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I roll my eyes just as my father enters the dining room. He’s dressed in a three-piece suit, as he usually does, and his eyebrows are stuck in their perpetual disapproving frown. “Can you two try to behave for one dinner?” he asks.

“How else would we have fun?” I ask him, earning an unamused scoff from my father.

I’m not close to Jonathan Vasilyev. As my mother’s Right Eye, his duty only lies with her and his disinterest in our lives has always been palpable. Until it came to ordering our discipline, then he was more than happy to oblige. Although my mother is ruthless, there is an undercurrent to my father, a sadism that doesn’t exist in her. Xander probably gets it from him.

When my mother enters the living room, she settles in her seat at the head of the table and the food is served in steaming pots and intricate dishes. Throughout the meal, I only manage tocatch hints of the conversation, my mind drifting to the pictures of the dead man.

At Summit, I initially thought the dead girl had been bruised by something else, but she had already begun the decomposition process. That man in the warehouse must have taken Haze too, bringing our death toll to six. The bodies are piling up, which means I’m running out of time and so is Alex.

Once dinner is over, I step outside with my brothers, feeling myself relax when we escape the house into the cool evening air touches my skin. It feels I’ve been holding my breath underwater for hours. I need to get home and sleep, but judging from the last few nights, I won’t get a lick of it.

“Have you found anything?” Hayden asks.

I shove my hands in my pockets. My mother asked me not to talk to anyone about the dead guy in Sying and as strange as it is to lie to them, I remember what she has offered me, a chance to prove myself, so, I decide to tell a half-truth instead.

“Not yet,” I say. “But I’m working on it.”

“Is this about the dead girl in Summit?” Xander asks, grabbing his matte black helmet from his bike’s handle.

“Yeah.” Hayden nods. “Something about it feels off.”

“Maybe she just OD’d,” he says. “This wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had one of those.”

“I’ve seen what an OD looks like, and it wasn’t that. This was something else. That drug, it’s dirty,” Hayden says. “Have your guys picked up anything weird?”

Xander shakes his head. “Not that anyone has reported. It’s been pretty quiet. A few skirmishes here and there, but nothing I can’t handle.”

With Xander in charge of the men in The Snake and Hayden managing the clubs and the casinos, I’m not left with much responsibility. I keep my mouth shut, guilt spreading throughme, but the sooner I find out what’s going on, the sooner I can stop lying to them.

“I’m gonna go,” I say.

Xander grins. “Another night with Chelsea?” he asks, eyebrow arched. “Careful, you might fall in love with her.”

“Something against love, Xan?” I ask. “Unlike you, I don’t have to constantly be in orgies to feel something.”

Xander’s grin is menacing, and if I didn’t know him, I might be afraid, but all it does is make me smile. “You can join me tonight if you like? I miss bonding.”

“Ew,” Hayden mutters. “Do you have to be so disgusting all the time?”

“Offer’s open to you too, but I know how you get about bodily fluids, so…” Xander says, earning him another roll of the eyes from Hayden, who begins to stalk away to his car.

“Let me know if you find anything,” he says to me.

I give him a mock salute. “Will do, boss,” I call.

When Hayden drives away, Xander is looking at me strangely. “You were off all through dinner,” he says, losing the smirk and looking at me levelly. “You aren’t sleeping. Why?”

He rarely asks questions. He only says statements from careful observations. For all his brashness, he is acutely aware of everything and everyone around him. It probably helps not to be able to feel anything. He can see how everyone else is feeling instead. But maybe there is a hint of concern there and it sends an unexpected warmth through me.

I pause. I know if I told him about Alex, he’d lose it, and he wouldn’t let me give him the same old lie I told them from the beginning.

I’ll kill him myself.

Yeah, sure, Rowan. It’s been two years and now you can’t sleep.

“If I said I can’t talk about it yet, would you leave it alone?” I ask.

He watches me for a moment, blue eyes that match my own gleaming from the garden lights. “Sure,” he says with an easy shrug. “As long as you’re safe.”