Page 32 of Vicious Souls

“Like I said, I would advise against you leaving. I don’t want you thinking I’m keeping you here with some calculated ulterior motive. You do not have anything that I don’t already possess,” I lie. There is the waterfront. But she doesn’t need to know that.

“Then what?”

“No one would ever dare make a move on us like they did yesterday. Never in a million years. No one. The fact that the Savages did tells me two things.” I waggle two fingers in front of her to demonstrate my points. “That one, they came for you, meaning they knew where you were. And two, they have some serious backing; they would never have dared breach our territory unless it was on someone’s authority.”

“Who?”

Moneybags looks just as perplexed as I feel. I am missing something, I can feel it. I just don’t know what that something is. But I am determined to get the answers I need.

“That’s what I’m going to find out.”

“Tate can protect me,” she claims, lifting her chin in nonchalance. She is determined to play that card.

“No, he can’t. If he could, he would’ve protected you from me. If he could, he would’ve found you before the Savages did.”

She cocks her head in question then squints, looking at me with accusation in her eyes.

“You never did tell me,” she starts, and it’s as though she is spearing me with her suspicious eyes, “Why you crashed my father’s burial and took me.”

“That was on my order…”

I turn at the sound of my father’s voice as he rounds the house and comes to join us. I should have known he’d be listening. He throws a furious glance my way, disagreeing with the way that I’ve approached the situation, then softens his gaze when he turns to Murray’s daughter. It would seem he has a soft spot for his old friend’s offspring.

“I’m Durian,” my father says, extending his hand toward Moneybags. She flicks her eyes down to his hand then takes a step back and stands to her full height. She almost puffs out her chest. My father tucks his hand away, giving her a sad half smile instead.

“It would seem my son got ahead of himself somewhat, telling you that you could leave. Of course, that is your right if you so wish. But for the sake of transparency, you should have full disclosure.”

“I know all about your feud with my father. I trust you no more than I trust your son.”

“In your position, you should trust no one,” my father warns her. “No one. Now your father is gone, all eyes are on the Murray dynasty.”

“Including yours?” she spits.

“I’ll quickly follow your father. As for my son, he has more than he’ll ever need. It’s the ambitious upstarts you should be worried about.”

“Then why are you protecting me?”

“Despite our differences, whatever they may be, your father saved my life on more than one occasion. I will not return his good deeds by allowing the demise of his only child.”

“You needn’t trouble yourself.”

“Come, you have much to learn,” my father tells her, turning toward the house. Moneybags follows his retreating body with disbelieving eyes then turns to look at me, a question in her eyes.

“For some reason, my father has sworn to protect you, no matter the cost. I didn’t understand it at first. And you’ve been an infuriating pain in my ass ever since we crossed paths. But what I do know is that he does have a point – three attacks on you is not a coincidence, Moneybags.”

29

KINGSLEY

“Three attacks on you is not a coincidence, Moneybags…”

Dante’s words keep ringing in my ears, long after we go our separate ways in the garden and I return to sulk silently in my room. I have to admit, I’m not much of a sulker, but I am a deep thinker. Most gamblers are. Yet I am under no delusion that what Dante said is not true. The night I met him, I was attacked not once, but twice. The second attack could have resulted in disaster with the ensuing high speed car chase in No Man’s Land. That the Savages had doggedly followed us until they were slowed down by Dante’s quick thinking and a squadron of police cars was a miracle in itself – but it also indicated the lengths they would go to trying to catch up with me. I never did believe that the reason for their extended assault was simply the result of one man’s bruised ego at not having tapped into a piece of ass. Then came the attack at Dante’s hide-out. An attack that, as he has explained, would not have been dared upon the Accardis unless it was orchestrated. If that were true, it meant someone definitely knew I was there, and they definitely knew the Accardis had been the ones to take me after my father’s funeral. But be that as it may, the attacks on me had started before my father’s passing. Or had they? The incident at the club had happened the night my father passed. The night I had gone home and found Tate, furious beyond measure, waiting for me, berating me for being so selfish. No one needs to know what he said to me that night, but his words still swim in my head like an omen I am happy to discard at the side of a deserted road somewhere I will never travel again. I toss the words over in my head, my hackles rising once again as heat rises through my body and flushes my skin.

“He’s better off dead than knowing what a slut you’ve turned into.”

The minute the words escaped his lips, I knew he regretted them. But it was too late. He’d said them and they’d registered. They had cut deep into my soul, basically destroying me. First, that he had referred to me in such a way, when he knew nothing – nothing – about me. And second, because that’s the way he had chosen to let me know about my father’s death. In that moment, I had hated him. And I hated him still. Hated that he had overstepped his authority and spoken to me as no one, not even my own father, had ever spoken to me before.

A knock at the door brings me out of my reverie, and I watch as Helga pushes the door open and shoots her head in. She looks at me then frowns, as though finding something unexpected, then immediately straightens, her face shuttering to neutral.

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