Page 104 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo

Caroline… she’d sold it. For him. To pay his bail when he’d been nabbed for stealing a loaf of bread and cash from a local baker.

“You shouldn’t’ve done that, Caro.” His own young voice filtered through the past. “I deserve to rot for a dirty thief.”

She’d pushed him into a grimy alley behind crates full of skinny Spitalfields chickens. Her fingers had been cold on his chest. “You owe me now,” she’d whispered.

“Any’fing,” he’d vowed, fighting for breath against a young lad’s lust. “I’ll give you whatever you ask.”

“A kiss.” It hadn’t been a request, but a command.

The kiss had been his first, but not hers. Not Caroline. She’d been kissed too early and too often. They’d been sixteen in that alley, and she’d been charging money for her favors for two years.

Cutter hadn’t liked that. There had been a new frenzy to their theft after she’d taken to the streets. A sense of urgency. If they could make enough to pay for a regimental commission, their lives could drastically improve. They could send their wages home.

Cutter. Cutter “Dead Eye” Morley. Caroline’s twin brother. The stickiest fingers in Spitalfields. Maybe in all of London. He could throw a pebble in a pail at fifty paces and break a window with his slingshot from down the row. He’d been light and fleet-footed, scaling buildings and scanning the city from rooftops while Ash—then called Dorian—had been the brute on the ground. Lifting, beating, or breaking what he had to.

“You could marry Caroline,” Cutter’s young self suggested earnestly as he balanced on a dock rail while they’ddawdled through the markets smelling worse than the wares of dead fish. “Then we’d be brothers. If you died, she’d get a widow’s pension.”

“Could do,” Ash had agreed. He could marry the pretty Caroline. He could save her from the streets. If he excelled, she’d be an officer’s wife. “Could do,” he’d repeated, liking this idea more and more. “But if I was supporting your sister, who’d getyourpension if you were killed?”

“Easy.” Cutter’s slim shoulders shrugged as he slid his friend a sly look. “Your mother. She’s still got her charms, hasn’t she? Think she’d marry me?”

“Buggar off!” Ash had snagged at Cutter and he’d jumped away, laughing.

“Don’t be sore at me. I won’t make you call me Papa.”

They’d chased through the markets, upsetting both crates and fishmongers in their mad dash. Ash had been fast, but no one could catch Cutter. If he had, he’d have done the boy no true damage. They’d have grappled and brawled, as brothers are wont to do, before one of them cried peace.

Theirs had been a merry threesome. Cutter, Caroline, and Dorian. He couldn’t remember all their years together. He couldn’t recall their meager meals or their magical moments. But an innocent, boyish love speared his chest with a point so exquisitely sharp, it robbed him of breath.

They’d been family.

Until there had been blood.

Blood and water. Always blood and water.

And gold.

Gold hair waving like reeds in the soot and soil of the Thames.

Caroline.

With a raw sound, Ash’s knees gave out. He pressedboth his palms to his temples as he groaned her name with the same anguish he’d felt the morning they’d lost her.

Word spread that a body had been pulled out of the river by Hangman’s Dock, so he and Cutter had drifted to that part of Wapping to catch the spectacle and maybe pick a few pockets.

Once they’d lazily made their way to the front of the crowd, he’d amassed nearly two shillings’ worth.

Then Cutter had screamed. A pitch of agony which he couldn’t believe he’d ever forgotten. A sound like that left scars on one’s soul.

Caroline. Saucy, seductive, resourceful Caroline. Her wit and smile had both been quick as her brother’s feet.

Quick enough to draw the attention of a killer.

Cutter had gone mad. He’d knocked out two bobbies and had to be restrained by seven more to keep away from his beloved sister’s body.

A part of him had died that day.

As inconsolable as Cutter was, that was Ash’s first taste of cold, calculating fury. He didn’t want to grieve. He didn’t want to talk to the coppers. He wasn’t interested in justice.