Relief made her shudder. “What about— How are you gonna…”
She couldn’t even get the words“dispose of the body”out of her mouth. While she wholeheartedly believed that monster got what he deserved, it was impossible for her to comprehend the realities of murder or its aftermath.
Harlan combed his claws through her hair. When they caught on a snag, he stopped to very carefully unwind the knot before he continued his strokes. “Don’t think about that. Let’s just get you back to the hotel and taken care of.”
Her voice was very small and watery when she asked, “Can’t we just go home?”
“We will go home tomorrow,” he promised. “But I need to make a few calls first.”
ChapterTwenty-Four
Felix Amauri wasa young man not to be fucked with.
That was the impression Harlan got when he met him the first time fifty years ago, and it was the same impression he got when he met the vampire in the deserted main floor of The Lush approximately six hours after he ended Julius once and for all.
It didn’t take much to get Felix onto a private m-jet headed for San Francisco. All it took was a photo of Julius’s right hand — and his bloody ring.
“Who owns this place?”
Harlan eyed the younger man as he stood in the center of the room, his hands on his hips and his eyes roving over the empty booths and overturned tables. His guards stood at the door, arms loose at their sides and expressions coolly focused.
Unlike Julius’s hired help,thosemen would die for Felix in a heartbeat. They would kill for him even faster.
“Some local family,” Harlan answered, his tone brusque. He didn’t care about the bar, nor Felix. He just wanted to get back to his anchor, who he had left in the heavily guarded suite drowsy and full of venom. It kept her calm, and it soothed the bone-deep terror that she might be snatched from him again that he still felt hours later.
Itching to be near her, he cleared his throat and nodded toward the bar. “Small time shit. Mostly drugs and smuggling through the Underground. I think they call themselves the Vance family.”
Felix hummed. His eyes, a cool blue that bordered on gray, fixed on Harlan with a familiar intensity. He was a man raised by Dora Amauri and it showed.
He was utterly self-possessed and ice-fucking-cold.
His expensive leather shoes barely made any noise as he made his way across the floor to join Harlan at the small table and chair he commandeered for their meeting. A black body bag lay by his feet.
Felix was taller than Harlan, but leaner, with a swimmer’s build and long black hair that curled around his neck and ears. His most notable feature, besides his pretty face, was the lock of white hair that curled over his forehead. It was a signature feature of the Amauri family, and one he knew Felix wore proudly.
That, and a bad attitude.
Felix nudged the edge of the body bag with the toe of his shoe. His lip lifted with disgust. “That him?”
“Yes.” Harlan fished the ring out of his pocket and set it on the table between them. It was a gaudy thing — thick gold, with the Amauri crest engraved in the center — and had delivered more wounds to Harlan’s face than any real weapon ever had.
Felix glanced at the ring, then back to the bag, before he cracked a wide, pleased smile. Sinking down into a chair, he spread his arms and announced, “I need a fucking drink.”
Harlan watched one of his guards peel away from the door to slip behind the bar. He disappeared through a discreet door for a handful of moments before he came out again, this time with a pale, scowling woman in toe. The guard pushed her toward the bar. “Get him a drink. Best alcoholic synth you have.”
The waitress, dressed in a severe black cocktail dress and gloves, firmed her angular jaw but didn’t talk back. Instead, she used a keycard to unlock a compartment behind the bar and retrieved a bottle of extremely expensive alcoholic synthblood called Velvet.
She kept her eyes down and her movements efficient as she cracked the lid and activated the heat seal. Walking briskly, she didn’t bat an eye at the body bag on the floor as she moved to deposit the bottle in front of Felix.
Harlan suspected it was not the worst thing she had seen in The Lush.
The blonde waitress was barely a wisp of a thing. Small, fine-boned, and pale, she looked like she was made to make people like Felix feel powerful when she served them. Harlan didn’t get the appeal of any of it, but when he watched Felix’s eyes trace her form, his fangs pressing into his bottom lip, Harlan suspectedhedid.
“Thank you,” he said, breaking the tension. He didn’t want to be the reason the poor waitress ended up as Felix’s plaything, so it was best he shooed her away as soon as possible.
Putting a firm order in his tone, he commanded, “Go home now. If your boss gives you shit about leaving the bar, send him to me.”
Her eyes flashed to his for just a moment before she nodded. She turned on her low heel to walk away, but not before Felix’s arm shot out. His large, clawed hand circled her wrist like a manacle. The waitress stiffened, her delicate shoulders bunching.
