Prince of Power (House of Terriot Book 2)

by Nancy Gideon

  A harsh laugh. “So you can bed our enemy?”

  His expression tightened then relaxed. “No. So we can be powerful again.”

  Wes snorted and shook his head. “You’re a fool, Colin. Cale will destroy us all with this new alliance.”

  “Not with his brothers behind him.”

  “That’s not going to happen. More and more of them will realize that I’m right, that Cale is the wrong man for the job. This is about family, Colin. I thought you’d understand that.”

  “And Sylvia? What about her?”

  That stopped him for a moment then his face flushed hot. “I’ve done everything for her, to make sure she’s safe, to give her back her respect.”

  He flung a hand toward James. “By letting that madman torture her?”

  Wesley sobered. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. Rosie was supposed to keep her safe.” He’d sent his girlfriend, James’s devious cousin, to smooth the way for his half-sister’s return into their fold. “But that didn’t work out so well.” He glared at their other brother. “That’s when plans changed. I convinced James that he could never lead us, but if he wanted to survive, he could follow by my side. He may be certifiable, but he does have resources. Sylvia and I will be the new rulers of our clan, just as our mother intended.”

  And then Colin could see it, that glimmer of madness that had driven Wes and Sylvia’s shared mother Martine to destroy her own to save herself.

  “And what about Turow?” he asked, hoping to rattle Wes into seeing things clearly. “You think he’d go along with this? That she’d just abandon him to side with you? You want to force her to make that choice?”

  “There wasn’t supposed to be a choice for her to make. Another of Jamie’s screw ups.”

  Colin winced at his cold tone. “You were going to kill Row? Your sister’s mate?”

  “Not because I wanted to,” he shouted in frustration. “I thought she could sway him, but he convinced her to see his side. So Jamie said he’d see to him. Like I said, he has uses. Stevie was supposed to take him out in that fight, but damned that Turow, he’s a tough bastard.”

  “You didn’t think she’d find out? That she’d forgive you?”

  “She’s our mother’s daughter. She would have joined the winning side whether she liked it or not.”

  Even knowing better, Colin decided not argue the point.

  Wes shrugged. “So, what’s your plan now that you know?”

  “My plan? I sure as hell am not going to let you two go.”

  “You’d take us both back home to humiliate us and ruin our families?” Wes blinked in disbelief.

  “I’m not doing that. You did that when you made the insane choice to agree with that lunatic!”

  “Cale’ll kill us, Colin. You know he will.”

  It always came down to that ugly solution. Some would have to die so the others could thrive. Colin had come to New Orleans in hopes of finding another way, a way to save them all. But all he’d done was postpone the inevitable. He saw that now, and it was destroying him.

  Watching his expression carefully, Wes advanced another idea. “We could silence James and then no one would know but the two of us.”

  “I’d know. And I’m not willing to live with any more lies. Not unless I was convinced you’d never harm anyone else I love. And I don’t think there’s anything you could say that would convince me of that now.”

  Wes’s voice raised, growing impassioned, not to persuade but in self-preservation. “You’d hurt my sister the same way Turow did, by blindly following a fool.”

  “I would never have put her in that position to begin with. Don’t try to put your crap on me. You’ve got two choices, go home and face Cale like a man and trust our family is strong enough to survive the truth of what you’ve done, or we’ll take care of it here.”

  His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How?”

  “By making it right.”

  James’s crazed laugh interrupted. “He wants you to fall on your sword, you moron.” He straightened within his shackles, mocking their confrontation with a wry smirk.

  “Shut up, Jamie.”

  “Let me go,” James shouted at Wes. “We can kill him and Turow, and no one would be the wiser.”

  Colin studied Wes’s expression, watching the war of indecision tear at his conscience.

  “Do that,” he suggested. “Michael, Derrick, Row, me, Cale. Who’d be left for you to lead? What would you tell Rico and Kip? They know you’re here. Kip’s been tracing your accounts. How do you know he hasn’t already tipped Cale? Are you going to murder us all so you can sit on a throne with no one to lead? And what about Kendra and Sylvia? You don’t think they’ll ask questions? You gonna kill a pregnant female and your own sister? Where will it stop, Wes?” He paused to let that sink in then added quietly, “Let it stop here. Go to Cale. Confess what you’ve done. How do you want your family to remember you?”

  “Don’t listen to him, Wes!”

  Colin held his brother’s stare. James’s cry never caused a flicker. “Row will take care of her, Wes. You know that. She loves him, and he’d sacrifice anything for her. Would you?”

  Wes drew a shaky breath and let it out slowly. “You’re a good man, Colin.”

  A wry smile. “Not so good. But I am your brother, and I care about you and about Sylvie. You think Jamie does?”

  Wes considered that and shook his head. “No. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass. He’s like our father in that.” He put out his hand. “Thanks, Col.”

  When Colin accepted the gesture, Wes gripped hard and jerked him fiercely forward to pull him off balance as his own eyes went red and his ugly snarl revealed sharp teeth. Colin reacted to that threat without hesitation, as Wes had likely intended, his fist shattering his brother’s ribcage, sending splintered fragments into his heart. Their gazes held. And Wesley Terriot smiled faintly as dark blood seeped from the corners of his mouth. Colin sank to the floor, holding him, easing him down into his final rest.

  That’s how Turow found him, on his knees, their brother’s body in his arms. His pale gaze jumped to James where he sat still bound and helpless in the chair then back as Colin raised his head to look up through glistening eyes.

  “Col? What happened?”

  “I didn’t have any choice. How am I going to tell Sylvie I couldn’t save him? That I killed him?”

  Turow’s hand was on his shoulder, pressing firmly as he drew conclusions from what he saw and heard in his brother’s anguished confession. “We’ll tell her together when we take him home to set his spirit free. We’ll tell her Jamie killed him while trying to escape.”

  James laughed. “I’m just supposed to go along with that?”

  Turow met his gaze. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  James sat frozen in his chair too stunned for words. At first. “You don’t have to do this,” he argued in a panicked rush. His focus jumped to Colin. “You’re supposed to take me back! You can’t let him do this.”

  “He’s not letting me do anything,” Row corrected. “Cale told me I’d have the privilege of ending you when you no longer had a value.”

  “I do!” he yelped. “I know things. I’ll tell you everything.”

  Turow looked to Colin. “Could we believe anything that came out of his mouth?”

  Colin shook his head. “No. He’d just try to blackmail us by threatening to tell Sylvia about Wes. She’s already had enough pain in her life.”

  “Yes,” Turow agreed. “She has.” He faced their other sibling, his eyes gleaming hot, flashing red and silver. “You hurt her. I heard her screams, felt her pain and could do nothing to stop you. That was then. This is now.”

  With a swift swing of his arm, Turow’s claws ripped across James’s throat.

  The click of the lock woke Mia from her uneasy slumber on the couch. A glance at the clock brought a frown. Two a.m.? Before the questions started flying, she reminded herself of the rules she’d insisted upon . . . without re
alizing how difficult they’d be for her to follow.

  The sight of his large silhouette woke a complicated stirring inside her. Lust, of course. She couldn’t look at him, hell, think of him, without wanting him. But what surprised her was the deep, comforting sense of completion. Her mate was home. All was well.

  “Hey. I didn’t mean to wake you. I’ve got to grab some things and a quick shower.”

  Something was wrong. Nothing betrayed itself in his face. The lines there were hewn in granite, his stare steady and unblinking. Her worry spiked. “What’s happened?”

  His moves were quick and efficient, stripping out of his coat, keys on the counter, words crisp. And brittle. “My brothers James and Wesley died tonight. I won’t be gone long. I need to take them home, fill Cale in. And see Sylvie.”

  Then she noticed his hands as the sudden, strong kitchen light came on. The way they shook in tiny tremors.

  Mia surged off the couch, wincing at the pain of that abrupt movement. She hurried toward him, not missing the way he backed up to avoid contact, his gaze sliding away and down before she could read what was in it. She placed a staying hand on his arm, feeling muscle tighten to the point of trembling. “Colin? Talk to me.”

  “I need to tell her . . . I need to tell her how her brother died. How sorry I am that I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t save him, Mia. I tried. I did everything I knew how to do. I gave him every chance to do the right thing.”

  Alarm warred with concern, forcing her to keep her distance, to let him deal with whatever was tearing him up inside. There was blood on his coat that wasn’t his. “What happened?”

  “I killed him, Mia.”

  Her heart twisted at his predictable response of accepting the weight of consequence for every awful deed. “You can’t blame yourself. The choices he made weren’t your fault.”

  He spoke forcefully, concisely so there would be no mistake. “Mia. I. Killed. Him.”

  She stared up at him, seeing those strong lines crack and begin to dissolve. As his gaze liquefied, realization struck as hard as the sight of his vulnerability before he looked away again. “It was Wesley,” she surmised. “He betrayed your family.”

  “I didn’t want it to be. Wes and Jamie and I, we understood each other. We talked about ways to overthrow our father. And then out of nowhere, Cale, the last of us we thought would rise up, tore through our family like a tornado, sucking us into his damage path. He had this way of making us believe in him. And it was so perfect, Mia, like the things my dad, my step-father,” he corrected out of habit, “used to speak of before the wrong people heard him talking.

  “Then it started to fall apart. Maybe because of who we are, of how we were raised, to fear and doubt and scheme and lie to get to the top of the food chain. Jamie splintered off first, played by Wes’s mother. I didn’t know Wes followed him down that path. He forced me to kill him to spare his sister.” He looked to her again, his gaze dissolving in guilt and pain. “What am I going to tell her, Mia? What am I going to say to Sylvia?”

  “What does she need to hear?” was her simple response.

  “The truth. I can’t lie to her after so many others have.”

  “Is it a truth she needs to hear, or one you have to tell? She trusts you to love and protect her. Do that, Colin. Be the friend she deserves.”

  He struggled with that, features pinched with an agony of indecision. “What would you want me to say if it was you?” His soft petition devastated.

  She held his needful stare and gave compassionate weight to his question. Did it lessen her brother’s loss knowing how his fate was delivered? Gone was gone. A void never filled, an absence ever present. Mia answered from her heart. “No. I wouldn’t want to know. If you can carry it, don’t give her that burden.”

  His eyes closed, a single track scoring his cheek. She reached up, cupping the back of his head, drawing him down to her shoulder, holding him there as she whispered, “What do you need to hear from me? That you’re a good man? You are. That you did the right thing? You did. No matter what you do, you can’t bring him back, you can’t make him choose differently, you can’t take away the news that will break her heart. But you can carry that truth so she doesn’t have to. And then I can carry you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  While Colin showered, Mia packed a bag for him, giving him the time and space to purge his grief. When he emerged from the bathroom, façade and emotions firmly in control, she stepped into his embrace.

  “I wish you could go with me,” he confessed somberly.

  Mia placed her palm over his heart. “I’ll be here. Always.”

  His big hand covered hers for a gentle squeeze then he moved away, picking up his bag, carrying it into the kitchen where he shrugged into his coat. She’d cleaned the blood off the leather as best she could. Keys in hand, he started for the door.

  “Colin? Aren’t you going to kiss me good-bye?”

  He stopped but didn’t turn. “I don’t think so. I just got my shit together, and I’d have to scrape it all back up again. I won’t be gone long.”

  “Okay.”

  Hand on the knob, he paused. His bag hit the floor. She was in his arms before he’d fully turned, their lips engaged in a hurried, fierce exchange that gentled on a tender heartbeat.

  “I love you, Mia,” he whispered against her yet-bruised lips, tone a low, seismic rumble. “Knowing you’re here means everything to me.”

  “Good.” She stroked his face, reluctant to let go despite her courageous front. “Follow your heart, not your conscience.”

  He held her close, just breathing her in, absorbing her heat and her love. And something else. He didn’t know what it was. A small, strong spark of sensation, there then gone. Before he could puzzle over it, Mia stepped back, straightened his coat, smoothing the leather with her palms as her gaze adored him.

  “Be safe . . . my prince.”

  A huge bonfire broke with the dawn across Lake Tahoe, sending the spirits of Wesley and James Terriot to their rest beyond as was the tradition of the family huddled together on that cold, stark morning.

  The numbness spreading through Colin wasn’t caused by the stinging bits of snow slashing his unprotected face, freezing the dampness along the rim of his lashes before it had a chance to fall. It lay deep within, a small cube of anguish continuing to build into an iceberg of dread and inevitable consequence. Because, without knowing what was on it, Turow had delivered the tape of his conversation with James to Cale.

  There hadn’t been time for any of them to speak since they arrived, except for Row to his mate, breaking the news of Wesley’s death. Sylvia stood between them, strong, dry-eyed, not leaning into either of them as she watched her brother’s body go up in purifying flames. As the fire guttered out, her small hand nudged into Colin’s. He couldn’t let go, his fingers squeezing as tight as the crush about his heart.

  He had to leave her as the remaining princes in the House followed their king to the still-hot pyre, each releasing two handfuls of ash into that tearing wind, carrying the essence of two lost souls over the trees and across the cold waters below.

  While their dwindling number moved somberly toward the lodge to gather for hot coffee and a fortifying meal, Kip bumped Colin’s elbow.

  “Cale wants to see you in his office.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  At least he wouldn’t have long to wait for the axe to fall.

  The fire roaring in the great hall’s huge-throated hearth reminded Colin too much of the ashes he’d left behind for him to think of stopping where tables were laid out for their repast. Michael. Derrick. His step-father and brothers. Now James and Wes. He moved quickly through the gathering, nodding at words directed his way but not hearing them.

  He knocked once on the closed door to Cale’s office and obeyed his king’s command to enter the way he would a request of whether he wanted a blindfold before a firing squad.

  Cale stood on the far sid
e of the room, hands clasped behind his presented back. Colin’s stomach dropped when he saw the other two perched on the couches. Kendra and Sylvia.

  “My king.” He stood like a statue by the door.

  “We need to talk about your conversation with Jamie.” Cale’s tone betrayed nothing.

  “What about it, my king?”

  “What about it?” Cale echoed with a harsh laugh. “Are you kidding me?”

  Kendra spoke up. “Gently, my king.”

  Cale didn’t turn. “How much of it was fact and how much fiction? Stevie?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll leave that to you to find out. I told him just enough fact for him to buy into the rest.”

  “The rest being you willing to betray your king and join him in treason.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good to know at least.” His king didn’t sound relieved. He sounded pissed as hell. “And the part about me fucking around behind my queen’s back? Would you call that fact or fiction?”

  Colin’s reply vibrated like the beginning of an earthquake. “You’d know that answer better than me, wouldn’t you?”

  Cale whirled about, his features florid with rage. “Where do you get off talking shit like that?”

  Unsettled by the guilty party’s fury, Colin struck back just as angrily. “Where do you get off questioning my honor?”

  “Stop!” Kendra rose, putting a palm up toward each brother to halt more unretractable words. While Sylvia sat composed and silent, their queen crossed to Colin, resting her hands atop his shoulders. The empathy in her soft gaze sent a quiver of doubt through him.

  “I’m sorry, Colin. We should never have questioned your integrity. Forgive us . . . forgive me for reading the wrong things into your actions. Forgive me for hurting you with my foolish doubts. I should have spoken directly to you about my suspicions. Can you forgive me?”

  He swallowed hard. “Yes, my queen.”

  “The thought of you, of believing that you might plot against us, was almost too painful to bear because of how much we love you and depend on you.”