Wylder shook her hands off him and stepped away. “Gia, I think it’s better that you sleep it off. You’re drunk.”
Gia pouted in response and then turned her attention to Kaige, running her finger along his jaw. “What about you? You want some of this?” She thrust her hip out at him.
Kaige rolled his eyes, but he took her by the waist and leaned in. “No,” he said, loud enough for us to hear.
Gia’s lower lip wobbled. “I just want to be good to you,” she slurred and then scampered away, stumbling in her high heels.
“Is it just me, or is she more annoying when she’s drunk?” Kaige asked.
Gideon sighed. “Don’t even pretend that you don’t like the attention.”
Kaige grinned in answer.
“I think it’s time we pull the plug on this party.” Wylder put his hands on the balustrade and raised his voice. “Everybody gets out in five minutes, or I’m going to start shooting.”
The music stopped abruptly. Everybody stared up at us in horror, Wylder’s words cutting through the haze of alcohol and drugs in their system. There wasn’t a person in the room who didn’t know they were looking at the second most powerful figure in the Nobles.
He raised a brow and motioned to the outline of the gun at his hip. “Do I need to repeat myself?”
People started rushing out of the foyer immediately, their urgency to get away almost comical. Wylder shook his head at them and returned his attention to us, swiping his hands together. “Always an effective way to break up a party fast.”
As the last of the partiers hustled out, we walked down the stairs, examining the aftermath. Throwing a party was one thing, cleaning up afterwards was a whole lot of trouble.
I stepped on what looked like a used condom and winced in disgust. Kaige toed the pizza crusts and the crumpled paper cups out of his way. “People are such fucking pigs.”
“Thank God for the cleaning staff.” Wylder paused, and a smirk that set off warning bells in my head curled his lips. “Although I say we tell them to leave one room untouched for the time being.”
What was he up to? I studied him and couldn’t stop the question from tumbling out. “What about Mercy?”
“What about her?”
I knew I was pushing it, but I had to give it one more shot. “Even if Colt is a problem, we don’t need her to tackle him. We’re the Nobles. You just cleared a hundred people out of the building by pointing at your gun. Why keep her around?”
Wylder shrugged. “I don’t believe in throwing away a useful tool that’s fallen into our laps. Colt Bryant could become a problem for us in the future. And Mercy Katz has the inside scoop on him. Maybe she’ll even prove herself somewhat useful in other ways. It’s been a long time since high school, Rowan.”
I bit back any retort I might have made to that. I’d worked my way into Wylder’s inner circle by doing whatever he needed me to do, being whatever he needed me to be, and I was still a relative newbie here. He’d been counting on the other guys way longer. If I made a single misstep, I wasn’t totally sure he wouldn’t be castingmeout of the house at gunpoint.
Kaige snorted. “Do you think she’ll have any idea who her fiancé really is? He murdered her family in cold blood and then tried to kill her. He obviously wasn’t the most upfront dude ever.”
“No,” Wylder said. “But they had been engaged for a year. They’ll have talked. She’ll have seen things. I don’t get the impression she’s the type to wander around with her head in the clouds.”
“At the very least, she’ll have some idea of his schedules and habits,” Gideon said in his familiar analytical tone.
Kaige frowned. “There’s something I don’t get though. Why would he go to all this trouble for a whole fucking year? He couldn’t have found an excuse to get enough key Claws members together sooner?”
“Maybe it took him that long to build enough trust?” I suggested.
Gideon nodded. “Tyrell Katz wasn’t an idiot. It would have taken a lot for him to agree to go in without weapons.”
“Well, his loss is our gain.” Wylder’s smirk came back. “If there’s anything the kitty cat hasn’t told us yet, we’ll get to the bottom of it. And if she’s a rat as well as a Katz,she’llbe the one we’re crushing.”
“We shouldn’t go easy on her,” I said quickly. “Whatever our history, I won’t.” If Wylder wouldn’t kick her out right away, then I’d just have to make sure she decided leaving of her own free will was better than staying.
It might even be better for her. Her dad was dead—Tyrell Katz was gone from this world. Part of the reason I’d started on this path was with the vague idea that someday,Imight be in a position to end that villain’s life, and now it was already done. It felt weirdly anticlimactic, like it wasn’t quite real.
This bastard from the Steel Knights had screwed Mercy over too, and I couldn’t condone what he’d done to her entire family or tried to do to her, but at least she didn’t have to live in fear of Tyrell anymore. She could go anywhere, do anything… The last thing she should have wanted was to get dragged down into even more violence.
Why the hell had she had to come here when she’d had so many other options?