Cleo doesn’t show up at school.
It’s probably for the best, because after we finished dealing with her, I snapped a couple of pics, which I’ve circulated to my soldiers. The spoiled social media influencer wearing mysacerhas quickly spread through the underground. Cleo’s helping my street cred – if people know I’m willing to condemn someone that famous and well-connected, they won’t want to cross me. And it helps breed loyalty – whoever eventually kills her will earn major respect from me.
If Cleo shows her face in the wrong part of Emerald Beach again, she’s a dead woman walking.
So I’m surprised when George hands me her phone in History class, a concerned look on her face. The screen shows a photograph posted to Cleo’s social media. Our favorite spoiled princess has her forehead covered with a baseball cap so no one can see my mark. She wears a trendy cropped hoodie and leans against a crumbling stone wall. A veryfamiliarcrumbling stone wall, complete with battlements and Romanesque folly peeking through the trees beyond.
She’s returned to Blackwich Castle.
The caption reads:
Whatup, bitches. School is for pussies, and this cat is free of that shit and ready to roam. Who needs a degree when you have a million followers? I’m staying with a friend while I figure out the next steps for my career. Like the view? Watch this space.
Irrational anger bubbles up inside me. Is this bitch for real?
This is the duke’s doing, I’m sure of it. Gabriel’s dad has the fuckingaudacityto toss him out without a penny, to break up Gabe’s band and break his heart by having CleomurderDylan, and then to demand he marry that she-devil so he can have his heir, and all this time he was running the Grey Death trade through Emerald Beach?
And now he’s got the nerve to keep that rat safe from my wrath?Andshe’s on social media, posting about moving to England and living in a palace, as if her life is just peachy. I bet he’ll get her in for surgery, too, to erase my mark. Make her good as new again.
Nope. Not happening.
I glare at the picture, trying to focus my rage into a solid plan of action.What would Julian August do?
It’s simple, really. Julian August would clean house.
And that’s exactly what I intend to do.
7
Gabriel
“Ineed you to set up a meeting with your father,” Claws says.
She lies across the bed in my room at Malloy Manor, watching as I strum my guitar and sing under my breath. I’ve been working on a song for her, fine-tuning the lyrics, getting it to where I know it has an emotional punch. If Noah Marlowe hears this song and weeps like a baby, I’ll know I’ve done my job.
Holding the guitar in my hands feels strange – it’s been so long now that I’m a little afraid of it, of the power it has to coax hidden things from inside me. But in many ways, it’s like the music never left me. This song falls from my fingers and my lips like it always existed, like I’m simply plucking the lyrics from the universe and giving them form and substance.
But a song is a fragile thing. One mention of my father and it’s gone, snuffed from existence like he’s choked it out with his cruelty. Reluctantly, I set down the guitar and meet Claudia’s icicle gaze. “Why?”
“Because we need to have a little chat about Grey Death.” Claws flips her golden hair over her shoulder, her eyes boring into me.
Yeah. Fair enough.
I knew this was coming. I thought that if I distracted myself with Claudia’s birthday, I could escape the truth. But I should know by now that I can’t outrun my legacy. I may have taken the name Gabriel Fallen, but my father’s blood still flows in my veins.
No matter how many times I go over what Cleo told us, I can’t reconcile my dad the stodgy duke who disowned me for bringing shame upon the family as the kingpin of the growing Grey Death epidemic.
And maybe a bit of George’s and Eli’s Sherlock Holmesing has rubbed off on me, but I can’t help being curious about how he ended up on this path. When did he go from the glory of the empire to hawking A-class drugs? But I also know all too well that where Grey Death is,realdeath soon follows, and I don’t want Claws anywhere near him.
“I’ll talk to him for you,” I say.
She shakes her head. “This has to come from me. The Triumvirate has never included a woman before, and old school assholes like your dad will want it to stay that way. He can’t believe for even a moment that I’m not in complete control.”
“I can ask for a meeting, but I can’t guarantee he’ll speak to me.”
Her eyes flash, and her mouth turns up at the corners with that dazzling half-smile she gets when she has a plan brewing. “He will if you tell him you agree to have his heir.”
I drop the guitar on my foot. The pain doesn’t even register as my heart leaps out of my chest. “You’re pregnant?”
