Page 36 of Queen of Diamonds

“Zed.” Knight looked at me incredulously. “She didn’t seem dead set on our help in the first place.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You don’t get why she doesn’t want to be around us? After she left?—”

“If she’s running from the Brotherhood then no,” I snapped. “I don’t get why she doesn’t want our help.”

“You’re blind. She wanted to go, but what did you do? Tied her up and dragged her here against her will.”

“Something’s not right.” I couldn’t shake that. “And besides, if she’d told us, would it have changed anything?” I asked.

A strange silence followed that question and Knight’s lip curled. Fuck the answer we were both thinking.

The last intel we’d got said Ace had dropped her. She’d cheated on him and he’d curbed her. Exiled, just like we’d been—only it hadn’t blown up his relationship with the Romano Mafia she’d come from. I guess her dad thought her behaviour was shitty enough to keep the alliance.

Well, no. That wasn’t why.

It’s because the alliance had become useful to them both.

I was a prideful fucker, and being afraid of my baby brother wasn’t something I’d admit to lightly. But I wasn’t a fool. Ace had turned out smarter than I’d even known. Both on taking my place from me, and what he’d done with it since. I hated him, but I couldn’t deny he’d picked the Brotherhood up off the floor and made it into something unstoppable.

But the point was, she was exiled, which meant… “If she’s on Ace’s radar now, it’s not good,” I said.

Knight was silent. We both knew the only time they came knocking after they sent you packing was for one thing.

“She hasn’t told us why,” Knight muttered. “It’s dangerous. We’ve never bothered him, and he’s never bothered us. So what did she do to get back in his sights?”

I took another drink of my beer, feeling a chill creep up my spine.

“If she’s lying, even now,” Knight said. “Whatever she’s hiding, I just hope it doesn’t put one of us—or all of us—in a grave.”

13

GLADE

“Another game…”

Ace’s voice was the first I heard when I finally succumbed to sleep on the old mattress. I was instantly stolen by the same nightmare that was haunting my every waking moment.

A memory. And the moment, of every one I’d lived, that had truly broken me.

“What do you want?” I asked him.

The dark marble of his mansion was icy beneath my shins, a coldness that rose from the floor itself, chilling me in the thin nightdress I wore, as if the soul of this place had turned to ice long ago to match its owner.

“Last week, the trick with the maid. I was… impressed.”

I dared glance up to the Alpha lounging on the armchair before me. We were in his rooms, the place to which he had summoned me in the middle of the night.

“You almost escaped,” he said. Dark hair swept over skin as pale as Zed’s, but the only other things that they shared was the electric blue eye colour and the slight crook on their nose. His lips were rich red in contrast to his skin, stretching over his teeth in a cruel smile. “It doesn’t seem to matter how hard I try. I can’t seem to crush you. It makes me jealous, you know?” he asked. “Thistle is long broken—perfect obedience, and rather fucking dull. The universe promised her to me, yet saw fit to promise an Omega like you to my brother, instead?”

I was silent as I waited.

It had been days since I’d almost reached freedom. He hadn’t said anything after, the punishment had been exacted instantly, far more than anything he could think up in the aftermath. And then he’d joined me in my bed each night since, delighting in the nightmares that consumed me, wanting to be there each time I woke.

That was enough for him. I paid.

Or so I’d thought.

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