Page 102 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

‘Riley took care of me. He kept me safe.’

‘Kept, yes. Very true.’

Riley leans forward slightly. ‘What alliance, Sorrenko?’

‘We all thought you were dead, see? Both of you,’ Vasily says, looking between Riley and Kade. ‘Céliane never told us that she knew. She didn’t want us to know.’

‘Why?’ Lachlan asks intently.

‘Céliane and Blaire at one time wanted the same thing; to free them.’

‘Mimi and Jules.’

Quietly, Vasily says, ‘And Mari, of course.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘How she loved her nicknames.’

‘Silly—’

‘The misalignment of siblings is a hard thing to bear,’ the tall man whispers, ‘isn’t it, Harker?’

Riley says nothing.

Kade looks between all three of them, seeking answers.

Lachlan blinks. ‘Wait.’

‘We cannot wait that long,’ Vasily says, patting Lachlan’s hand.

‘There was a baby.’

Vasily sips his tea and makes a circle with his index finger. ‘Keep going.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Kade demands, his heart beating faster, instincts coiling in warning. ‘What baby?’

‘Blaire told me...’ Lachlan says, staring ahead. ‘Your mother, Isabel, had a baby two years before you. She said the baby died.’

‘Go on, you are so close,’ Vasily encourages.

‘Isabel named him Jean... something.’

‘Jean-Marie.’

‘Jean-Marie.’

Both Riley and Vasily say the name in perfect synchronisation.

Riley’s tone is flat. He stares at nothing, blank and shuttered.

You have to know Riley to see the tells.

The slight whitening of his knuckles where his fingers dig into his own arms. The disconnected stare that speaks only of pain he himself contains.

Lachlan’s jaw drops into lax astonishment. ‘No fucking way.’

Riley finally looks at Kade, and it’s terrifying to read the apprehensive apology etched there in all the tells only Kade would know to see because only he knows and loves Riley Harker.