Vow of Obedience ( Cavalieri Della 2)

I say the words flatly, holding back the flood of anguish that threatens to break through my icy control. Arthur watches me from behind his desk, his face thrown into strange relief by the lamplight. His eyes are hard and cold. No different to any other day but now, more than ever, I wish I could read his mind.

Instead of answering, he passes me an ornate silver crucifix on a chain. It’s Trefor’s. Before that, it was our mother’s, and he wore it ever since she was killed. I rub my thumb over the shiny metal, remembering all the times I saw it slung around his neck. My baby brother.

Dead.

I close my hand so tight around the crucifix I can feel the metal imprinting on my flesh. When we got put into care, I swore I’d always protect him. I failed him then and I’ve failed him now.

“His body?” I ask. Trefor would want a Christian burial with a church service. Something that honored what he believed.

“No body. Just that.” Arthur pulls a box out of a drawer and pushes it toward me. “And this.”

It’s a small box, about the side of a pack of cigarettes. It sits ominously on the empty expanse of desk and I know whatever it contains isn’t going to be fucking pretty. I reach out and pull the lid off.

It’s a finger, tattooed with a crucifix between the first and second knuckles. The flesh is torn and pink, with shards of shiny, white bone.

Arthur doesn’t say I’m sorry. He doesn’t say, I wish there was something I could do, or, He’s in a better place now. Despite what Trefor believed, all that’s bullshit. Arthur knows it, and I know it. The only thing that’s worth anything now is blood.

Every drop belonging to the man who killed Trefor.

It’s all going to be mine.

“Lange,” I growl. It’s not a question. Adelmo Lange has been a thorn in the ass of the Cavalieri Della Morte for years now, and he’s as shady as he is dangerous. He owns Avallonis, a fortress-like compound in California’s wine country. Six weeks ago, Trefor infiltrated that place on Arthur’s orders. He was a new face Lange wouldn’t connect to us, and Trefor was so keen to prove himself.

I’ve wanted to go after him for weeks but Arthur made me sit tight. Trefor was undercover, and the Cavalieri charging in would only get him killed. Now he’s dead anyway, and a finger is all I have to bury.

I see my brother as a fourteen-year-old boy, the day I had to leave the system. There were tears in his eyes he was ashamed of, and he was angry with me that I was leaving him behind. But I had no choice. I was eighteen and I was going into the Army, while he was stuck in care. Life would get better for him once he got out of the system. I promised him that. He just had to hold on a bit longer.

His life never got any fucking better.

“Let me be the one to take Lange out,” I growl.

Instead of answering, Arthur reaches into his desk and pulls out a bottle of whisky and a couple of glasses. He takes his time, unscrewing the cap and pouring two measures, then passing me a glass. I throw the whisky back in one mouthful and feel it burn down my gullet. I want it to burn harder. I want to go up in flames and burn everything down around me.

“Sit down, Geraint.”

I sit, though my body is clenched tight. Nothing good ever happened after being told to sit down.

Arthur pours us more whisky and leans back in his chair with his glass in his hand. “There’s no one I can send with you. No way to get you into the compound. Lange will be expecting retaliation.”

I narrow my eyes at Arthur. He better not be fucking saying no. “What about the rest of his family?”

“Heavily protected.” Arthur flips open a tablet and shows me a series of photographs of a wealthy, stylish family. The men are in sharp suits while Mrs. Lange wears heavy gold jewelry and designer dresses. “His wife never leaves the compound. His sons don’t go anywhere without six security guards. And his daughter… Who the fuck knows where Branwen Lange is. She disappeared months ago.”

My gaze snags on the photograph, a high school girl in a graduation gown. Her black hair is styled into a neat bob, there’s a silver crucifix around her neck, and she’s smiling.

I snatch the tablet up, remembering that night in San Antonio. Those big, dark eyes looking up at me. The quivering lower lip.

It’s her. I had a Lange spawn in my arms and I didn’t even know it. I could have wrung her fucking neck right then.

Arthur is eyeing me curiously and I hand the tablet back. “She’s in a convent in San Antonio. Or she was, five months ago. She ran right into me after I took out my hit, and I dumped her there.”

He nods. “Find her. Use her. Kill him.”

All the tension leaves my muscles and I feel a sharp pain in my hand. Opening it, I see the crucifix has left an angry red imprint in my flesh. If Arthur had told me to stay away, I would have, no matter how much it hurt not to avenge Trefor. My loyalty isn’t easily won, but Arthur has earned it, one hundred times over. He’s my boss, but he’s more like a fath

er and I respect him a whole load more than I did my real old man, and any man since who’s tried to rule my ass. In the Army, there was a fuckload of them, all worthless shits.

But not Arthur Calthorpe.