Chapter 8: The Viper's Nest

POV: Roman

It had begun to rain the instant I walked away from the docks.

It wasn't a clean rain. It had been a cold wet gush that smoothed out the streets of Briarwood with a coating of black ice and grease. My G-Wagon wipers were slamming fiercely on the windscreen, a beating, scratching noise, and it did not help to soothe the noise in my head one bit.

My right hand, holding the steering wheel made of leather, was hanging over. I had a fight on the ice yesterday and my knuckles were cut wide open and the stuff taped was all a dull rotten brown. However, that was not what caught my eye.

The scent of her remained in my hand.

Bergamot. Vanilla. And the acute, intoxicating smell of female excitement which had been veiled by pure terror.

I held on to the wheel until it was raped on the leather. I had meant to scare her. I have come to that store to remind Sloane Mercer of who was the powerhouse in this town. I was even going to strike her against the rust and the rot, give her the ledger, and see the self-congratulatory federal spy know she had been legal accomplice to the Thorne syndicate.

But then she looked up at me.

She hadn't cowered. She had put those little, daintily carved hands humpback against my chest and dared me. She hated me. She despised all that the Thorne name entailed the slimy, suffocating men-only club where women were poker chips. I thought I could feel that hate all throbbing in her body. And God, it was what I had never seen before.

When I bumped my mouth on hers it was meant to be a punishment. Instead, it was an ignition. Her taste, all knife-like, all desperate, all feral, had torn away the leash out of my grip.

Now, she had the ledger. My father's shadow book. The single article, which might land me, my crew, and my whole race into a federal prison, during the remainder of our natural days.

And I didn't care. Let her try to burn me. I would have enjoyed seeing her hold the match.

The massive gates of the Thorne Estate were the ones that rose above the fog. Two umbrella-wielding armed guards came out of the guardhouse, carrying their tactical rifles low in front of their chests. The gates were swung inward and my plates were looked at rather sharply.

The house was a gothic manorial mansion made of a century of blackmail and blood money. It looked like a castle. It felt like a tomb.

I pulled the truck in the circle driveway and killed the engine. I sat in the dark and waited a complete minute forcing the adrenaline out of my system. I slowed my breathing. I froze the thought of Sloane with a layer of absolute ice, sociopathic.

then, to go out in the rain.

The huge oak front doors had been opened already by a silent housekeeper before I had gone to the top step. I went around that big foyer, the vaulted arches and the foreign marble floors and, making no detachment of any kind, came to the east wing.

My father's study.

The door with heavy mahogany was forced ajar. I didn't knock. I threw it wide and went into the viper-nest.

The aroma in the room was of old bourbon, pricey cigar and polished leather. It was hot, and very unlike the frosty rain that was caused to fall upon us out of doors, but the warmth did not in the slightest promote comfort.

Silas Thorne was standing at the huge window looking out on the manicured grounds. A tall man with all-silver hair, his erectness was horribly straight. He didn't look like a mob boss. He looked like a Fortune 500 CEO. That was his greatest weapon.

You are late, Roman, I no longer turned around, but said.

Well, I said, after the fashion, and crossed to the crystal decanter on the side table. Two fingers of amber clear liquor found their way into a heavy glass in my hand. I didn't drink it. I simply felt good about the heaviness of the glass hand. Something to beat with in case things unraveled.

"Volkov called." Silas finally turned. His eyes were all the same pitch-black as mine, where mine were aglow with an implacable violence, his were fiercely dead. He claimed that loading at the south dock had been smooth sailing. But you went alone out of the warehouse, he said, too. Where did you go?"

I was about to have a meeting to conduct, I said and leaned my hip against the side of his enormous desk. "The PR problem."

Silas's jaw tightened. He steepled his fingers and got up to approach his leather wingback chair, which he sat down on. "The Mercer girl. She's becoming a distraction. I do not like distractions, Roman. They lead to mistakes. And funerals in our business are errors.

"She's not a distraction, Silas. She's a shield." I drank the bourbon slowly with its flame coating my throat. The college administration is in terror. The athletic department is being poked at by the FBI. When we murder the PR consultant they have just hired, they do not just ask questions. They send tactical teams. I'm keeping her close. I am giving her the story we would like her to be having.

"Are you?" Silas turned his head, and his dead eyes ectomized me. Thou hast apparently to have taken a taste of her, Vovkow. He tells you that you almost broke his neck in saying her name.

A poisonous vindictive wrath stung my heart. Volkov had been a dead man on record. I would have lopped his tongue out with my own hand. But I maintained my countenance absolutely quiet. I smiled coldly, and arrogantly, at my father.

Volkov, animal he is, and does not know finesse, I drawled setting down the glass. "He wants to dump her in a lake. That's messy. I am rotting her to the core. She thinks she has power. I have her teasing at her little corporate games till she is so tied in our web that she will not be able to breathe without my say. Then, as the heat subsides we hush her up.

It was a flawless lie. It was the type of sociopathic tact that my father admired.

Silas stared at me for a long, suffocating time. There was not a sound in the room except the ticking of the antique grandfather clock in the corner and the rain beating on the glass.

Sure, Finesse, said Silas. He put his hand into his desk drawer.

My muscles coiled. I changed direction and was about to lunge. In case he should draw a weapon I would have to kill him on the spot.

But he didn't pull a gun. He reached into a large, cream-colored envelope, and threw it on the smooth wood of the desk.

It is a charity gala this Saturday, with the Petrov syndicate, and I am leaning back in my chair, Silas said. "A neutral ground event. The mayor will be there. The chief of police. And half the competing families in the state. I want you there."

"I have a game on Saturday."

"The game is at seven. By ten you will come to the gala, Silas said. His voice was never open to compromises. And I would have you take your little PR shield with you.

My heart stopped. I looked at the envelope and my thoughts charged with a thousand possible disastrous thoughts. "She's a civilian, Silas. Taking her into a room with Petrovs is a huge security threat.

You said you were breaking her, said Silas, a sadistic smile on the end of his mouth. "Prove it. Bring her to the gala. Kick me this federal-funded whore. Will I know whether she is really in your thumb, or you are a boy toying with a toy you do not know how to handle.

His elbows were on the desk, his face bent forward. `Let her break, Roman... let her demonstrate the smallest measure of unfaithfulness to this family... I won't ask you to handle it. I will."

The menace was there in the air, and it was heavy and absolute.

"She'll be there," I said. My voice was a tombstone.

"Good." Silas gave me a wave of the hand. You’ve checked the vault over your way out. Also using the shadow ledger is important. The accountant has an audit with us tomorrow.

The floor pitfalled and gave way beneath me.

My blood turned to ice water. The ledger. It was the very book which Sloane Mercer was presently reading, miles away, in her apartment.

I didn't flinch. I didn't break eye contact. I just gave a single, sharp nod.

"Consider it done," I lied.

I walked out of the study, slamming the massive door behind me. The second opened the lock, the facade broke down. I sucked a breath of pain into my lungs.

I had forty-eight hours.

It was forty-eight hours before my father opened that vault and knew that his empire was in the mercies of the foe. A day and a half to plan on how to keep Sloane alive at a mafia ball with men who would love to murder her just to watch her do it.

I began to wander towards my private quarters down the long shadowed corridor. Back was the adrenaline I had repressed, smashing my veins like a freight-train.

I had given her the chain, and had imagined myself to be tying her to me. But when I looked over the end of the barrel of my father’s imminent wrath, I understood the dreadful fact.

I hadn't chained her to me. She had chained me to her. and, in case of any leaping on the part of hers, I would be all the way down the dark on the right beside her.

When the Devil insists on Sloane wearing clothes and acting his Queen among a crowd of monsters in a room?