There had to be something blocking the strings under the old grand’s cover. She stood up and careful y lifted the heavy black lid.
An envelope was tucked inside. She knew the vel um paper. It was from her father’s personal supply.
Devony retrieved the envelope, then closed the piano cover and sat back down on the bench.
Her fingers trembled as she careful y tore open the seal. A single printed photograph was al the envelope contained.
Devony stared at the picture, her breath leaking out of her on a gasp. “Oh, my God.”
CHAPTER 26
Rafe knocked on the doorjamb of his commander’s office.
Chase looked up from the scattered papers and photographs on his desk, an expression of mild surprise on his face. “You look a hel of a lot
better than you did when I saw you a few hours ago.”
“Yes, sir.” Rafe stood at attention, dressed in his black patrol uniform, his face shaved clean and hair trimmed into some semblance of control.
He was steady on his feet now, al traces of the agony from Devony’s parting shot subsided. Al except the pain that had taken up residence in his heart. He didn’t expect that would be dissipating anytime soon. As in, never.
Not as long as he and Devony were apart.
“Come in,” Chase said. He had patrol team plans for tonight and other mission materials on his desk, along with some of the files and photos
Rafe had taken from Devony’s brownstone.
“I just got off a cal with Lucan,” Chase said. “The intel you and Devony supplied has given us multiple avenues to investigate, both from here in Boston and D.C. Gideon thinks it’l take days to unpack it al , but we’ve got a good start on several new leads as we speak.”
Rafe inclined his head. “I’m glad it’s proving useful. I can’t take any of the credit for it, though. That belongs solely to Devony. And to her father as wel .”
Chase nodded. “We owe them both a debt, especial y if any of these new leads prove out. Gideon says Roland Winters’s handwritten notes seem
to indicate he suspected his files may not be safe at JUSTIS.”
“That’s what Devony thought too. Her father kept his research at the Boston Darkhaven, not at home in London. I think he knew if anything
happened to him, his work would be safest with her. I think he wanted her to be the one to find it, because he knew she would do something about it.”
Rafe had the past several hours to consider everything that had happened during his time with Devony. She had told him that her family pushed
her away from law enforcement, tried to shelter her, but it seemed to him that her father understood what she was capable of. He knew the kind of strong, competent, determined woman she was.
Roland Winters had to know that if he left a torch burning behind him, no matter how dim, Devony would be the best person—perhaps the only one
—he trusted to pick it up and run with it to the end.
Chase’s brows rose. “She’s a special woman. Takes courage to go after men like Ricardo Cruz and Judah LaSal e the way she did. And to think
she meant to fol ow their trail al the way to Opus’s inner circle if it took her there? She had no idea what she was up against.”
“She didn’t care what she was up against,” Rafe said, unable to keep the pride out of his voice when he spoke about the woman he loved.
“Devony wanted justice for what was done to her family. I don’t expect she’s changed her mind about that now. What happened here—the way I
hurt her—isn’t going to slow her down for a minute.”
“She’s tenacious,” Chase remarked.
Rafe smiled and shook his head. “She is . . . extraordinary. She’s the most incredible woman I know. And I let her go.”
Chase grunted, a wry twist to his mouth. “Didn’t look like she gave you much choice, the way she cut your legs out from under you.”
“I deserved it. I hurt her, and I deserved every bit of the pain she left me with. Devony said I should’ve told her about my mission, that I was working covert for the Order. She said I could’ve trusted her to keep it a secret. But to do that, I would’ve had to break my trust with you. With Lucan and my teammates. I would’ve had to choose.”
Sterling Chase leaned back in his chair, a solemnity in his face and in his tone. “That’s a lot for anyone to ask of one of us.”
“Yes, sir.” Rafe exhaled a heavy sigh. “But it shouldn’t have been for me.”
He reached for the buckle on his weapons belt and unfastened it. Then he careful y laid it atop the patrol plans on his commander’s desk.
“The Order has been my life from the time I was born. It’s my family, as important to me as my mother and father. My teammates, my
commanders, everyone in the Order. I would lay down my life for any one of you, any day of the week. But I’m in love with Devony Winters. She’s my mate by blood.” He swore softly and shook his head. “She’s everything that matters to me.”
It was the truth.
He’d come back from Montreal with vengeance burning a hole in his bel y. He’d thought going after Opus Nostrum—destroying them single-
handedly—was the one thing he wanted more than anything else. He thought retribution was al he was living for.
Now, he wanted something else even more.
Devony’s forgiveness.
He wanted her future, with him at her side.
And he wasn’t going to let another second pass without going after her.
“You know, you can’t take back what you’ve done, son.” Chase gave him a sympathetic look. “Someday, I’l tel you al the ways I fucked up with Tavia. I know my friend Dante’s got plenty of similar stories where your mother, Tess, is concerned.”
“But Tavia forgave you. My mother forgave my father,” Rafe said, finding some hope in those truths. “That’s al I want from Devony, too. I’l spend the rest of my life trying to make things right between us. But first I need to find out if she’l have me.”
And to do that, he needed to get his ass on a flight to London as soon as possible.
The commander sat forward, his fingers steepled in front of him. “I had a feeling you were going to say that. And that’s why I put Mathias Rowan’s return trip to London on standby this afternoon. He’s waiting for you in the war room.”
Rafe didn’t even try to curb the grin that broke over his face. He reached for the elder warrior’s hand and gave it a firm shake. “Thank you, sir.”
Chase gave him a tight nod. Then he slid the weapons belt back toward Rafe. “You keep this. I’m not about to let one of my best warriors go that easily.”
Rafe put the belt back around his hips and fastened it, giving his commander a nod of gratitude.
Then he left the room in a flash of motion to go catch his waiting ride to London.
CHAPTER 27
Propping her elbows on the desk in her father’s office, Devony held the sides of her head in her splayed fingers and blew out a tired sigh.
Her temples throbbed. Her eyebal s felt seared to a crisp after several hours of obsessive—albeit fruitless—searching for answers about the
photograph she’d found.
Or, rather, the photograph her father had left for her to find.
Because there could be no doubt about that. There was no other reason for him to secret something like that inside an instrument no one else
would give a second look.
She picked up the printed picture and stared at it for what had to be the hundredth time since she took it out of the envelope. No matter how many times she stared at it, the image continued to confuse her.
It was a printed copy of a candid photograph, snapped at some type of social gathering. Within the crowd of people stood three men: her brother, Harrison; business tycoon Reginald Crowe; and another man snapped just as he’d begun to turn his face away from the camera.
Devony recognized Crowe. Anyone would. One of the wealt
hiest men in the world, he had also been one of the most dangerous, as it turned out.
Earlier this year, he had led Opus Nostrum’s effort to plant an ultraviolet bomb at a Global Nations Council peace summit. He would have gotten away with it, had it not been for the Order.
And now she recal ed that among her father’s research at the Back Bay brownstone were port logs dating back as far as two years ago
concerning shipment activities for Crowe Industries. Her father had been scrutinizing Crowe more than a year before the incident at the peace
summit.
Why was Harrison standing there chatting with Reginald Crowe like old chums in the photo? Had it been part of his covert work with JUSTIS?
Devony didn’t recognize the third man. Evidently, her father hadn’t, either. He’d drawn a circle around the man’s semi-obscured profile and had jotted a question mark on the image.
She had spent the past six hours scouring the internet for information or other images, and running facial recognition apps to see if she could find anything out about the unknown man. She had even logged in to JUSTIS’s secured site using her father’s credentials she’d memorized—the ID
and password she thought he’d carelessly left in his safe behind her mother’s portrait in Boston.
Now, she wondered if he’d wanted her to have that information too. Maybe he’d left al of his notes and research for her to pick up in his absence.
For al the good it did.
She had lost everything to Opus’s firebombing and to the Order. And tonight she had found exactly nothing on the mysterious third man.
If her father thought she could resolve the question for him after his death, he had given her too much credit. Al the photograph had done was raise a lot of troubling questions in her mind.
As did the date he’d scrawled onto the envelope. The day before the bombing at JUSTIS’s London headquarters.
Had he known about the danger? Had he some inkling of what was about to happen?
She dismissed both notions immediately. Her father never would have let his beloved wife and son get anywhere near that building if he feared it might be compromised. He would have sounded a swift and very vocal alarm within the organization the instant he suspected there might be
trouble brewing.
So, no. He couldn’t have known any of that.
But he had been concerned enough about his son and the two men in the photo to place it somewhere she would eventual y discover it, should
anything happen to him.
God, she hated to think that he might have feared for his own safety.
Or that he feared for her brother’s and had been unable to protect him in the end.
Could the third man have had something to do with the attack on JUSTIS? Had Harrison been the true target of a bombing that had kil ed so
many?
Her mind swam with a thousand possible scenarios and tangled theories, each one seeming to give birth to many more.
Obviously, she had spent too much time sitting behind her father’s workstation tonight. Her obsessive need for information and answers was
beginning to wear on her body and her mind.
She got up from the desk and stretched, realizing she hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink since she arrived. Being a daywalker, she didn’t need nourishment the way humans did. She didn’t need to consume blood every few days the way Rafe and other members of the Breed did, either.
She’d drunk from human blood Hosts before, but how she would ever do that again after she’d tasted Rafe’s blood, she had no idea. She didn’t
want to think about that eventuality.
She didn’t want to think about Rafe at al , but he’d been living in her thoughts al night, just as he lived in her blood through their bond.
Forever.
She didn’t even have to concentrate to feel his presence inside her now. He felt almost close enough to touch, which was a particularly harsh cruelty when she knew she had closed the door on her relationship with him—literal y and figuratively.
But, wishful thinking or not, the comforting buzz in her veins accompanied her as she headed into the kitchen to make some tea.
Her anger with Rafe had ebbed hours ago. Her hurt was stil raw, her heart stil frayed and aching, but she couldn’t hate him. She hadn’t ever hated him, not even a little.
She loved him.
And more than anything, she wanted to see him again.
As she put the kettle on and rummaged for the tea and a mug, she realized that it wasn’t only her anger that had faded.
During the months fol owing her family’s deaths, she had been driven by grief and fury. Revenge was what she lived for, not doing what was right or just. Those noble principles that she’d admired growing up, even aspired to, had morphed into something ugly and reckless after the JUSTIS
bombing.
She had lost her grounding once she set out to avenge her loved ones. It had been buried by her pain over her family’s murders, turned into a
poisonous hatred that had hardened her to the world around her. It had hardened her heart.
She stil wanted Opus Nostrum to pay for her family’s slaying and everyone else in the London office that awful night, but her personal vendetta had galvanized into something stronger, steelier.
A sense of purpose, not vigilantism.
Coming to know Rafe had done that for her. Partnering with him in a shared cause, opening herself up to him as a friend and confidante, as a
lover.
He had made her realize she didn’t want to be alone on her quest. She wanted to be part of something more.
With him.
The kettle whined on the stove. Devony poured hot water over the diffuser and breathed in the soothing, orange-and-spice fragrance of the loose tea leaves.
She felt an odd prickle at the back of her neck as she took the first careful sip.
Her head came up, and she listened for a moment to the utter silence of the empty Darkhaven.
She didn’t hear anything, but she was certain she wasn’t alone inside the house now.
A jolt of hopefulness arrowed through her. “Rafe?”
No one answered. Holding her steaming mug, she padded out of the kitchen to the short hal way that led out to the foyer.
If Rafe were close, shouldn’t she feel his presence through their bond? She felt certain she would, but her hope was irrational as she stepped into the open area at the front entrance of the Darkhaven.
It wasn’t Rafe.
The instant her gaze lit on who stood there, her tea slipped out of her grasp. She didn’t even feel the hot liquid splashing against her bare feet and ankles as the mug crashed to the tiles in front of her. Her heart was too ful , her mind too stunned, to feel anything except disbelief and a surge of overwhelming joy.
“Harrison?”
Her brother looked thinner than she recal ed him, his handsome face a little gaunt against the bright copper-penny color of his brush-cut hair.
Devony stepped around the spil on the floor, elation almost sending her racing forward to embrace him.
Almost.
Something halted her. She wasn’t sure why she hesitated, but uncertainty stil ed her footsteps. Her instincts seemed to freeze her limbs despite the desperate hope bubbling inside her.
“Harry.” She wrapped her arms around herself instead of him. “My God. Is it real y you?”
His mouth curved. “It’s me, Dovey.”
His nickname for her from the time they were children. It should have comforted her, but somehow, paired with the odd look on his face, the
endearment rang hol ow now, his voice airless and strange.
“But . . . how are you here?” She shook her head, torn between confusion and astonishment. “Where have you been al this time? Why didn’t you
try to contact me? Does this also mean that Mum and Dad are—”
He shook his head. “They’re gone.”
“Gone.” The word felt so cold, so inconsequential fal ing off his tongue. She knew it was simply a fact, however painful.
Yet she felt their deaths settle on her al over again now that she was looking at her brother, alive and wel . Somehow, miraculously, unharmed.
“They’re more than gone, Harrison. They’re dead. You al were, at least that’s what I’ve believed al this time. You, our parents, and a hundred other people who were also in that building when the bomb took it down. Yet here you are.”
He tilted his head as she spoke. “I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
“I am. You have no idea how many times I’ve wished to see you—al of you—again. But I’m . . . confused.” God, she only wished she were
confused. Because the most logical explanation for him to be standing in front of her right now was one that sent a chil into her veins. “How is it possible? There were no survivors. Opus left nothing but rubble behind that night. So, please explain to me how you were the only person to
escape that blast?”
“We’re at war, Dovey.” He took a step toward her. “People get hurt in war. People die.”
A feeling of nausea swept over her at his bland tone. “I’m not talking about war. I’m talking about cold-blooded murder. Opus Nostrum kil ed our parents. They kil ed your col eagues at JUSTIS. As of now, they also want to kil me.” She exhaled a shaky breath as she stared into the face of this emotionless semblance of her brother. This stranger. “I don’t suppose I need to tel you that, though. Do I?”
When he didn’t deny it, something shattered inside her. The part of her that had loved her brother, admired him as a hero for his commitment to upholding the law. The part of her that had mourned him these past five months alongside her parents.
“How long, Harry? When did Opus get their hooks into you?”
He shrugged, approaching a couple more steps. “Does it matter?”
“It does to me. Were you already on their side when Reginald Crowe tried to detonate his bomb at the summit earlier this year?” He didn’t answer, which was answer enough. Devony scoffed. “What happened? How did they brainwash you?”
“Brainwash?” He chuckled. “I’m seeing clearly for the first time because of Opus. They want peace—true and lasting peace. But they know it won’t come to fruition without war. A big war, one that can reset the balance of power and put better minds in charge. Stronger minds.”
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