Page 13 of Grim’s Delight (The New Protectorate Syndicate #1)

SIX

“You have to at least pretend that you’re having a good time,” Milo muttered.

Felix took a sip of his synth and flipped his second in command the bird. “Fuck off. I’m the boss. If I want to look miserable at this boring party, I will.”

Milo sighed. Squeezing his hulking frame into the chair beside Felix’s, he scolded, “You haven’t even tried talking to the elders tonight, man. You know you have to. That was the whole point of this.”

Reconciliation, they’d called it. The old fucks were all too happy to smile and pinch his cheeks and drink his booze in his house now that there were no other contenders for the throne.

He might’ve taken the opportunity to enjoy rubbing his victory in their faces if he didn’t feel like he was coming out of his skin. And if he wasn’t certain they would take the chance to push their candidates for his blood bride under his nose.

It was one thing to know he’d have to take one and quite another to feel like he was being forced into it. Especially now.

His synth tasted like ash on his tongue as he took another long swallow. It hadn’t tasted right since he met Dahlia all those years ago, but he could usually force it down. He barely managed it tonight.

Milo gave him a long look. He was good at making people do things with just a look like that, probably because everyone except Felix found his massive scar and pale eye unsettling. “She still not talking to you?”

“Does it look like she’s talking to me?”

Felix tracked the movement of a gaggle of his distant cousins as they drifted toward the bar in the corner of his ballroom.

Some of them were too young to drink alcoholic synth, but he had little doubt they’d try.

He certainly had, and his grandmother had somehow always known. And whooped his ass for it.

He missed the old bat. It did a man good to have a strong woman around.

“You still plan on picking her up next week?”

“Obviously.”

Milo braced his elbows on the small round table Felix had posted up at. Clasping his hands together, he cautiously began, “I really don’t think it’s a good idea to?—”

“It’s incredible that you believe repeating the same point six times means I’m going to start listening. Maybe you should try for a seventh, for science.” Felix pulled his phone out of his pocket. His molars ground together.

He liked Milo. Milo was one of his only real friends. Milo was his cousin. Milo was a good second in command. Milo was smart and loyal to the bone.

He also wanted to kill him more often than not. Especially when he tried to get Felix to leave Dahlia alone, which happened roughly once a week.

In the itty-bitty part of him that was reasonable, Felix understood that his cousin was doing what he’d always done: trying to protect him from himself.

Milo was the only one of the inner circle who knew how deep his obsession with the little blonde server went, and if Felix was forced at gunpoint, he’d even say that he trusted the man with her safety.

But that didn’t mean he planned to listen to his advice.

In a quiet voice, Milo warned, “You can’t keep her, Felix.”

“You don’t think I know that?” He unlocked his phone. Killing his cousin wasn’t an option, so he had to calm down. Checking up on his girl was like a little calm down pill, so he quickly navigated to the chat he’d opened with her new security team.

The efficacy of his calm down pill wasn’t quite as potent when she continued to ice him out for some reason, but it soothed him all the same.

Or it would’ve, if there hadn’t been a notification waiting for him.

He’d been informed by the day crew that she and Cecilia had gone to the hospital in the afternoon. The update had driven him crazy, but he’d done his best to remind himself that normal people went to the doctor all the time.

Maybe she’d cut her finger chopping… whatever it was she ate.

Maybe she had a gyno appointment and needed moral support while a doctor shined a light up there.

Most people didn’t only go to the doctor for bolt gun wounds, stabbings, strangulations, concussions, poisoning, or missing eyes.

That was just the people he hung out with.

Milo said she probably just had a cold or needed a shot. Felix couldn’t explain that even something minor like that made him antsy. He didn’t need his second being more concerned about where his head was at than he already was.

Gods help him if people started to think he’d gone soft.

The news that she’d returned to her apartment several hours later should’ve soothed some of his worry, but he couldn’t shake it. Dahlia had never been exactly forthcoming when she’d been sick in the past, but she’d been opening up more lately. She’d even let him send her soup once.

It was pathetic to feel so triumphant about something like that, but he had. And when she’d said thank you in that sad, sick voice, only to fall asleep on the phone with him…

He’d sucked up every little bit of her vulnerability like it was the sweetest blood. The more he got, the more he craved.

Felix had never had to work so hard to get a girl before. If they didn’t want him, he walked away, unbothered. But something about Dahlia kept him coming back for more.

She’d never told him to go away. Sure, she’d blocked him. She’d ignored him. She’d asked him what he thought he was doing, pestering her like he did. But she never told him to fuck off.

He was certain she loved him, and he’d been looking forward to proving it to them both.

Except now she wouldn’t speak to him. Her phone was off. He’d sent her another new one, hoping for some sort of reaction, but she hadn’t even answered the door to accept it.

He knew she was alive because he’d been given detailed reports of what could be seen the rare times her blinds were opened, but that was it. She’d become a ghost.

It pissed him off.

You aren’t allowed to hide from me, he silently warned her as he scrolled through her team’s updates. You aren’t allowed to be sick and not tell me. You aren’t allowed to ? —

“Huh.”

He glanced at his second, who was frowning at his own phone. “What?”

Milo’s brow was furrowed. He didn’t look overly concerned, but he was stoic on the best of days, so it was hard to tell what was going on in his brain. “Our man in the Bowan house just got back to me.”

All business now, Felix placed his phone face down on the table. “Tell me what he said.”

“Alastair had the Patrol report on the hit pulled,” he explained, eyes flickering as he scrolled through the message. “Looks like it was just finished. Gods, elves move fucking slow. But that’s not every?—”

Milo cut himself off. His face, already pale, drained of what little color it had. Muttering to himself, he said, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Instincts prickling, Felix sat up straight in his chair.

The Bowans were an old, aristocratic syndicate family.

They’d been top dogs once and still had a considerable amount of power, but they hadn’t adapted well to the modern age.

They were still a force to be reckoned with, though, and Felix had groaned when he found out Alastair, the head of the family, was the one to be injured during the hit.

They’d had to pay out the nose in tribute to make up for the damage and smooth ruffled feathers, but it could’ve been worse. Accidentally killing Alastair would’ve resulted in outright war. They were all lucky the old bastard managed to limp home.

Felix supposed it wasn’t necessarily unusual that the Bowans were looking into the incident, perhaps hoping to find out what Patrol had learned. He would’ve done the same thing. But something in Milo’s sudden stillness set his fangs on edge.

There wouldn’t be anything to find. His assassins were good, if a little showy. But not everyone could be Harlan Bounds or Atticus Caldwell. They were the best assassins the syndicate ever produced, and they’d been sworn to the Amauri family under control of Julius.

It was a damn shame his uncle was such a fucked up prick that he’d pushed two of their best killers to break from the family. He’d definitely deserved every bit of retribution Harlan gave to him in that bar, but that didn’t make their loss smart any less.

Luckily, he still had good men on his side. Even if they were a pain in his ass.

“What?” he demanded, rapidly losing what little patience he possessed.

“They pulled the file to corroborate a tip,” Milo answered, each word slow and measured in a way that filled Felix with dread. His cousin always chose his words carefully, but when he talked like that, it was always bad news.

And the way Milo avoided his gaze? It had to be very bad indeed.

“Apparently, a server was injured. Substantially.”

“So?” Felix didn’t love the idea of innocent bystanders getting hurt, but it wasn’t earth-shattering, either.

Milo took a breath before he met Felix’s stare. “The Bowans have gotten word that there… that there might have been blood exchanged with the server. And that server just tested neutral.” He swallowed. “Our spy said they’re planning to mobilize.”

It took him a second to follow what his second was trying to tell him. Working it out just as slowly as his second, Felix said, “The Bowans wouldn’t care if one of their men accidentally turned someone. They’d only care if…”

“If it was Alastair’s blood.”

Felix narrowed his eyes. Relaxing a bit now that he knew the sky wasn’t falling down, he leaned back in his seat. “Well, shit. He should send us a crate of guns or something. Sounds like we handed him a shiny new heir, no effort required.”

The old man didn’t have a direct heir, so they’d really done him a favor.

Turning was a damn nasty business and unreliable, since the odds of it working were slim.

Most vampires relied on good old fashioned procreation to make the next generation, but Alastair Bowan had been handed a gift: an heir of his given blood.

If it turned out the new vampire really was venom neutral, making them a coveted blood bride, too… They’d be worth more than their weight in gold.

Only blood brides could procreate with another vampire, making them highly prized by families who cared too much about their bloodlines. They tended to be female, but there were grooms, too.

If Alastair suddenly had an heir and they were venom neutral, it’d make that new vampire the single most prized bride on the market.

And the most hunted.

Godspeed and good luck, you poor wretch, he thought. You’ll need it.

Reaching for his synth, it took him a moment to realize Milo hadn’t relaxed. If anything, he looked even grimmer, which was saying something.

Speaking against the rim of his drink, Felix said, “There’s more.”

“Your girl went to the doctor today, right?”

His muscles locked. Speaking took some effort when he could barely unclench his jaw. “Yes.”

Looking a bit like he’d resigned himself to taking out one of his kidneys with his own claws, Milo told him, “The tip came from a doctor at San Francisco General. An hour ago.”

The noise of the room whited out. There was nothing but static in his ears as the facts tumbled together.

She wasn’t supposed to work that night.

The twenty-four hours after the hit had been some of the longest of his life.

He hadn’t even known that she was in the building until she texted him the following night.

All she’d said was that she didn’t have her phone, and since she’d refused to speak to him since, he hadn’t gotten any further details about that night or where she’d been.

Her silence drove him to distraction, but he’d been reassured that she was well.

Physically, at least. He didn’t have time to follow up in the two weeks after the hit as he stabilized his control on the family.

Whatever was going on in that enigmatic blonde head, they’d hash it out when he snatched up his prize.

Felix’s grandmother would’ve called him careless. She was always saying he missed the bigger picture.

The droning in his ears got louder and louder. Setting his bottle back on the table with a gentle tap, he asked, “Do they know the name of the server?”

Milo let out a breath. “Dahlia McKnight.”