ANMELDENHerald.The door at the top of the stairs was unlocked.I pushed it open.A room. Large, mostly empty. Chairs along one wall. A table in the centre with two chairs facing each other. A window with its curtain half drawn, pale afternoon light across the floor.Someone was sitting at the table.I crossed the threshold.My footsteps on the floor. The door swinging shut behind me.The man at the table looked up.I looked back at him.His eyes moved from my face down and back up. Not surprised. Not performing surprise.I knew that look.I knew his face too. Not from a meeting. Not from a room we'd shared. From briefings I hadn't been supposed to see, from reports Gerald had left on his desk and forgotten I was in the house, from the way Gerald talked about him without talking about him — the man whose name never appeared in writing but whose presence shaped every decision Gerald had made for fifteen years.The man who had been in Dante Yale's house every day for fifteen years.The man who
Adrian.I didn't follow Dante out.I stood in Gerald's study and looked at the mark in the dust where the photograph had been and listened to the house settle around the people leaving it and didn't move until the sound of the front door reached the top of the stairs and the house went quiet.Then I sat in Gerald's chair.Not to look for anything specific. Just to sit where Gerald had sat.What I knew: Gerald had built a replacement and had confirmed it in this study three weeks ago when I'd pushed him far enough that lying would have cost him more than the truth. He hadn't given me a name. He hadn't given me a description. He'd given me the fact of it and nothing else and I'd walked out of that room carrying the fact the same way I carried everything — quietly, without showing it, building around it in private until I knew what to do with it.I still didn't know what to do with it.Someone has been in my life.That was the thing I kept arriving at and couldn't get past. Not in Geral
Dante.Victor moved toward the window when I caught his eye.Adrian was at the desk. He'd been standing there since Hannah's line about the expiration date, hands at his sides, eyes on the rectangular mark in the dust where the photograph had been. Not performing thinking. Actually thinking. That was the thing about Adrian Yale that I'd spent three years resenting — he was genuinely intelligent and it was never convenient.I crossed to the window.Victor had his back to the room. I stood beside him and looked at the garden."Talk to me," I said. Low enough."Gerald's been managed," Victor said. Same register. "The Covenant's pattern — they remove liabilities cleanly and don't leave bodies where bodies create questions. Gerald's house looks exactly like a house carefully gone through and left to look undisturbed." He paused. "Someone who knew the house. Knew Gerald's patterns. Knew where things were kept."I didn't look at Adrian."The warning," I said."Real," Victor said. "Reeves had
Xena.Dante said "Gerald" somewhere on the highway.Not to anyone. Just the name, dropped into the car, landing where it needed to."Yes," Victor said, not looking up from his phone.Hannah looked at the window. Adrian looked at the road. I held the gun Victor had taken back from me at the warehouse and looked at nothing in particular and the silence around everything nobody was saying filled the car from the floor to the ceiling and nobody acknowledged it.Forty minutes north. Lincoln Park. A street where the houses sat back behind gates and trees. The gate was closed when we arrived. Victor had it open in under a minute.No signs of anything. Garden neat. Curtains drawn. A car in the drive I didn't recognize.I looked at the house.He stepped out. That's what it looks like.Dante parked. Victor had a key. The house opened up around us — high ceilings, the smell of leather and old paper, rooms that had been lived in and recently vacated.Victor went right without being told. Hannah f
Herald."Master Adrian."Thomas stepped out of the guardhouse with his hand already on the gate release.I nodded once. "Good morning Thomas.""Didn't know you were expected sir." The gate swung inward. "Mr Gerald isn't in.""I know." I pulled forward. "I have a key.""Of course sir." He stepped back. "Should I let him know you've—""No need." I kept moving. "I won't be long."In the mirror, Thomas raised a hand. The gate closed.I parked and sat with the engine off.Thomas would log the visit. Times in, times out, which car, who. Gerald had installed the system three years ago after a break-in and Thomas had maintained it without exception since. Whatever happened after today, Thomas's log would show Master Adrian arriving at nine fourteen and leaving at nine thirty-four.That was fine.Master Adrian had a key. Master Adrian visited occasionally. Master Adrian had no reason to be questioned about a visit to his father's house on a Tuesday morning.I got out.The front door took the k
Xena."What else do you know?" I asked.Hannah looked at me with a tense expression. "Well I know Reeves has a warehouse.""Would that happen to be in the West Loop?" Victor interrupted, not looking up from his phone.She cut him a look. "Yes."A smile crossed his face. Then he looked up at me. "Guess we've found our man."We moved in four minutes.Dante drove. Victor navigated. Hannah sat between me and Adrian in the back and none of us talked and the city moved past the windows. I held the gun Victor had handed me in the parking lot and looked at it.I've never shot anyone.I've thought about it. Once or twice. The kind of thought that surfaces and gets filed. But filing it and doing it are different things.Guess I'm about to find out which side of that I'm on.Don't think past the door.The warehouse was three stories of old brick in the West Loop. East entrance facing an alley. Victor parked two streets over and we walked the last block without talking.The city was barely awake
Dante.I pulled up at the abandoned driveway. Looking out the window, I immediately cursed under my breath.I hadn't seen this place since I was a kid. The buildings had overgrown weeds. Some already climbing the walls.Even a blind man would obviously sense the loneliness of the surroundings. "Th
Xena.I have had some strange experiences in my lifetime.Being born illegitimate into a family that kept me like a footnote. Being sent to a wedding that wasn't mine with twenty minutes of notice. And spending three years married to a man who looked through me at dinner every night.But none of th
Xena. Was Hannah drunk?I stood there waiting for the punchline. April Fools was months away but maybe someone had lost track of the calendar. Maybe this was some elaborate Yale family bit that I hadn't been briefed on. Maybe —Adrian crossed the room to stand beside her."It's true." He turned to
Xena.I gasped for breath, my legs still aching from the last round. Yet Dante stood over me like this was nothing but probably another of his one night stands.The bed was wet beneath me, wet from my juices. I stared at the ceiling for a while, the memories of his cock inside of me played over an







