THIRTEEN
Darius
I wasthe heir to the Hell Kickers and the Rosano family legacy. Second in command to Dad, giving direct orders to dozens of underlings… I shouldn’t have been blindsided byanythingthat crossed my path. It was my job to be prepared for any possible shit that anyone could throw at me.
But I hadn’t been prepared for Anthea Noble after all. Not raging at me with so much pain shimmering in her storm-gray eyes that it’d burned a hole in my gut.
What the hell had she even been talking about at the end there? She’d talked as ifwe’dwronged her in some way—not with how we’d treated her recently but the last time she was here, when we were kids. How did that make any sense?
And what she’d said about her husband… The memory of her taut voice made my hands close into fists. I believed what she’d said about his abuse. I believed it enough that in spite of all the reasons I had to be angry with her, I wanted to drag him out of his grave to kill him all over again.
DidI have reasons to be angry with her? Other than for chomping on my fucking dick, which I couldn’t help thinking still required some groveling. This whole situation felt as if it’d turned on its head, and I no longer knew which direction was up.
Maybe she’d messed withmyhead again despite my best efforts, and none of this was really all that confusing.
As I rubbed my temple as if I could shove my thoughts into more coherent order, Lucan strode in. He glanced at me and frowned in a clear question.
He might be able to sort out what I’d just heard. Maybe we all should talk. It’d been all of us together when the crap had gone down seven years ago. Both of my brothers had as much of a stake in this as I did, really.
“Find Felix,” I said. “We need to toss the ball around out back.”
Lucan arched an eyebrow, but he headed off to round up our little brother anyway. I went into my bedroom and retrieved the football we’d doctored with glow-in-the-dark strips for this purpose.
As a kid, I’d always found it easiest to hash things out with my brothers when we were in the backyard throwing the ball around. It brought a rhythm to the conversation, a sense of connection and collaboration, and focusing on the catching and tossing stopped anyone from getting too worked up about the topics of conversation.
As those topics had gotten more serious, we’d stopped going out during the day when you never knew which underlings would be hanging around out there too. But at night, we were pretty much guaranteed to have the space to ourselves. And catching the ball based mostly on sound and little streaks of light brought an extra challenge to the exercise.
Apparently Felix hadn’t been difficult to find. He and Lucan were already standing by the back door when I reached it, Lucan looking thoughtfully alert as usual and Felix bemused.
“Really?” he said, nodding to the football. “When are you going to grow out of that?”
I glowered at him. “It works. Now come on before I have you catch it with your face.”
As expected at nine o’clock at night, the backyard was empty. The only light was cast by the security lamp over the back deck mingling with the glow in the windows on our house and the one next door. We walked across the patio and past the old elm tree to the open area near the garage. Lucan, ever cautious, peeked into the garage itself to confirm that no one was going to be eavesdropping from in there.
I was fine with his wariness. This wasn’t exactly business-business, but it wasn’t a conversation I wanted publicized either.
I turned the football in my hands as we spread out in a vague triangle and tossed it to Felix without warning, as repayment for being mouthy. He snorted, catching it easily, and flicked it on toward Lucan. “What’s this about?” he asked.
“Anthea,” I said, and felt the vibe in the yard turn tense with just those three syllables.
“What’s she done now?” Felix muttered in a way that made me wonder what she’d already done to him that I didn’t know about. Hopefully he hadn’t made the mistake of trying to stick his dick in her mouth.
I caught the ball when Lucan heaved it my way and paused for a second to gather my words. Then I tossed it onward. “I had a little chat with her tonight. She said some things… It’s making me want to be sure of what happened the last time she was here.”
“Which things in particular?” Lucan asked.
“Holly said she caught Anthea going through Dad’s papers, right? Taking pictures of them and stuff. Did we ever come across any other indication that she was out to undermine the family? I don’t remember anyone else mentioning catching her at anything like that. Or any incidents based on whatever information she might have passed on from spying.”
Lucan shrugged. “She was careful about it. The only reason we know is because Holly caught her. I assumed Dad took into account what Anthea was likely to have seen and adjusted whatever plans he needed to so that there was no chance anyone could interfere with key operations.”
I could only vaguely decipher Felix’s expression in the dimness, but his voice came out rough enough to show his discomfort. “Dad doesn’t know. Hedidn’tknow.”
Lucan’s head jerked around, his toss to me going wide in his shock. I lunged to the side to grab the ball out of the air before it thumped into the fence.
“What do you mean?” Lucan demanded. “Of course Dad knew. Holly probably told him before she even told us. She was his wife.”
“Well, we know what a rare and exalted position that is,” Felix said dryly, and then sobered up. “I tried to talk to him about Anthea this afternoon. He’s suspicious of her motives for coming here rightnow, sure, but only because of the timing with the recent dust-up with the Nobles. He obviously didn’t have any idea that she’d been up to no good in the past.”