Page 6 of Lover Forbidden
“All ofthisis going to wait,” Lyric shot back. “While I go and make sure you didn’t offend my friend.”
Marcia hopped in front and put her arms wide like she was trying to stop a train. Speaking in a rushed hush, she said, “You have two hundred of your followers out there, who paid forty-nine dollars to stand next to you and get their pictures taken. The event is starting at seven. So no, you’re not going—”
“There are things more important than work.”
“Not tonight there aren’t.”
As the little woman stared up at her, that Botox-frozen face straining to reflect all kinds of inner horror, it dawned on Lyric that this thing with Lyrically Dressed, which had started with all the casualness of a sneeze two years ago, had taken on a life of its own.
And it was like feeding a monster now.
“You’resowrong about that,” Lyric muttered as she pushed the woman out of the way. “Life doesn’t last forever, you know.”
She hit that fire door like it was a solid obstacle.
And as she stepped out, the cold slapped her back just as hard.
“Allhan!” she cried out. “Wait!”
CHAPTER TWO
15 Windsor Lane
Caldwell, New York
If you were going to be a traitor against Wrath, son of Wrath, sire of Wrath, two things were guaranteed to happen. One, every worldly possession you had, whether it was stocks, bonds, or cold hard cash or the house you lived in or the clothes on your fucking back, was confiscated unto the King.
And two—
Qhuinn re-formed in a snowbank and looked up at a modern version of the kind of stately mansion he grew up in.
“We’re gonna hunt you until we find you,” he finished.
Fucking aristocrats. Always planning shit.
Taking out a copper key, he mounted the shoveled front steps and unlocked the heavy door. As he opened things up, the alarm that had been installed a week ago started to tick down, and while he traded that slip of rosy-colored metal for a big-ass block of Beretta, things were turned off back at headquarters.
He did not shut himself in as he stepped over the threshold.
While he flipped the safety off his gun and glanced around, all hewanted to do was get his hands around Whestmorel’s pencil neck and snap it off the spine at the ascot. The aristocrat had proven to be craftier than expected, however. He’d made his threat—and then done what most members of theglymeracould not handle.
He’d gone underground and stayed there, quiet as a mouse.
Not the move of an amateur, and no doubt the snob wasn’t just twiddling his thumbs.
“You’ll have to come up for air sometime,” Qhuinn muttered.
Sooner or later, there would be a tip-off. A financial flare sent up through the web that Vishous could trace. An associate who blabbed to somebody, a sighting at an event, a mistake that led to a crack in the conspiracy.
Or… an actual attempt made on the King’s life.
That last one was the contingency everybody least wanted.
And the reason he felt like jumping out of his own skin.
Stalking forward into the drawing room, he looked at the vacant spot over the fireplace—and wondered what kind of oil painting had been boosted on Whestmorel’s way to the exit. The guy had taken all computer components, cell phones, and security monitoring equipment with him. Safe was also empty—the Brotherhood’d figured that out when Zsadist had blown the door off. And there were all kinds of vacancies on the walls and the shelves that suggested some of the choice art had been taken on the evac, too.
What the hell were they going to do with the rest of Whestmorel’s shit? The male’s daughter had renounced her own bloodline—to the point that she’d even left her things behind in the house, in spite of the fact that she was totally innocent and had been offered the chance to take what she wanted.
