“Gallivan gave this to me. It’s a mess of shit Cormac has pulled over the years, shit which has put him on the radar of the Tribunal.” I scrape a hand down the front of my face. “He wants me to give it to Livvie because he knew she’d ask what they wanted. It’s supposed to turn her suspicion back to her father and away from me. God only knows what they have on Dad.”
“Shit,” Bronx mutters. “How could Dad not have told you any of this?”
I shrug. “I guess it’s part of the initiation process. I’m not supposed to talk about it, either. And if they find out you know anything, they might cut off your balls, so lock that shit up, got it?”
“Great. So what the hell happens next?” Bronx mutters under his breath. “Does some Grim Reaper show up with an envelope? The name of the person you’re supposed to kill?”
I drop into a dark cordovan leather recliner and collapse against the back. “I don’t fucking know. It’s not like they gave me instructions or anything. They said they’d be in touch. Very fucking cryptic.”
“So it could be anyone, huh?” Bronx puts down his glass and folds his arms over his chest. “Seems like you’ve got a decision to make. It should be easy. You’ve been groomed to take over from dad your whole life.”
I let out a deep sigh. “I don’t do things blindly. You know that. There’s always a reason for every move I make. But this… this feels shitty. Like I’m just supposed to be some hired gun to eliminate a target. I don’tlike anything about this, especially that some fucking old-ass yahoos are forcing my hand. That’s not how I work. But the empire isn’t the only thing I’d be losing if I don’t make the hit. If I don’t carry out their directive,” I say, rising to my feet and inching toward my brother. “They’re gonna killme.”
“Fuck,” Bronx breathes out. He claps a hand on my shoulder. “See, that’s why I like being an enforcer. I can fuck shit up without having the future of my family hanging around my neck like a noose.”
My face twists into a grimace. I push his hand away. “You’re a real asshole, you know that?”
He grins. “Yeah, you’re just realizing this?”
“Okay, dick, I need you to get the hell out of here now. And like I said, keep all of this quiet. Don’t fucking let those lips flap or I’ll saw them off your face.”
“Yep, sure thing. I’ll leave you to your murder plotting. Maybe you need to hate fuck your wife to get your mind off all this.”
“Get out,” I say darkly, pointing at the door.
Bronx salutes me and struts out the door like he doesn’t have a goddamn care in the world. And he doesn’t. Like he said, I’m the one with the noose around my neck and the death threat hanging over my head.
There’s only one way out of this initiation… to find all the dirt the Tribunal has on its members and threaten to expose it. To do that, I need to find the Blood Vault. That would put me in charge without having to carry out a random-ass murder.
For all I know, it might be the first of many. And if there is going to be blood on my hands, there will be a good goddamn reason for it. My reason, not theirs.
But there isn’t a lot of time. I have to come up with a plan before they get back to me with instructions. And the only lead I have is that USB drive from Roman.
The front door slams shut, signaling Bronx’s exit. It jars me, replacing my Tribunal plans with much more carnal ones. My heart slams against my chest as I stare blankly out the open office door, my mind stumbling back to those crazy hot seconds when Livvie was pressed tight against me, so close to?—
Fuck. No.
It’s a good thing that Bronx interrupted us before. Good that I keep my head focused on the fucking hellfire that’s about to rain down here instead of screwing the living daylights out of Livvie.
The words of those stuffy-ass suits rattle between my ears. I thought I knew the stakes prior to going before the Tribunal, what I stood to lose if I rejected their requests. I’d made my own mistakes, done shit that could have really fucked up the Tribunal’s plans for controlling the underworld that they painstakingly created by using big wielding power players all over the world.
My father’s no saint. He’s got plenty of blood on his hands, so much that they can never be scrubbed clean. But he’s a pawn, just like the rest of us in the eyes of the Tribunal.
And I had no idea what I was really up against before walking through the doors of that estate, the metaphorical gateway to my own personal hell.
My cock strains against my pants, still pissed at me for pulling away from her. He clearly doesn’t understand obligation and expectation. And eventhough I just want to escape the toxic thoughts jamming my brain, fucking her right now would be wrong, especially since I’m about to incinerate every perception she has of the man who raised her.
Bare footsteps slap across the tile floor. “You have some nerve just leaving me like that,” she hisses. I slowly focus my eyes on her, sweeping my gaze over the length of her body. My fingers tingle with the urge to graze the soft skin of her inner thighs, to plunge deep into her pussy.
Stop. Fantasizing.
For fuck’s sake.
Her eyes narrow. “What’s wrong? Why are you just standing there?”
I ignore her questions but wave her inside the office. “Come on, there’s something you need to see.”
Dots of color blossom in her cheeks, her eyes open wide with panic. “What happened at that meeting, Kingston?”
