Page 91 of Contested Crown

The growling in my chest almost became audible, but then Cade’s fingers crept up further, pressing against my lips. It should have felt like a gag, like a warning. Instead, something shivered up my spine.

Cade’s fingers dipped between my lips when they parted, pressing in.

“He told us.” Walker’s chest puffed up.

“He didn’t tell us. We were around when he was doing it.” Luca turned, glaring at Walker. He poked him hard in the chest. “Because we are invisible. We are silent. We are Declan Monroe’s shadow. We are the background wallpaper of his life. We don’t hear nothing. We don’t say nothing. Do you understand?”

“Yeah. I got it.” Walker deflated, glaring down at the ground. When Luca turned back, Walker muttered, “That still means we know more than Miles did.”

Luca turned around again, and I was pretty sure I was going to get to see his freight train of a fist make an impact up close. “There is what Declan tells us and what we know. What we can put together because we have two working brain cells and aren’t dumb-dumbs. Donotgo confusing the two. Or I will stand on the ladder and make sure your head isn’t crooked on Declan’s wall. You get me?”

“I get you,” Walker muttered. “So he didn’t find the stuff here.”

“There was no stuff to find here. I got rid of it myself. But Miles didn’t look here. So either he doesn’t know to look—” Luca waited expectantly.

“Or he isn’t interested in it?” Walker asked, uncertainty in his eyebrows.

“Or he knew we moved it.” Luca shook his head. “That dog left Declan because of this. You think he isn’t interested?”

I inhaled, gasping around Cade’s fingers in my mouth, and he turned slightly, pressing his free hand against my throat. I didn’t move.

The two bodyguards shuffled around some more, double-checking, but then left. I heard them making their way through the building, locking the front door behind them.

When they were gone, Cade’s magic flowed over my skin, dragging over my sensitized flesh like the finest sandpaper. I felt raw when it disappeared under Cade’s shirt.

“I will not have you dying for two idiots,” Cade snarled. “You are mine. Do you understand?”

With his fingers halfway down my throat, his free hand threatening to cut off my air, I could only nod. His fingers tightened once before relaxing. He drew his fingers out of my mouth, letting them trail down my skin so that I could feel the moisture, the scratch of his short nails.

Then he stepped back, straightening his shirt. For all the ridiculous clothes, the attire that made us both appear like junkies or the unhoused, when Cade’s eyes flashed at me, he still looked every inch the mage prince.

“I understand.” I let my lips curve into a smirk. “But I could have taken him. I could have taken both of them.”

Cade shook his head, but I caught the twitch of amusement in the corner of his lips. “What were they talking about?”

“I don’t know.” I walked over to where they had been looking, probing with my fingers. I felt the slightest seam in the drywall. That meant there was a secret button around somewhere, but probably like Declan’s safe, the mechanics of it had melted in the fire.

I traced the seam with my fingertip. “Can you open it here?”

Turning, I was about to ask Cade if he could slice it open like he had the other safe, but his face was still pale. Instead, I shifted my fingers, not enough to become full wolf but enough that my nails went long and sharp, that they didn’t crack when I pressed them into the burned drywall.

Huffing out a breath, I pried it open, revealing empty shelves. But everything was completely untouched by char. No flames had gotten inside the safe.

“Huh,” I said with a frown. I ran my fingers over the shelving, pressing against the back.

“A dead end,” Cade said, annoyed.

“No. Whatever was in here was more important to Declan than the books that would get him sent to prison for longer than Al Capone. This, he had fireproofed. This, he had cleared out before he lit his own business on fire.” My fingertip caught on something, and I picked it up. It was a small round circle, a plastic lid that fit something I didn’t recognize.

“What did they mean that this was what you betrayed Declan for?” Cade asked. “You told me that it was about a woman.”

There was something in his tone I couldn’t read—an uptick in his words that made the question more weighted than I was sure he meant.

“Yeah.” I turned, crossing my hands over my chest. I felt the frown tightening my brow as I revisited a past that I thought I had understood but now saw in a different light. “I noticed some irregularities in the numbers, and Declan told me to look into it. There was a woman in the Mission. She was a werewolf, giving people the antidote to Reaper.”

“That’s a drug?” Cade asked.

I blinked, coming out of my memories. Of course Cade Bartlett, sheltered Prince of House Bartlett, wouldn’t know the street names of drugs that were dangerous to sell and even more dangerous to take.