“Save them for later,” Darius muttered.
Felix shot him a narrow look. “I think by now I’ve proven that I can carry my own weight in this family just fine.”
Darius blinked, momentarily chagrinned. “You’re right,” he said, still gruffly but with an obvious apology in his tone. “We’re a good team—all three of us together.”
“Allfour,” I piped up.
“Don’t worry, Firebird,” Felix said, giving my neck another stroke with the gun. “No one’s forgetting you any time soon.”
Darius drew himself up straighter. “Footsteps,” he said under his breath. “Probably Griffin.”
We all fell silent, settling into our roles. Just as the footsteps came close enough that I could hear them from across the room, Lucan thumped his hand against the desk. “We’ve got to get moving on this,” he said in an almost frantic tone. “If we don’t get everything ready in time…”
He was setting the stage. Good.
Griffin pushed the door aside and marched into the room. He took in the scene with his beady eyes, stalling just a couple of steps from the door.
“What’s going on?” he demanded. “I thought you said Marcel needed me.”
“He does,” Darius said, quickly and firmly. “He’ll be back in a moment—there were too many things he needed to take care of. We’ve got to strike fast if we’re going to get the better of the Nobles. Grab the notebook from that drawer, and we can get started.” He jerked his hand toward the cabinet.
To give the appearance that he was too busy to take care of the task himself, Lucan had thrown himself into pawing through the papers and books Marcel had left on his desk. Griffin hustled across the room, knelt by the drawer, and then paused, glancing around at us again. He knit his forehead, a frown crossing his face.
“What exactly are we doing?”
“We got something important out of her,” Felix jumped in, waving his gun toward me. “Get a move on, man, or Dad’ll be pissed. Any second now, we’ll have Nobles crashing in on us.”
He was a good enough actor to convey a genuine-sounding panic. It spurred Griffin to action just enough to get his hand to close on the key and twist it in the lock. But as he jerked the drawer open and Darius’s gun hand whipped upward, Griffin’s head snapped around to stare at me again.
“You’re setting me up. Just your brother’s puppet, huh? And you convinced them too.”
Darius hesitated, still aiming at Griffin but not firing yet. He glanced at me, and my pulse hiccupped with the fear that I’d see suspicion in his gaze. But instead he only raised his eyebrows in a hint of a question, his expression nothing but determined.
He trusted me. He was simply asking if I thought he should go ahead and shoot or find out what this prick had to say.
I blinked at Griffin, not entirely sure myself. “What are you talking about? None of this was Ezra’s idea. He’d be pissed if he knew what they’re doing.”
I made my voice as frantic as possible, but Griffin had spotted Darius’s gun, of course. He knew the situation wasn’t what we’d said at first.
His hand crept toward the bulge of his own pistol at the back of his jeans, and Darius gave his gun a little shake. “Hands in front, or I’ll shoot you without hearing what you’re blathering about. I don’t care either way.”
Griffin froze, his jaw working. He turned his attention on me again. “Do you really think a gang boss would let his kid sister go running around loose making her own plans?” he sneered at me. “He had to know we’d strike back at him. He wanted you in here getting sympathy for your side so you’d take out everyone who’s against him. I’ll bet he made it sound like family loyalty, as if that means anything. He just wanted to use you.”
His words sank into me with a jab of horror. That was what my dad had done for all those years, wasn’t it? Forced me into compliance for the good of the family business, used me for his own ends without caring what I thought.
The disdain in Ezra’s voice when he’d dismissed my claims about Holly echoed up from my memory, and my stomach twisted. Had he really expected me to come here and use my own judgment, or had he simply figured I’d wreak enough havoc to make his own job easier, one way or another? Maybe he’d even been clever enough to realize that scoffing at me would spur me to further action.
There was a moment, just a second or two, when I wavered. I was so fucking done with being anyone’s dupe. But Felix set a gentle hand on my shoulder, Lucan caught my eye from across the room, and Darius adjusted his grip on his gun, his aim never shifting.
Griffin had gambled wrong. He didn’t understand that I wasn’t here only because of my family or even mostly on Ezra’s behalf, not anymore. And what we were doing here was for the men I’d fallen for at least as much as it would help my brother. If my ends happened to eliminate an enemy of the Nobles, it was a happy coincidence, not a mistake.
I was calling the shots here, and not one man in this room or outside it was going to control me ever again.
I gave Darius just the slightest tip of my head, and he pulled the trigger.
The blast propelled Griffin’s body against the cabinet, his ruined head smacking the drawers. It left an imprint of blood and bits of skull on the shiny wood as his body sagged lifelessly to the floor.
A shout from below told us the lackeys were already coming running at the noise. Darius made a sweeping gesture for the rest of us to clear out. The story was supposed to be that he’d discovered Griffin on his own, after all.