“And we’ll kill them if you don’t help us.” Hale’s voice is cold. “Looks like you’ve found yourself in a bind, Leland. Next time you decide to betray your family, maybe think it through a little more.”
Leland spits out a string of curses, helpless rage making his entire body shake. He has a hard choice to make right now—a choice no man should ever have to make. But I remind myself that he didn’t end up here by accident. He willingly betrayed his brotherhood, knowing full well what that would mean.
He helped kill Damian.
No matter how much mercy or sympathy I could start to feel for him, it’s quickly stamped out by the truth. He may as well have pulled the trigger himself.
“We need to know what she’s planning,” Hale says. “And you’re going to find that out for us.”
“Fine. I’ll do it. I’ll try,” Leland chokes out. “But I want you to promise to put my wife and kids in protection.”
Hale doesn’t say anything in response. I know he has an image to uphold of an iron ruthlessness that shows no mercy, but I also know he has no desire to hurt Leland’s family. Hale isn’t so coldhearted as to kill innocents in cold blood—not even after his own father was just shot.
“When you come back with something actually helpful to us,” my friend says coolly, “I will consider sparing your family. You have three days, just like last time.”
Hale turns away first. It’s a clear dismissal, and the rest of us follow after him. Only Ciro remains, absently watching Leland, still in a world of his own.
“He’d better find something,” Hale says as soon as we’re out of the room, strain clear in his voice. “Now we know Camilla is planning something. But what good is that information when we have no way of anticipating it? Of guarding ourselves against it?”
The tension is a pulse that beats through the room, the thought hanging over all of us.
We need Leland to find something. Need him to get actionable intel on the Rooks.
Because he’s the only lead we have.
Hale keeps me and Zaid on babysitting duty over the next several days, but we cut back on our surveillance of Leland quite a bit. It’s too fucking risky to tail him closely, and even at a distance, we run the risk of Camilla noticing and getting suspicious. So we keep tabs on his general location and on his family, making sure he doesn’t skip town and trusting that his sense of self-preservation will keep him from doing anything stupid.
But when another two days go by without any information from Leland, I start to get antsy. I know he can’t push too hard, too fast without setting off alarm bells in Camilla’s head. He’s savvy enough to play things subtly, to try to win her trust before digging for information. It’s just a waiting game now.
But I’ve never exactly been known for my patience.
On the fifth day after our meeting with him, we’re in the middle of dinner when a heavy thud from outside makes us all look up. Tires screech in the distance as someone peels away in a hurry.
My muscles tense. Shit.
“What was that?” Grace looks around the table, and I can see on her face that her mind has jumped to the exact same thought as the rest of us.
Hale mutters a curse under his breath, shoving his chair back as he stands quickly. Ciro, Zaid, and I follow, moving almost as fast as he does.
This time, we don’t leave Grace behind. Like she’s been doing all week, she stays with us, moving as one of us as we stride across the foyer, weapons in hand.
But as soon as Hale opens the front door, I flinch in regret. She takes one look at the body that’s been dumped on the doorstep and lets out a strangled noise. Her hazel eyes go wide as she stumbles backward.
“Shit. Get her out of here,” Hale mutters, a string of curses following his words.
We all shift into memorized positions—positions that were never assigned to us, but ones that we’ve adopted on instinct for times like these. Ciro shields Grace’s body with his own but doesn’t touch her as she turns away from the scene. She presses a hand over her mouth, her body heaving as she struggles not to vomit.
I cringe again, fighting the urge to abandon my job and help her.
My brother quickly snaps me out of it as he brings out a body bag, and without hesitation, we reach down and try to get as much of Leland’s mangled body into the bag in one piece as possible. With the thing so fucking destroyed, it’s nearly impossible.
Whoever killed Leland did it in just about the most gruesome way I’ve ever seen, and I actually find myself hoping he died quickly. There’s
no fucking doubt in my mind that he was dumped here to send a message.
Camilla knows.
And this is her way of telling us.