“It’s no joke. He’s threatening to kill my best friend. I’m not going to pretend I’m okay with that.”
“You realize you’re sitting there talking about murder?” I study Noah’s face. “I don’t want this life for you. It might be too late for Antony and me, but you’re supposed to graduate high school, leave for some snooty Ivy League college, join a fraternity, and be awarded a giant gilded stick to shove up your ass.”
“It’s too late for me, too.” Noah’s dark eyes bore into mine. “I lost my future when Felix died.”
I hate that he believes that. I hate that he’s so willing to embrace my world. It might look like the perfect outlet for his rage, but before this is over Noah Marlowe will wish he’d never met me.
But right now I need his cold fury. “Antony has given us until Thanksgiving to bring Eli back to us. That’s significant. It means he has no intention of killing Eli.”
“How do you figure?”
“The Triumvirate runs their separate operations, but twice a year the leaders meet for two significant events – Saturnalia in December, and Lupercalia in March. These are wild parties – celebrations of the family achievements – but also a chance for the soldiers and tribunes to form alliances and build working relationships.”
Noah raises an eyebrow. “Like a mafia corporate retreat?”
“Exactly. At each event, the Triumvirate holds a secret meeting where they decide on rules, mete out punishments, and move the pieces around on the chessboard of their empire.”
“And Antony thinks Nero is planning something for this meeting?” Noah’s eyes glint with understanding.
I nod. “And Antony knows it involves Eli and his family somehow. If Antony really believed Eli is a threat to us, he’d have killed him by now. He wouldn’t wait for my permission. He knows if he gets rid of Eli, we lose our connection to Nero, the chance to figure out what he’s up to. He wants me to get close to Eli again so we can find out what Nero is planning.”
“Why not just tell us the truth, then?”
Because he doesn’t trust me anymore.
I try to speak the words, but there’s a lump in my throat and I choke on them instead. Antony is everything to me, he’s held me through my darkest moments, has literallydragged me from my grave. Our parents always taught us that loyalty came before anything else, that family was everything.
It fuckingsucksthat he feels he has to keep this from me, but I understand. Both of us lived through the ultimate betrayal – Brutus breaking his blood oath to kill my father and take over the family. Both of us lost everything because we believed loyalty kept us safe. Antony wouldn’t make that mistake again, not even for me.
Noah’s looking at me like he expects an answer. I shake my head. I can’t find the words.
“Okay, so your cousin wants us to get Eli to tell him what Nero’s doing.” Noah pulls me close. “We can do that, no problem.”
Wordlessly, I burrow into his shoulder, digging the remote from between the sofa cushions and pointing it at the sound system. A moment later, Gabriel’s smoky voice wafts from the speakers:
You drank my milk,
sipped my blood,
tore my flesh away.
You crawl between the sheets,
My dreams scattered at your feet.
With bloody lips and wide lovely eyes,
You whisper, love me love me love…
I lose myself in the melancholy song, my heart aching at the crack of Gabriel’s voice as he allows his pain to bloom in every note. Even before he died, Dylan’s ghost haunts him, pulling him back into his body – the one person Gabriel can never escape.
All I want to do is hold him. I want to tell him he’s perfect just the way he is, that his broken pieces are all I could ever need. But he’s not here, and I can’t reach him, and I hate myself for it.
Noah holds me while the music washes over me, bathing my sins in Gabe’s beautiful voice. After a while, he clears his throat. There’s a question burning in his mind, and he needs to let it out. “What happens to the August family at this meeting in December? Their leader is AWOL. Who goes in his place?”
“No one can speak for him. Brutus will have to show his face at Saturnalia, or he’ll forfeit his rule over our family.” I realize then how important that is, that we have a chance to unseat Brutus and deprive him of his power if only we can prevent him from attending that meeting.
Noah is thinking the same thing. “That might be one way to get rid of a number of our problems. We find Brutus and make sure he doesn’t get to that meeting. Then it doesn’t matter what he thinks he knows about you.”
