He walked past me, and I shut the door behind us. From the pocket of his dark jacket, he pulled out a small, battered flip phone.
Watson held it out. “Take this.”
I eyed the device. “Why do I need another one?”
“The other one was compromised. Don’t use it unless you absolutely have to. But my suggestion would be to snap the damn thing and toss it in the canal if you still have it.”
I wrapped my fingers around the phone, feeling its weight in my palm. Something in the pit of my stomach told me that Watson wasn’t being entirely truthful about the other burner, but I trusted him enough to take the device and hide it better than the last one.
“Thanks for the heads up,” I said, slipping the phone into my sweatpants. Watson lingered in the hall, eyes darting to the small window next to the door.
“You ever wonder,” he began slowly. “How certain people in this city manage to stay one step ahead of the raids, the warrants, the occasional ‘accidental’ evidence leaks. Hell, even the occasional breaking and entering?”
I folded my arms over my chest, shoulders shrugging slightly. “Thought they just got lucky.”
Watson’s mouth curved into a smirk. “It’s never luck. It’s inside help. The Lovelen Police Department has more cracks than a broken teacup. And I recently connected the dots that every one of those leaks led back to one person. A person who surprisingly has come into quite a large sum of money recently.”
“Parsons?” I asked, raising one eyebrow in question. It wasn’t a surprise to me. I had suspected it for a while that the older detective wasn’t entirely truthful with his quest for the Knights’ takedown. Without them in control of most of the territory, they had the final say when it came to the drug distribution.
Watson nodded solemnly. “He takes his orders from somewhere else but is still getting a cut and the power he craves from the leaks. Parsons will wear the badge when it gets him through a door, but the second the badge becomes a liability, he’s just another hired gun. He isn’t doing the Knights’ dirty work, which makes me think he was working for your father at one point and now has switched loyalties to another club. But this mission to destroy Kaius and the Knights has to come from the loss of that big cut he got from the Death Dealers.”
My stomach turned at the truth. My father had always had a dirty cop on the inside to ensure they could stir the narrative away from the club when he needed it. But the thought that someone as slimy as Parsons had been that person made me sick.
“And no one else in the department has noticed?” I asked, praying that he would say an internal affairs case had been initiated for Parsons, and his warning was just a precaution.
“They’ve noticed,” Watson responded flatly. “They are either on the payroll too or too scared to make any moves against him. Parsons is untouchable, and he knows it. That’s dangerous. It’snot just that he’s corrupt, but that he is comfortable in being that way. He’ll feed you to whatever monster with the biggest check without even blinking.”
I nodded once. Maybe it wasn’t the Knights who had orchestrated the destruction of the Death Dealers. But that didn’t explain why Kaius had been standing over Alec’s body that night, taunting him until he put a bullet in his head. Didn’t explain the marriage certificate. And most definitely didn’t explain why my brother had made me light the damn house up in flames that night.
“Alec,” I screamed over the gunfire. My socked feet skidded against the tile floor, praying that the rain of bullets didn’t catch up to me. I turned down the main hallway of our home, body slamming into someone’s chest. I let out a screech, swinging at the man, but he caught my wrist in his hand.
“Emersyn, hey.” A familiar voice soothed me, but I continued to fight against their hold. “It’s me. It’s Alec.”
I froze, eyes finding the matching blue ones of my brother. Slamming one final slap to his chest, I whispered, “What in the fuck is going on?”
“A rival club is trying to patch over the Death Dealers.” Alec’s gaze traveled above my head, watching for any threat that might come our way. “And they are doing a damn good job at it.”
“Who?” My voice shook in fear.
I had heard of this happening to other clubs, and most of the time, there wasn’t a soul left to remember them. My stomach dropped as I took in my older brother. Blood and dirt covered his skin, and bruises blended in with the dark ink he had obtained over the years. This wasn’t good, and I knew that. Tonight, the Death Dealers would fall.
“The Knights of Lovelen,” Alec spat out between clenched teeth. “I asked them for help, not for a damn massacre.”
My eyebrows knitted together. “What do you mean you went to them for help?”
“It’s not important.” Alec’s glare landed on me, and a fear that I had never felt when it came to him filled the pit of my stomach. This version of my brother was not the loving and kind man I had grown up with. This was a dark predator ready to take on anyone who stepped in his way. Even the little sister he had always protected.
I tried to dodge Alec as he lashed out, but he caught me by the shoulder, slamming my back into the wall beside us. The gallery walls my father had proudly hung up rattled upon impact. The most recent photo of our family on the beach in Mexico flew to the floor. Glass splintered in the frame, and I couldn’t help but notice how Alec’s smile didn’t reach his eyes in the image.
Alec snapped his fingers in front of my face. “You need to listen to me, Emersyn.”
I gulped down the burning acid traveling back up my throat and nodded the best I could toward him. He examined me for a moment longer before speaking. “The house needs to burn. I don’t care how you do it, but after tonight, our family home needs to be nothing but ash.”
“What about—” I began, but Alec’s fist slammed into the wall next to my head, cutting off my question. Flinching away from the collision spot, I stared wide-eyed at him. “The house of Spades will be nothing but a distant memory by dawn.”
My stomach churned at the memory. There were so many holes in that night I was still trying to piece together, and every time I thought I might be closer to those answers, something else had me doubting my narrative. But there was one thing I was sure of—I needed to grow my immunity to hemlock, no matter if I was found out. It might be my only leg up against Kaius and Parsons.
“I need something else, but it’s not exactly legal,” I said, watching Watson for any hesitation.
