13
Samuel jerks out of my guys hold and smooths his hands over the lapels of his suit jacket. His dark hair is speckled with silver, and he looks years older than when I last saw him a mere few months ago.
“Times hard?” I kick my leg up, resting my ankle on my knee as I tip my whiskey back, “You look like shit.”
“Fuck you, Silver.”
I chuckle, “Touchy.”
His eyes dart around, not at my men even though it should be them he’s worried about. No he looks everywhere else, at the cameras installed all around the club, at the dancers below, the bar. He doesn’t seem to care much for the guns trained on him at all. I don’t comment, instead choosing to keep that information to myself.
He looks nervous as all hell, jumpy, paranoid and something tells me it isn’t because he’s just entered the lion’s den all by himself.
“Valentine send you?”
He nods once.
“Interesting,” I say, “couldn’t get the balls to do it himself?”
“He knows you’d put a bullet in his head quicker than he could speak, or am I wrong?”
“You’re not wrong,” the man is in hiding. Has been since the day he murdered my mother because he knows how this will end and he’s only delaying the inevitable.
Ryker squeezes his shoulder and lowers him forcefully into the sofa opposite me. He was stripped of his weapons the moment my guys got a hold of him, but he didn’t try to run which is how I know he’s here to relay a message.
Brave. Neither Valentine nor Jameson could know whether I would let him leave here alive.
I’m still debating it myself. I pull the gun from its holster and hold it in my lap, carelessly stroking my fingers over the smooth surface, caressing the trigger like one might a lover.
His eyes glance down at the weapon and then back up to me, “You don’t want to hear what he has to say?”
“Not particularly but humor me anyway.”
“He wants to set up a meeting.” Jameson swallows, “a trade.”
“A trade?” I’m not even remotely interested. There isn’t a single thing Valentine has that I could want.
“He’ll leave the city in exchange for his daughter.”
I laugh, “You honestly expect me to believe that?”
“Believe what you want, he’s just a father who wants his girl back.”
“Wren isn’t his girl,” I growl, “in fact, has she ever been? He sent her off to live with Benjamin Lawson, pretended that he wasn’t even her father.”
“That was for her own protection.”
“No, if it were for her protection then he would have sent her far, far away. To a family not even linked to this city or this life, he kept her close for one reason.”
“What reason is that?”
“He wants her in eventually, to take over from him one day.”
Samuel doesn’t answer but he grimaces which tells me he doesn’t believe that to be true. But what else could he want Wren for?
“You’re making a mistake, Silver.”
“Am I?”