Page 12 of Grim’s Delight (The New Protectorate Syndicate #1)

FIVE

The news from San Francisco was good — for all of five fucking seconds.

Felix liked finishing things. He enjoyed puzzles, word games, fitting things in exactly the right size organizer, and, of course, the satisfaction of a good kill. It didn’t matter if he was the one who pulled the trigger or not. If it was done on his order, it was his.

And there was no one he’d looked forward to killing more than his aunt Yvanna.

Knowing that it was done in the very same bar where his piece of shit uncle Julius had been poisoned three years prior? Even better.

It’s done, he’d thought, viciously pleased by the photos of Yvanna’s nearly unrecognizable corpse. The war’s over. We can finally fucking breathe.

His men were already whooping and hollering, their greedy fingers going for the stash of potent alcoholic synth he kept in his office, but Felix didn’t join in their celebration. In that moment, the only thing he wanted to do was talk to his girl.

Finally. Finally. Finally.

His pulse throbbed in his neck. The gland in the roof of his mouth burned, as it always did when he thought of the tart little waitress he was obsessed with.

Felix wasn’t used to delayed gratification. He didn’t do self-restraint. When he saw something — or someone — he wanted, he took it.

And he’d never wanted someone like he wanted Dahlia McKnight.

The only thing that stopped him from having his men put a bag over her head and gently escorting her onto a private plane was that he couldn’t guarantee her safety while Yvanna lived. That normally didn’t bother him, especially when the women he took to bed knew the score, but with Dahlia…

The thought of her becoming a casualty of the war that raged between him and Yvanna over control of the Amauri empire had made him pause. He couldn’t enjoy her if she was dead, and Felix hadn’t put as much effort into her as he had just to have her snatched from him.

So he’d bookmarked her for later.

She’d be his spoils of war and his reward for putting up with Yvanna’s bullshit for so long. As soon as things stabilized and word filtered out that he was the uncontested leader of the Amauri family, he’d take a little trip to San Francisco to pick up his prize.

He couldn’t keep her. Not forever. Not even for a few months. But he’d take what he could before he was forced to send her away.

He’d be taking a blood bride soon enough, and there wouldn’t be room in his life for the two of them, no matter how many times he tried to convince himself he could make it work.

To form an alliance with another powerful family — a necessity in the cut-throat, bloodline-obsessed syndicate world — he’d have to take one of the few blood brides available and pray they wouldn’t make him miserable.

There was a shortlist waiting for him on his phone at that very second, with photos and bride prices and points of negotiation for each family.

From what he’d learned, that was why Yvanna had been in The Lush.

She’d been hoping to make a match that could turn the tide of the war — with the Bowan family, of all people.

He doubted she would’ve succeeded, since those uptight twats thought they were so much better than Amauris, but it was a ballsy play nonetheless.

It was just too bad for her that he had a reason to keep a very close eye on that city, and on that bar in particular.

It’d been shockingly easy to set up the hit. The only real complication was making sure it happened on a night when his girl was off.

Getting that full-body itch that came whenever he went without hearing her voice for too long, Felix stepped away from his plush leather armchair and the men who caroused around it. He stood by the large window overlooking the Amauri mansion’s grounds and held his phone to his ear.

It wasn’t unusual for her to ignore his calls. Dahlia liked to keep him on his toes, and he enjoyed letting her. Usually.

Felix scowled at his wavering reflection in the glass as his call went directly to voicemail. He checked the time. She would definitely be up already. Even on her nights off, she was up and moving around by then.

It wasn’t normal for her phone to be off. She typically only did that when she was working, and he’d triple checked that she wasn’t. He’d even made sure her friend Cecilia was off, just in case.

Dahlia never talked about her, probably because she was afraid he’d use her as leverage, but there was vanishingly little he didn’t know about his girl. Those two were practically inseparable, so he was pretty sure she’d rip him a new asshole if he accidentally killed her.

Ignoring a rowdy call for him to join the party, which was just the prelude to what would no doubt be at least a week of celebration, Felix rang one of the two men he’d assigned to guard Dahlia.

As much as it bothered him, he’d had to hire out to get her protection. He hadn’t wanted to lead any trail back to himself, just in case his enemies realized how highly he valued her. It would be just like one of the crusty elders to put a hit out on her to try and teach him a lesson.

In their world, no one was off limits except mates, what they called anchors. And a tasty little treat like Dahlia? She was easy pickings.

The men he hired were supposed to be good. Not as good as the sworn Amauri soldiers, but good enough. One was an arrant — a non-magical human like Dahlia — who watched her apartment during the day, and another was a vampire. It was the vampire’s job to watch her at night.

With how much he was paid, there was absolutely no reason he shouldn’t have been available to take Felix’s call.

And yet somehow it went to voicemail, too.

Sensing something was off, he called the arrant in charge of the day shift. He was very, very lucky he answered on the second ring.

“Hello?” Maxwell sounded groggy but alert enough. There was a slight pause as he checked his phone and realized who he was speaking to. “Oh, uh, sorry, sir. How can I help you?”

Felix flexed his fingers on his phone. “Where’s Stevenson?”

“Sir?”

“Stevenson,” he snapped. “He’s not picking up his phone. Where is he?”

“Um…” The arrant seemed to wake up a little more. “I think he took the night off, sir. I don’t know where he is.”

Felix went very still. “He took the night off.”

It wasn’t a question, but the arrant babbled like it was. “Well, yeah. The charge wasn’t working tonight, right? He takes those nights off. She sticks to her schedule, so he didn’t think it’d be a problem.”

“He didn’t think it’d be a problem.” A red veil slipped over his mind, muting everything around him.

I don’t know where she is.

On this night of all nights, when Yvanna and her lackeys were in his girl’s city, she’d been left without a guard. And now he couldn’t reach her.

Something expanded in him. It was huge and hot and explosive. A lesser man would’ve called it rage, but for Felix, it was the wild joy of a wildfire — a certainty that he’d be scorching the earth and leaving nothing behind.

“Listen to me very carefully,” he said, deceptively calm. “You are going to get out of bed. You are going to find your charge in the next hour. If you can’t, you’ll report back to me. Once you’ve done that, I have another job for you.”

At last sounding like he’d grasped the gravity of his situation, the man rasped, “Sir?”

Felix stared blankly out at the sprawling courtyard of his estate. The beat of his own heart was all he heard when he ordered, “You’re going to hunt Stevenson down and shoot him in the fucking face.”