18
Wylder
I leaned backon the leather chair and took a small sip of my brandy as Mozart’s No 40 in G Minor played in the background. Normally, the music would have cleared my head. Tonight, I couldn’t shake all the pictures my imagination kept conjuring for me.
Why did Mercy have to be so fucking stubborn? She should have taken off for someplace safe days ago. But no, she’d stuck around even with everything I’d been doing to push her away, and now she was out on a “date” with that psychotic prick Jasper Herald.
Date was a polite word for what was open sex bartering. I couldn’t believe Dad had agreed to it. Why the hell had Mercy agreed to it? After the agony I’d put myself through, seeing the betrayal and hurt flash across her face every time I insulted her and having to hold myself back from telling her I didn’t mean any of it, she’d walked straight into the lion’s den anyway. Straight into the lion’s mouth, more like it.
One thing was for sure: there was no other way the night would end except for Mercy sleeping with him. The only question was how much of her would be left afterward.
The glass cracked in my hand, a trickle of the amber liquid seeping over my fingers. I blinked down at it. I’d started gripping the glass so hard I’d fractured it. Shit.
A tiny thread of scarlet wound into the spilling brandy where the crack had nicked my skin. I watched it, remembering the time I had cut myself to promise Mercy that I was going to help her crush Colt Bryant if she cleared Kaige’s name.
She’d held up her end of the deal, and I was making good on my promise. Wasn’t that enough? Why did she have to get involved and put herself in the line of fire? Why couldn’t she let me protect her?
Dad obviously didn’t trust or respect her as much as he should have someone he’d initiated, let alone as much as she’d earned. He wouldn’t have sent her on this mission otherwise. He was probably hoping she’d come back shattered so he wouldn’t have to deal with her anymore.
If she survived tonight, he’d just find something worse to throw at her. We still had a battle with the Steel Knights ahead of us, and Lord knew it was going to be bloody no matter how many men we had on our side.
Unless I could come up with a way out of it. The beginnings of a plan had occurred to me after the night of the ambush, thinking of how I’d had to send Kaige to draw away the cops. Why not turn one of the biggest pains in our asses into a tool and save us all a whole lot of trouble?
I’d wanted to get the details totally solid in my head tonight, but I was too distracted. I straightened up, dropping the glass on the side table and going to wash my hands. Maybe it was never going to be perfect. I’d already delayed talking to Dad about the idea while I tried to get it there, and look what Mercy had gotten herself into in the meantime. I needed to convince him now, before she could find herself in an even worse mess.
And things could get a lot worse for her. I should know.
When I got to Dad’s study, I found him sitting in his usual spot behind his desk, engrossed in a book. Some treatise on business strategy or politics, probably. He was dressed in his usual business clothes, an immaculate tie and shirt pressed to perfection. Sometimes I wondered if Rowan took his fashion cues from my father.
He glanced up at me, as unreadable as ever. “Wylder. I assume everything went smoothly before Mercy left for the date?”
I sat down in the armchair closest to his desk. “I wouldn’t know. I didn’t see her before she left.”
That wasn’t true. I’d watched her from the second floor as she’d gotten into the car and been driven away. She’d looked absolutely stunning in the emerald-green dress that’d hugged her in all the right places. She was all sinful curves and softness, and it should have been my hands on them, not fucking Jasper Herald—
I had to catch my fingers before they dug into my palms and bit back the question I wanted to ask. Had he heard anything from Jasper’s people yet? I couldn’t betray even that much interest.
“I’m sure she’s enjoying his company,” Dad said, setting his book down with a smile.
My jaw ticked. Mercy wouldn’t want some aging crime boss’s greasy paws all over her. But I knew Dad was trying to set me off. He wanted some reaction from me, and he wasn’t getting it.
Time to change the subject. “There was something else I wanted to talk to you about, actually. I think we can use the truck of drugs we stole from the Steel Knights to our advantage. It might be the key to taking them down for good—and in a way that won’t require tying ourselves to some other gang.”
Dad’s eyebrows arched. “Intriguing. What exactly are you suggesting we do?”
I spoke with all the confidence I had in me. “We set things up so Colt Bryant and many of the other prominent players in the Steel Knights get caught by the cops on major charges.”
I could tell at once from Dad’s expression that I was on shaky ground. His lip curled with a hint of disgust. “You want us to take help from the police?”
“Not exactly,” I said quickly. “We’d be using them like the dogs they are. Sic them on our enemies, and let them fight it out with each other while we laugh from the sidelines.”
That framing toned down his initial reaction enough that he didn’t yell at me to get out, anyway. He eyed me narrowly. “Continue.”
I didn’t have much time to convince him. I sucked in a breath. “We have a huge batch of the drug—a brand new drug that the cops must be aware of and eager to crack down on. I know you don’t have any interest in distributing it ourselves. Rather than just toss it in the trash, we can use it as bait. We put out word on the street that we are going to start selling it and take over distribution from the Steel Knights.”
“That would certainly piss them off,” Dad said dryly.
“And that’s what we want,” I said, warming to the pitch. “We’ll make sure just enough detail gets out for them to determine that we’re storing and distributing the drug out of a building we’ve chosen specifically for our plan. Bryant and his men will come to take revenge for our theft and to try to show they can overpower us. But we’ll also have to give a few tips to the cops that the Steel Knights are about to make a big move.”