Valentine was standing in the small kitchen, calmly sipping coffee. His eyes zeroed on the bruise on Lachlan's chest. Lachlan held his towel around him a little tighter as he looked Valentine in the eye.
"I suppose you want to revisit that conversation about what you will do to me if I mess with your brother," he asked.
Valentine's smile was as cold and sharp as a dagger. "You're a smart boy, Lachie. You know what I will do to you. Just like you know that no one will ever find the pieces." He sipped his coffee again, and Lachlan grabbed his bag.
"Great. Glad we got that out of the way," he said and went back into the room to get dressed.
Lachlan was pulling on his jeans when his phone started ringing. "Hey, Cuz. What have you found for me?" he answered.
"These guys are suss as fuck," Layla answered, sounding chipper and well-rested. "Sorry, I haven't called earlier. I would have had something to you sooner, but Arne didn't wake me when he was supposed to."
"Because you needed rest, and I won't apologize!" Arne called from somewhere in the background.
Lachlan laughed. "It's okay, Lay Lay. We all needed some sleep. I was running on empty too."
"How is Apollo? Is he doing okay?" she asked.
He made me blow from a single touch, so he's great! I will never live it down, and he's sure to be thrilled.
Lachlan cleared his throat. "He's good. He was a bit wonky from blood loss, but he seems a lot better this morning."
"That's good. Okay, so about what I found...can you put me on speaker or something with the boys? I don't want to have to repeat all this again."
"Sure. Let me see if Apollo has come out of the shower yet."
Lachlan walked out of the room and found both the Greatdrakes boys dishing up breakfast. Well, Valentine was. Apollo was standing in the kitchen with a piece of bacon in each hand.
"Layla's found something," Lachlan said and put his phone down in the middle of the small kitchen table. "The boys are here, Lay Lay."
"And how is my favorite little dragon?" she cooed. "Apollo, I need verbal confirmation that you are okay."
"He can't give it to you because his mouth is too full of the bacon he's stuffing into it," Valentine answered.
Layla laughed on the other end of the line. "So he's perfectly fine. Excellent. Okay, boys, gather around. I've been deep-diving the Sanguis Vitae and their frontChrysopoeia. I have found blueprints of the building in Paris, but I'm still trying to get into their system to learn about the security. From what I can tell,the system is in a closed loop, with everything running off their personal servers. I could get in there, but I would need one of you to be in the building to do it. That brings me to my next bit of news... They are having an auction tonight. It's invite-only, but Val could work some magic around that."
"They know who we are, Layla. I can't see us being able to just walk in there," Lachlan pointed out.
"That's the best bit! It's a masquerade party, so no one will recognize you."
Valentine rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Do they have a catalog of items posted? I want to see if they have anything good."
"They do. Looks like a bunch of old manuscripts mostly. Medieval texts with drawings in them. I didn't look too close, but I can send you the list."
"Excellent. I'm always hunting for new things."
"Jesus, Val. We need to get in the building to get Apollo's blood or corrupt their samples, not go shopping," Lachlan grumbled.
Apollo grinned at Valentine. "Depends on what they have? We could always work in a heist while we are there."
"Seems remiss of us not to take them off their hands. There might even be something there to help Dad's research," Valentine added. "The best way to hide a crime is to get everyone to focus on another crime. It's a great idea if I do say so myself."
Lachlan ran a hand through his curls. He forgot that he was trying to talk to dragons and magicians. Both were hoarders of shiny things.
"Come on, guys. We don't havetimeto plan a heist. We don't even have clothes and masks to blend in tonight," he tried to argue.
"We are in Paris, honey. You and Val can work out the complicated stuff. Leave the clothes and masks to me," Apollo said with a triumphant smile.
Lachlan knew he should argue some more, but it was pointless. He was outvoted, and Apollo had called him 'honey' in front of Layla and Valentine. He couldn't fight against that even if he tried.
