Page 304 of From Rakes to Riches

The observant doctor bustled around, rolling his shirtsleeves down his forearms and affixing the cufflinks to allow them the semblance of privacy. “I like my patients to bathe and scrub as clean as possible and also to forgo meals the day of a procedure, if possible,” he said. “Sometimes the anesthetic can cause nausea, and I shouldn’t like you to aspirate whilst asleep.”

With these last few words, he opened the door to their private room—a courtesy not afforded to many patients, no doubt—and escorted them out the door and into the night.

Both brothers enjoyed a simultaneous inhale of crisp February air as they melted into the familiar darkness of the streets.

They’d always been creatures of the shadows.

But perhaps not for much longer.

“For a moment there, I thought you were going to tell him about the pits,” Raphael prompted. “About everything.”

It wasn’t cold enough to lift his collar to shield him, but Gabriel did it anyway as he ignored any mention of the pits. “The two procedures will set everything back. We’ll need to make other arrangements.”

“I’m not worried.” Raphael lifted his shoulder and watched the billow of his breath break as he walked into it. “What are a few more days? No one will be looking for us.”

Since Raphael couldn’t read his brother’s expressions, he’d learned to pick up on other cues, some as subtle as mere vibrations in the air between them.

The set of his boulder-sized shoulders, the number of times he cracked his knuckles, as he was wont to do when brooding. “I still don’t know if we can pull this off without bodies to confirm our deaths.”

Raphael elbowed his brother, feinting at shoving him into a gas lamppost. “Find me a body that could pass for yours, and I’ll gleefully murder him and enjoy pretending it’s you.”

Gabriel didn’t even pretend to be amused. “It is hard for me, knowing I will not be awake to oversee things.”

Clutching at his heart, Raphael acted as though he’d been skewered. “Your lack of trust wounds me, brother. Fatally, I expect. I should not have to fake my death.”

“Keep your voice down,” Gabriel snarled, searching the empty night for interlopers.

The Fauves didn’t haunt this part of town.

Sobering, Raphael rested his palm on Gabriel’s shoulder, the one from which the real mantle of leadership rested.

As the face of the Fauves, Raphael was an effective figurehead. Sleek and elegant, dangerously charismatic, cunning, and collected.

And, admittedly, not difficult to look at.

But few knew that he was the tip of the blade wielded by his brother.

Gabriel wasn’t just muscle, as most suspected, he was might.

He was master.

Because of the rules by which they’d always lived.

The rules they now carefully planned to leave behind.

“I have it well in hand, brother.” Raphael squeezed the tense muscle before releasing it, wishing he could say more.

Wishing he had more time with the only person he loved in this world.

Gabriel’s chest expanded with another measured breath. “Tell me again.”

“Once you are recovered enough to travel, you will retrieve your new papers from Frank Walters and go to the Indies. I have transferred our enormous fortune to St. John’s Bank in Switzerland, where I will retrieve it. After, we will meet in Antigua and from there go to America using our new identities.”

“You’ll telegraph the villa if something goes awry,” Gabriel reminded him unnecessarily.

“That goes without saying, even though you’ve said it twenty times too many.”

A grunt from his brother was as close as he ever came to a laugh.

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