Merchant shook his head. “No, but we need a new Overseer for the Pits.”
“What happened to the last one?”
“His whereabouts are unknown,” the Merchant murmured.
“Killed?”
“If so, it’s not related to the Dungeon.”
“How sure are you?”
“He was a loose cannon.”
Leo resisted smirking. He nodded slowly, guardedly, taking the information on board, considering.Playing the part. Playing the part. Always playing the fucking part. “How much are you asking to replace him?”
“It doesn’t matter,” George cut in, huffing. “We are not interested in the Pits. We are interested in the books. I want to know who to invest in!”
Leo locked eyes with the Merchant, and for a solid moment, they stared at one another, an unspoken agreement forming between them. He didn’t have to see the smile spreading across his face. He could hear it in the big man’s voice when he said, “We’ll look over the books now.”
Yes, to appease George, they would look over the fucking books.
But when Leo found an opening, he was going to come back.
And he was going to take over the Pits.
High Table be damned.
*
“What the fuck were you thinking talking over me like that?” His father huffed after they had slid into the back of the car.
Leo glance quickly at the rear-view, meeting Shane’s eye before coolly giving his father an empty response. “I got excited.”
George shook his head, firing off a slew of curses. “You make me look weak talking over me like that! You make me look like a fucking child, a needy fucking child, repeating myself, demanding something!”
Leo licked his lips, close to telling him that investing in a fighter wasn’t where the money was at. But why try and convince the very man you wanted to dethrone where the true source of power was?
Suddenly, it was all beginning to make sense to Leo.
All those visits at the fucking Dungeon.
Watching the torture, the fucking, the brutal flesh trade before his eyes.
Seeing the darkness, even being reminded of it every time he crossed paths with a certain biker.
He had been scared of it once upon a time. He had shrivelled up inside, felt parts of him rotting and dying until he was this—this—this fuckingthinghe was now. But maybe this thing he was—maybe it was all in preparation for something bigger.
He locked his jaw as Shane drove down the empty roads, his mind firing all sorts of possibilities at him. He was questioning everything, even though it was too late to go back. He wondered what it would mean to go down this different path, one that strayed from the High Table altogether.
Something this bold, this dangerous, this…deceptive, would cost him his life.
Shane kept staring at him, kept trying to meet his eye, because he could feel it, the buzz beneath Leo’s skin. A purpose that was forming before his very eyes. One that would derail him from everything he had known and was taught to believe in.
“Careful who you fucking cross,” his father continued to rant, without understanding how pivotal those words were to Leo.
He would cross many people.
What the fuck was he even thinking?