He knew.
He knew she wasn’t human. Whether or not he’d guessed she was Breed or something close to it, she couldn’t be sure.
Devony didn’t stick around to find out. She hadn’t been able to get away from him fast enough. She’d fled the penthouse party for home, and for the rest of the night she worried about what he might say to Fish or the others.
She stil worried now, because if he had given Cruz or anyone else a reason to doubt her, it would undo everything.
Al her hard work and planning. Al the sacrifices she’d made to get even this far.
Al the promises she’d made through bitter tears and a seemingly bottomless pain.
Devony steeled herself to the anguish that stil had a firm hold on her. Taking the kettle off the heat, she fixed herself a cup of strong tea and carried it through the spacious first floor of the Darkhaven.
The brownstone was hers now, but had been in her family for decades. She had lived in it on her own while attending university in Boston the past two years. Her plans for a career in music were over now, although that was the least thing she missed. She hadn’t stepped foot in her classes in months, but she stayed in the old house because she couldn’t bear to return home to London.
Not after what had happened.
Not until she had upheld her vow to make it right, to make someone pay.
Maybe she wouldn’t even return then.
In the grand, bookshelf-lined study her father’s carved oak desk stood like an immense, unbreakable sentry. Fitting, considering she’d always
thought of him in much the same way. Her protector, her champion, her shining knight.
She smiled wistful y, picturing him in the room that was fil ed with so many of his cherished treasures. His books and col ectibles, his chessboard where he used to patiently teach her and her brother about logic and strategy and the patience required to win a war. Across from the big desk
hung a painted portrait of her beautiful, dark-haired mother, a piece he’d had commissioned especial y for that very spot on his study wal so he could see his beloved mate even when their work kept them apart.
Devony’s gaze sought out another picture, the framed family photograph on the edge of her father’s old desk. It greeted her in this room each
morning, a reminder of those better times.
Devony pressed her fingertip to her lips, then touched each of the three smiling Breed faces that surrounded her in the photo. Her handsome,
ginger-haired father, Roland Winters. Her daywalker mother, Camil a. And her older brother, Harrison, who’d also been born a daywalker, just like Devony.
They were al the family she’d had. She let her fingers rest on the cold glass that covered them.
“I love you,” she whispered in the emptiness of the room.
Then she slid her hand beneath the edge of the desk and pushed the button that was concealed on the underside.
One of the enormous built-in bookcases opened silently on its hinges. Behind it was a room her father had designed as a security feature of the large home. The hidden space had been constructed during the time not long after the Breed’s existence had been revealed to mankind. Back
when wars between the races had been a terrifying new normal.
Daytime raids on Breed households by humans afraid of their night-dwel ing neighbors were epidemic. Retaliations were brutal and blood-
soaked.
Those wars that fol owed First Dawn had been mostly extinguished in the twenty years that passed since then, thanks in no smal part to the work of the Order. The law enforcement officers of the Joint Urban Security Taskforce Initiative Squad around the world had helped too.
But hatred was a difficult disease to wipe out completely. It festered in silence, invading wherever it found the slightest purchase.
It waited for the opportunity to spread.
Waited for a new carrier to come along and give it fresh life.
And now it had found one in the terrorist group cal ing themselves Opus Nostrum.
Devony walked inside the former panic room and let her gaze travel over the maps and photos and dossiers that covered each of the four wal s.
Red strings attached to pins connected some of those individuals to others on the wal . Drug dealers, gangbangers, petty criminals. Corporation heads, politicians, community leaders. A few weeks ago, she’d added photos of Ricardo Cruz, Wayne Fishbaugh, Vincent Axelrod, and Eugene
“Ocho” Snyder.
Many of the faces she’d added to the wal s now had a large “X” drawn on them.
Before this was over, she expected to eliminate numerous more.
Because this room served a new purpose now.
No longer a place for panic, but one for cold and steady justice.
It was aiding in a new war—a very personal one.
Devony took a sip of her tea as her gaze moved along the images and connecting lines she’d established between groups and individuals.
Eventual y, she would find the link that led her to Opus. One day, she would pay them back for what they had taken from her.
Until then, she had to have patience.
And she was not about to let the former warrior from the Order knock her off that course.
CHAPTER 5
Devony rode her Triumph into the parking lot behind Snyder’s Exotic Auto in Roxbury.
At 10 PM on a weekend, Ocho’s garage had been closed for several hours but a dim light glowed from the smal windows above the two bays out
front. Cruz’s dark gray Lambo was sitting in the nearly empty lot next to the rest of the group’s vehicles.
They were al here ahead of her. That didn’t exactly ease the niggle of anxiety that had been troubling her from the moment she’d received Cruz’s text, instructing her to come for a meeting at the gang’s unofficial headquarters.
Al day, she’d been plagued with paranoia about her standing in the group.
It was bad enough that she nearly revealed herself to them at Asylum. Then, at Judah LaSal e’s party, she had practical y bolted from the place after her unnerving run-in with Rafe on the terrace.
Had anyone noticed her extreme discomfiture around the Breed male?
Had she given them any reason to suspect why he made her so nervous?
Or, worse, had he voiced his suspicions about her to Fish or the others after she was gone?
“Get a grip,” she muttered to herself under her breath. If she had been compromised, she would just have to deal with that swiftly and on her own terms.
She hadn’t yet found solid evidence that Cruz and his friends were in league with Opus Nostrum, but they were far from choir boys. If things went south with them here tonight, she had no problem counting them as col ateral damage in her quest for answers . . . and for retribution.
Devony kil ed the Triumph’s growling engine and swung off the seat. With her helmet secured on the back of the bike, she headed for the rear
entrance of the garage and went inside.
The door was unlocked, the low rumble of conversation and intermittent chuckles leading her to the manager’s office where Cruz, Ocho, Axel, and Fish were seated.
She met their inquisitive stares with cool, measured confidence. “Looks like I’m late.”
Fish careful y shook his shaggy head. He was wearing sunglasses and looked to be nursing a protracted hangover. “I just rol ed in five minutes
ago. What happened to you last night, Brinks? One second you were chatting it up with Rafe, the next you were gone.”
“Gone?” Devony shrugged as if she hardly recal ed. “No, I hung around for a while. Not that any of you would’ve noticed the way you three were
sucking down the drinks and drooling over the women.”
Axel chortled. “You jealous, Brinks?”
“Excuse me?”
From behind his metal desk, Ocho smirked. “If you prefer chicks, that’s cool. It’d be even cooler if you let us watch sometime.”
/> “What the hel are you talking about?”
He held up his hands in mock surrender and it took al she had not to reach out and snap off the three fingers he had left on his right hand.
Fish snickered. “Rafe told us what happened between you two last night.”
Oh, shit. The statement made some of the blood drain from her face. She had no fear of these human men, but confusion and dread had her pulse
hammering in her temples. “He told you what, exactly?”
“Said he made a move on you,” Axel said. “He told us you shut him down hard.”
Fish grinned. “Actual y, what he said was that he thought you were gonna try to kick his ass, and that’s about the time I walked up. I saw you were pissed at him, but damn, girl. Are you suicidal too? You couldn’t touch him if you tried. He’s a fucking Breed.”
So, they didn’t know anything. Thank God.
They didn’t know, because Rafe kept their conversation to himself.
She wasn’t sure if she felt relieved or even more deeply concerned. Why would he lie for her? And what did he think he could demand in return?
Al she knew was, she didn’t want to find out.
Devony kept her silence as the three men continued making jokes and laughing.
Cruz didn’t seem to share their amusement. His text to her had seemed al business, and his sober attitude now only confirmed it. “You three
boneheads about done? I didn’t bring you al here for shits and giggles.”
“What’s going on?” Devony asked him.
“We’ve got a gig on the docket for tonight. A big one.” He pul ed a brochure out of the pocket of his leather jacket and held it out to her.
She stared at the advertisement for an upcoming Impressionist art exhibit on loan to one of the city’s museums. Nearly a dozen masterpieces
soon to be on public display, each one easily worth mil ions. But not in the hands of a bunch of thieves like Cruz and his gang.
She glanced up at him. “You can’t be serious. Even if you get your hands on them, they’l be worthless to you. You’l never be able to fence them.”
His mouth quirked in the center of his goatee. “Don’t worry about that. I’ve got it covered.”
“What about security? We’l never even make it inside, let alone get close to the art.” She shook her head, not wanting to be a party to this at al .
“There’l be guards posted around the clock. Alarms on the doors and windows, even on the exhibits.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Got al that covered too.”
“Covered how?”
“Rafe,” Fish said, looking at her over the tops of his dark sunglasses. “Turns out, he’s looking for work. Lucky for us.”
“Lucky?” She gaped at Fish, then swung her disbelief in Cruz’s direction. “Tel me you’re joking.”
But he wasn’t. His face was pure resolve. “You said it yourself, we’l never get inside unless we can take care of the guards and the security
systems. We need the vampire to get it done.”
No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening.
Her stomach sank, cold and leaden. Al her hopes of keeping Rafe at a safe distance—not only for her personal goals, but for her state of mind—
were evaporating by the second.
“He’s a Breed warrior, Cruz. Are you forgetting that until recently he was part of the Order?”
“I haven’t forgotten that for a minute.”
She pushed the brochure back at him. “I don’t like any of this. Have any of you even stopped to ask yourself why he’s hanging around? He just
shows up in the right place at the right time, and now you open the door and invite him in?”
“Ain’t that what we did with you, Brinks?” Ocho asked, a note of chal enge in his voice.
She sank her teeth into her tongue to keep from letting him goad her. That’s al she needed right now, to lose a grip on her emotions and show
them her fangs or the heat of her Breed irises.
Cruz got up from his chair to face her. “You don’t make the rules around here. I do. And before you go thinking I’m stupid, think again. I’m not about to trust a goddamn vampire without testing him first.”
There was a threat in his airless voice, in the way he practical y spat the word ‘vampire.’ Devony knew Cruz was dangerous. Right now, the
menace rol ing off him was lethal.
“What do you mean, you’re going to test him?”
He merely smiled. “Go get your toolbox, Brinks. You’re gonna need it. I’m putting you to work tonight too.”
It was a dismissal without so many words. A reminder that she was not yet part of them, only an asset they intended to use just as long as it suited them. When she was no longer needed, she would be out. She knew that before, but tonight the message was loud and clear. Which meant she
needed to ramp up her efforts to find out what, if any, their connection was to Opus.
She wouldn’t be able to do that once Rafe was in the picture.
A selfish part of her hoped that he would fail whatever test Cruz had in mind for him. It was the only way she could continue her work on the inside without discovery.
Devony left Cruz and the others behind in Ocho’s office and went out to the parking lot to get her safecracking tools from the lockbox on her bike.
Being Breed, she didn’t need dril s or magnets or other implements in order to break into a safe. Al she needed was the power of her mind. But they could never know that, so she’d faked her way through her first job with the gang several weeks ago and never looked back.
Overhead in the moonlit parking lot, storm clouds bunched sooty against the black night sky. In the distance, she heard the low rumble of thunder.
Except it wasn’t the weather vibrating al the way into her boots now.
It was him.
Rafe, roaring up on his BMW like a shadow in the darkness.
He was the last thing she needed to deal with right now.
She tried to hurry col ecting her kit from her bike but there was no avoiding him. As he entered the gravel lot, she felt his intense eyes on her like warm hands moving over her body. A shiver that had nothing to do with the autumn nip in the air shuddered through her as she glanced his way
and their gazes col ided.
Heat arrowed through her, uninvited.
Ocho and the guys thought she had no use for men. She only wished that were true as she watched Rafe rol toward her now.
It didn’t help that he was as handsome as Adonis. His dark blond hair was a wild tangle from the ride, the lack of helmet only making his thick mane look even more untamed and luxurious as it danced around his impossibly broad shoulders. Irrational y, her fingers itched with the urge to find out if the tousled waves were as soft as they looked.
His hair wasn’t even his best feature. Every inch of him was powerful and immense, pure male perfection that was barely contained beneath his black shirt and leather jacket. Dark denim clung to his muscular legs, which were spread wide to accommodate the bulky body of his motorcycle.
Desire coiled inside her and a sudden vision of him, naked and magnificent, invaded her senses before she could stop it.
Bloody hel . What had gotten into her?
Devony pivoted away from him as he slowed to a stop next to her. Her fingers were usual y nimble and unerring. With awareness of him sending a
dangerous arousal through her senses, she was al thumbs, fumbling to retrieve the compact pack that held her tools.
Behind her, the BMW’s motor quieted, then stopped. The leather seat creaked softly as Rafe got off it and his heavy boots hit the gravel as light as a cat.
“Looks like a storm’s on the way.”
She nearly groaned in agreement. Doing her best to tamp down her body’s reaction to this male, she determinedly left him at her back as she
continued struggling to unfasten the snaps and bungee on her toolkit.
“Need some help with that?”
He reached around her and the heat of the near-contact felt like an open flame to her heightened senses. “Leave it,” she bit off without looking at him. “I didn’t ask for your help.”
Amber sparks tinged her vision. Not good. The spike of her irritation was too sharp. She had to contain herself around him.
She’d already given him enough cause to suspect she was hiding her true nature. She couldn’t afford to confirm it to him now. Not when Cruz was practical y rol ing out the red carpet for him to be part of the gang.
“I see you’re stil upset with me from last night,” he murmured. “I want you to know, I didn’t tel them your secret.”
Even though she already knew that, hearing him say the words was jolting. She continued working furiously on her gear. “I have no idea what
you’re talking about.”
“Real y?” He scoffed under his breath. “That’s how you want to play this?”
He was standing too close, crowding her against her bike. Final y, her impatience hit its limit. With a pulse of mental power, she freed the last cord holding her pack of tools and yanked the kit free. She held it against her like a shield as she pivoted around to face Rafe.
“We done here?”
“No,” he said grimly. “I think you and I are just getting started.”
“Like hel we are.” She stepped past him but didn’t get far. His hand wrapped firmly around her arm, the same way he’d taken hold of her at the party last night. “Let go of me. Now.”
He shook his head. “Not until we talk. We can either do it here right now, or inside, in front of everyone else.”
She glared. “Are you trying to threaten me?”
“Just trying to get to the truth. You’re not what you’re pretending to be.”
“I don’t think you are, either.”
His handsome face remained impassive, but he didn’t deny her accusation. And his grasp on her arm went a bit tighter. She tested his hold,
confident she could break free if she real y wanted to, but not without proving his point.
His eyes searched her face before moving lower. “What are you hiding under your long-sleeved turtlenecks and barbed-wire attitude?”
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