Page 9 of Provocation (Den of Deception #3)

We go in the side door and hear Dom barking orders, his buzz cut, dark jeans, boots, and black blazer like armor that tells people not to fuck with him.

Sandy is cleaning up behind the bar while sipping a cocktail.

A couple of the other employees are putting chairs on tables and making sure there’s no one in the bathrooms. When Dom sees us, he does a double take, his eyes roaming over Daisy.

I step in front of her protectively, and he looks a little amused as he saunters up.

‘You’re here early. Sark stopped by last night. He said?—’

I shake my head a little and Dom glances at Daisy, his calculating eyes assessing her in a way I don’t like at all.

‘Who’s this?’ he asks as if he hadn’t already noticed her.

‘This is Daisy Evans.’

‘ This is your stepsister?’

My jaw clenches. ‘Yeah.’

He inclines his head at Daisy who gives him an awkward wave. He clearly wants to ask about her. His expression is brimming with questions, but he gives the club a sweeping wave of his large arm instead. ‘Just cleared everyone out.’

‘Yeah, we saw them all on the way in.’

‘Take her downstairs,’ I say to Mav, and Dom’s eyes burn brighter, curiosity and something I don’t like in their depths.

He thinks I mean the Dark Lounge.

He’s going to be disappointed.

I pull out my phone.

Tell your giant brother to stop perving on our girl or I’ll him.

I watch Mav, who’s showing Daisy the way downstairs, look at his phone and stop. He turns around.

‘Dom, stop perving on our girl or you’re getting fired.’

I give him a long-suffering look. ‘Asshole,’ I mutter.

The usually unflappable Dom is looking like a deer in the headlights, his eyes darting around between us. ‘Your girl? All of your girl?’

‘That’s right,’ Blake practically snarls. ‘You got a problem?’

Dom’s hands are in front of him. ‘No problem whatsoever,’ he says, looking like he’s fighting a smile. ‘Lady’s prerogative.’

‘Any more talk of raids?’ I ask him, changing the subject.

‘Not since the last one that I’ve heard,’ Dom replies, his game face back on. He turns and calls over to the girl who’s still clearing up behind the bar. ‘Sandy, you hear any chatter tonight?’

The blond shakes her head. ‘Nada. Didn’t see any plain-clothes trying to get in either.’

He shrugs. ‘Maybe they’re giving up for now?’

‘Does that sound like Detective Black to you?’ Blake asks, swiping an unopened beer off the bar and twisting the cap off. ‘That sonofabitch has been a thorn in our sides since we bought this place.’

Dom lets out a sigh. ‘I can’t say it sounds like Black to just up and quit, no.’

‘He’s waiting for us to get comfortable again. Make sure the tunnel is sandbagged. I want Daisy to be able to get out that way without wading through shit if she’s here when it happens.’

‘Why would she be?’ Dom’s brow creases. ‘Does she…work here now?’

‘Sort of,’ Blake mutters.

‘She’s our chemist.’

Dom’s eyes narrow ever so slightly at us as his big-brother protective tendencies rise. ‘I thought Mav was your chemist.’

‘They’re co-workers,’ Blake says and meanders away toward the door that leads downstairs.

‘Is she… Did Mav just take her to the lab? The secret hidden lab that only the four of us even know about?’

‘Five now,’ I say.

‘What if she tells her dad?’

‘Well,’ I start following Blake, forcing Dom to walk with me if he wants to continue our conversation, ‘her dad has been dead for well over a decade, so I don’t think he’s gonna care, man.’

‘You know who I mean,’ he hisses. ‘How do you know you can trust her?’

I glance back at him, ready to shut this little talk down right now. ‘Daisy’s loyalty will never be in question with me. Not ever. But, if it makes you feel better, if John finds out, she’s just as fucked as we are.’

I leave him upstairs, hoping he doesn’t bring this up again. The lone, bare bulb illuminates what can be seen of the cellar space. It looks like a square down here, but there’s a lot more to this basement than meets the eye.

This was once an old warehouse and I’ve found quite a few tunnels branching out from this cellar that I think must be from Prohibition, or perhaps before that, because I’ve found more than one musket ball resting in the dirt down here, too.

A ton of the passages are flooded at this time of year and into the Spring, because the river is so close, but there are a couple that lead to the main sewers, and, if the flooding is diverted, it’s possible to escape through them.

We’ll need to show Daisy how to hide the lab and get out of here if the cops do decide to raid us again.

I don’t see Blake in front of me as I get to the bottom of the cement stairs, and I see the door to the Dark Lounge ajar.

Rolling my eyes, I go into the private part of the club that few people know about and even fewer are allowed into.

The lights are all on for once, giving me a view of the various pieces of furniture that are in here for our patrons’ uses.

Some are made of smooth ebony and black leather, others iron and nylon rope.

‘I want Daisy in here,’ Blake says from the other side of the room, as he runs his hand over a padded Saint Andrews cross.

‘No,’ I say, and he looks up at me sharply. ‘She’s not ready and you know it. Sex is new to her. We don’t want to take it too fast and scare her.’

He nods albeit reluctantly. ‘You’re right. All this might be a lot for her to take in.’

‘And not while anyone else is in here. No one but us.’

‘Agreed.’

‘Good,’ I say, ‘Now, come on. She wants to get started and you and Mav might need to grab some supplies.’

I leave the Dark Lounge, trying not to imagine Daisy in there, all the things we could do with her, all the things I want to try with her.

I adjust my hardening dick in my pants and try to focus on something else as I walk across the basement and to one of the rusted iron exits that looks like it’s welded shut.

I use my phone to unlock it, and I hear the bolts recede. I pull open the thick, bank vault door that we had Mav’s brother install for us months ago, reminding myself that no matter how he looks at Daisy, Dom is still an asset with a diverse set of skills that we need.

I peer down the unlit passage. Water drips, echoing in the darkness, but, as I shine my phone downward, I see that there’s hardly any flooding at all. The sandbags we put on the east side of the tunnel are helping. It’s at least passable now.

I close it up and relock it, making a mental note to give Daisy access to the app Blake built to control the mechanism.

I glance at the door to the lab and see that Blake left it ajar. That’s so typical of him. Probably too busy making eyes at Daisy. With a dramatic, I slip through into the brightly lit space.

‘If you leave the damn door open, the lab’s not gonna stay secret for long,’ I grumble.

Blake just shrugs. ‘You were out there.’

I ignore him in favor of watching Daisy, who’s standing with Mav in the corner. She’s looking around the room with a practiced eye and she smiles when she sees me.

‘How do you like it?’

She nods. ‘It’s a funny little room. Where does the vent go?’ she asks, pointing to the grate on the far wall.

‘There are tunnels all around here. This room sits next to one. It goes to the other side of the wall, and the intake draws fresh air from upstairs.’

‘Okay,’ she murmurs. ‘This is what I need for the first batch.’

She hands Mav a list and he scans it quickly.

‘Give me an hour. Blake?’

He plants a kiss on Daisy’s cheek and leaves, reading the list over again as he walks. Blake stalks forward and grabs Daisy, pulling her to him and whispering something into her ear that makes her blush again. I try not to feel jealous.

He follows Mav, giving me a shit eating grin that I want to smack off his dumb face.

‘What did you mean before?’

I focus on Daisy and find her staring at me.

‘When?’

‘At your dad’s when you were speaking to Marcus. You said that everything had been a test. What did that mean?’

Her question sounds casual, but it’s anything but. There’s fear in her eyes. Jesus, does she think I was part of it?

I go to her and resist the urge to touch her, hold her. She won’t want me to do that while she’s not sure what’s happening.

‘Marcus told the pledges to mess with you. He said it was part of the hazing. We didn’t know about it until a couple of the guys told us the day you went to the Medical Center.’

‘Mess with me?’

‘Yeah.’ My teeth clench together. ‘Some of the same stuff we did, but they had a spreadsheet with a points system. Say things to you, call you names, and follow you around. That kind of thing.’

I wince because some of it sounds a lot like what we did to her, but she doesn’t say anything about the correlations if she is thinking about them.

‘Maybe they were even behind the car that almost hit you,’ I say and she seems to consider.

‘That could be true,’ she allows. ‘It hasn’t been alluded to in the notes. Usually the stalker says something in writing about what he’s done just afterward, but he hasn’t mentioned anything about the car. Maybe it wasn’t him, after all.’

‘It’s possible. I think Marcus had been told to push you,’ I continue, ‘make things difficult for you. To see if you’d crack.’

‘Like I did with Larson,’ she says quietly.

‘Yeah, I think so. I think the Bandervilles… Despite my father keeping it under wraps, everyone in the Novelle social circles heard what happened with Larson. They were making sure their son wasn’t marrying an embarrassment. They were making sure you were cured.’

‘Cured.’ She nods slowly. ‘Too bad I passed their test, huh.’

I can’t help it. I take her hand now.

‘Daisy,’ I say carefully. ‘If you had failed, you’d be back in England now.’

Her shiver is almost undetectable, but it’s there. ‘I take it back, then.’

She looks up at me. ‘How long do you think this was being planned?’

I shrug. ‘I don’t know, but, knowing Pop, a while. Years.’

‘Mrs. Tremaine,’ she whispers, looking away and frowning as she considers something.