the creation and distribution of Magic Mirror under Vetle’s care.
“That’s the problem, sir. He must have realized we were on to him. He tried to run, and we found him, but before he did, he messed with the formula of the drug. By the time our chemists realized, several batches had already been made.”
Odin stiffened. “Were they distributed?”
Being Brumal came with a few seedier side hustles that, whether he liked it or not, Odin was meant to maintain. He’d adjusted the rules here and there to better fit his personal tastes though, and one of those rules had been to never dole out risky product. A dead junky was a junky who couldn’t come back, after all.
Wren pulled something from the inner pocket of the leather jacket he was wearing and tossed it onto the mahogany surface of the coffee table between them. The tiny pill was still wrapped in plastic, no bigger than his thumbnail, and in the form of a ruby red apple.
“So you didn’t just come out of friendly concern.” Odin picked up the pill and held it up to the light. From sight alone, there was nothing out of the ordinary about it.
“Sorry.” Wren shrugged a single shoulder.
“Have they been tested? What’s the damage?” Odin felt the first inkling of fury whip through him and clenched his fist tightly around the pill. In the hearth across the room, the fire raged and logs crackled.
“We managed to get a hold of a few people the drug had been sold to,” Jita told him. “They’ve already signed confidentiality agreements.”
