Page 63 of Blades and Bone

“No,” Brodie said. There was nothing else he needed to know. There was nothing else he wanted to hear from this man. He didn’t want to know how he and Hamish would’ve been used to manipulate Vivian and Ann. Well, Vivian anyway. Ann would’ve let Hamish die. She was much more ruthless, but then she was older and had been dealing with threats for much longer.

Somehow, he’d circled back to once again agreeing with Vivian’s decision. The Ashbys were not equipped for dealing with the Orlans…the Reids were, and they could handle this situation. He stood and walked toward the bedroom.

“Undress him. Use a knife,” Garrick said.

Brodie expected to hear Hamish refuse, but there was only the cutting of clothes and footsteps behind him. He turned, expecting Hamish.

Garrick ushered him into the bedroom. “What you have heard doesn’t leave this house yet.”

He nodded. “You and Ann will sort it out.”

It’s what he expected, and what he wanted. He didn’t want to be hunting the unaffiliated or checking their palms for white daggers. He wanted to run the resort. He wanted to get to know his niece when she arrived. And maybe that made him soft or weak for a vampire, but just because he had fangs didn’t mean he needed to be ripping out throats.

“She will consult Vivian, but they are in far deeper than we suspected.”

“You misjudged them again.”

Garrick gave a single nod. “Mirabella has been working on this for a very long time. She had everything set up long before she made her first strike on the Hadley compound.”

Brodie let himself consider aligning with Mirabella for just a moment—was she the better option? The safer plan where they got to live and continue with their lives? Except he knew it was an illusion because Mirabella wouldn’t uphold her end of the deal. Vivian wouldn’t be allowed to live. She would find an excuse to get rid of the newly installed matriarch and take over.

“What do you want me to do?” Because he couldn’t sit around and do nothing, even though he didn’t want to join the fight.

Garrick glanced at the corridor toward the living room and lowered his voice. “Sometimes you realize too late that someone shouldn’t have been blooded. I need you to look after him. Give him the life he should’ve had without the obligations that come with being a blooded Reid.”

“He seems capable of handling the duties.”

Garrick grimaced. “Mmm. Which is why I didn’t realize. He can put on the appropriate mask, but he can’t maintain it. You saw that in the first meeting. Any other vampire would have simply nodded and accepted.”

“He followed your orders tonight.” Without question and without thought.

“And will suffer for it. For some reason he’s always looked up to me and sought my approval.”

“He said you’re his favorite uncle.”

“My sister was not thrilled to have another boy. Nothing he did was ever good enough for her, and he was always in trouble for something. His heart is too soft for this kind of work. I should have talked him out of being blooded. That is my mistake and something that I will live with for the rest of my life. I believe this arrangement will be good for him. Don’t prove me wrong.”

Good for Hamish, and what about him?

He was supposed to believe that the dead-eyed man cutting clothes off a bound vampire wasn’t really who Hamish was? He wanted to believe that, but it was a bit too convenient, too easy.

Brodie nodded because he had nothing to say.

Garrick grabbed the front of Brodie’s T-shirt. “Swear it, because he is my favorite nephew and I am the reason he is here.”

Brodie stared at the shorter vampire, who was probably already thinking of multiple ways to kill him. “I swear he’ll be fine.”

Whoever he was. How could he protect someone who’d casually killed a man and then helped break the mind of another?

Garrick pressed his lips together as if he didn’t want to reveal his fangs. That would be rude as well as threatening. “Fine. I’ll finish cleaning up and send him to you.”

And what was he supposed to do?

“Then we wait for instructions? I can’t go to my sister, but is there anything I can do?”

“Yes, wait.” Garrick walked out before Brodie could say anything else.

He ran his fingers through his hair, unable to process doing nothing while at the same time not wanting to be directly involved. He didn’t want blood on his hands. He didn’t want any of this. It would be easy to point the finger at the Reids and blame them for this attack, but the preparations had been made long ago. Mirabella and her kin had been infiltrating the unaffiliated for months…or even years.