Page 58 of Caution to the Wind

And Hazard, a grown man, an outlaw biker, stayed, head bowed, knees getting wet in the muck of mud and straw on the ground.

“You didn’t tell me you took their women,” Jiang murmured so quietly in Cantonese, I could only hear him because I was only a metre and a half behind him.

Kasper didn’t even spare him a glance. “It’s good, then, I don’t report to you.”

“Why would you keep that from me?” Jiang insisted. “You know the blond biker came to me with a deal. It would have been helpful to know we already had the situation under control.”

“Are you accusing me of keeping secrets,Dai tai?” Kasper said so low, it was barely a sound, yet the vibration of violence could be felt in the air.

Across the clearing, Rooster shouted, “Are we fuckin’ doin’ this or what? I gave you what you asked for.”

“Technically, my Red Pole was the one to find the biker who killed our man at the silo,” Kasper said in that flat, metallic monotone that set my teeth on edge.

I sucked in a sharp breath at his words.

“I was the one who got him here, ain’t I?” Rooster demanded. “Now hand over the women, or I won’t be responsible for some’a my trigger-happy brethren.”

Holyfuck. Rooster wasgivingthem Henning as some kind of payment. I stared at the man I loved slumped on the wooden pole and prayed to God, my ancestors, anyone I could think of to save him.

Kasper raised his brows. “That threat is empty. If you open fire, we will return it, and none of us will leave this farm.” The air itself seemed to still as he hummed over his decision and then flicked his fingers. “Fine, bring them forward,” he ordered in Cantonese.

A man unpeeled himself from the group of thugs to his right and disappeared into the stalks.

“While we wait…” Kasper tipped his chin at a man with the number 438 tattooed on his neck, denoting his role as Deputy Mountain Master, Kasper’s vice-president essentially, moved forward to collect the hooded man.

Two more followed, gathering the saddlebags filled with heroin.

But my gaze was fixed on the hooded body as it was thrown at Kasper’s feet. Jiang, beside him, stared at the figure with something like mounting shock, his face blanching.

“Who is it?” he whispered.

“Trash I asked The Fallen to pick up so I wouldn’t have to sully my hands,” Kasper said mildly, and with a nod, the Deputy Mountain Master reached down to rip the hood from the man’s head.

Jiang made a sound I’d only heard once before, the same one Henning had made when he’d seen Kate strung up and bleeding to death in the basement of the House of Horrors. A sound like something had died in his chest.

The man at Kasper’s feet was shifting in and out of consciousness, his breath rattlingly wetly in his throat from damaged lungs. His face was a mottled mess of swollen flesh, bruises, and dried blood. Once, maybe, he had been attractive, and maybe, if he survived the night, he could recover enough to be so again.

But I had the distinct and gut-wrenching feeling he wouldnotsurvive the night.

Jiang trembled as he seemed to gather the pieces of himself together. When he spoke, his tone was as stripped bare as his brother’s. “How?”

“How?” Kasper asked disdainfully, finally showing emotion, and it wasangercurdled by a bone-deep disgust. “I knoweverything,Dai tai. When will you get that through your rabbit head? You have never been able to hide anything from me, and you never will.”

“Why, then?” Jiang asked, desperation just skirting into his tone. “You don’t need to… I won’t see him again.”

“You won’t,” Kasper agreed, almost pleasantly, and then, before I could blink, the Deputy Mountain Master had a pearl enamelled gun in his hand, and he was pulling the trigger.

Thebangwas blast, the radius kicking Jiang back a few steps, and I went along with it, sliding deeper into the stalks away from the horror. They had forgotten me, for the moment, but I was uninitiated. They wouldn’t let me survive the night unless I took a vow to join Seven Song, and now, finally, I couldn’t think of a worse fate.

Because the poor man, clearly Jiang’s beloved, was dead on the ground, blood and grey matter splattered around him like rotten tomatoes.

And Jiang?

He didn’t move a muscle, not even to blink, not even it seemed to breathe. Yet I could feel his despair in every inch of my body. It echoed through the clearing and back in a feedback loop.

Kasper stepped over the body between them as if it was nothing and lightly slapped his younger brother’s cheek. “Do not keep secrets from me again,Dai tai. If you do, you’ll meet your lover much sooner than you should.”

The commotion of the triad soldiers bringing The Fallen women into the clearing drew my attention away from the horrifying scene in front of me. A handful of women ranging in age from elderly to teen ran across the clearing, but not one of them was Cleo. I let out a heavy exhale at the same moment Henning, finally, woke up.