“So, you won’t help me yourself,” I choke, “and you also get a say in whoelsecan’t?”
Vaughn's jaw clenches. “Even if wanted to help you with the situation with your father—and to be clear, Idon’t—I couldn’t.”
“But…but the Syndicate?—”
“You don’t know anything about the Syndicate.”
“I know it’s powerful,” I counter. “And I know you run it. So?—”
“It isn’t that the Syndicate can’t,” he grunts. “It’s that itwouldn’t.”
I glare at him. “You meanyouwouldn’t.”
I gasp sharply as his hand tightens around my throat. “I meanthe Syndicatewouldn't,” he growls. “The Syndicate is not a charity, Evelina. It’s a brotherhood. A family that helps its own…not outsiders.”
He draws in a slow breath, and I don’t realize my legs are shaking until my knees knock together as his thumb traces through the sticky blood on my throat.
Vaughn straightens to his full height, his broad shoulders half-blotting out the moon as he looms over me looking partly annoyed and partly amused.
“Go home, Evelina,” he murmurs quietly.
His hand finally drops from my throat, and I immediately notice the cool air hitting my skin where his hand just was.
“Hold on,” I blurt as he starts to turn away. “Please?—”
I shudder violently as he whirls on me. His blood-soaked hand grabs my jaw, making me gasp as he angles my face up to his. His slick thumb traces a thin line just under my bottom lip, across my chin.
“What did I just say aboutbegging, Evelina,” he says quietly but with breathtaking intensity, still in that unnervingly emotionless tone.
He drops his hand, leaving me shaking and trembling against the tree, my pulse racing.
“Go home, princess,” Vaughn murmurs. “Same deal as the party. Forget everything you saw tonight.”
He starts to walk away.
“Wait.”
I’m a fraction of a second away from adding “please” before I stop myself.
Don’t beg, it makes me hard.
I steel myself as he slowly turns to look at me again.
“You said the Syndicate only helps its own. How does someone join?”
Utter silence descends over the clearing. Even the background noise of the nighttime animals goes quiet, as if nature itself is holding its breath at the sheer idiocy of what just fell out of my mouth.
But family is family.
I swallow the lump in my throat. “I’m serious. How do I?—”
“I heard you the first time.”
There’s a deadness to his voice as it floats through the still air between us like a frozen breath. Vaughn’s brows pinch a little, as if he’s trying to decide if I’m making a terrible joke.
He regards me coolly. “I don’t think you realize what you’re asking,princess.”
The “princess” rolls bitingly off his tongue like a slur, and I stiffen.
