Page 22

22

Brianna

T he long road up to Roman’s house was smattered with pine needles. They’d passed through three separate gates—and gone over a bridge. Truth be told, Bri hadn’t realised just how far north of the city Roman lived. “Is this still all your land?”

“All mine.” He smiled, his hand locked onto the steering wheel. “There’s just over 300 acres in total.”

The high number surprised her. “Why do you need so much land?”

“Definitely nothing to do with burying bodies,” he said quickly, words falling over one another.

Her head whipped round. “What?”

“What?” He pointed his head towards the back seat. “It’s for Jasmine. Obviously. Hey, Jas?”

The sound of Jasmine’s tail whipping against the back seat was a steady beat. “You, uh, get a lot of bears up here in the mountains?” she said.

“A few,” he nodded calmly. “And mountain lions. And coyotes.”

She couldn’t deny feeling a little bit apprehensive at that. “I feel like a house cat dumped in the middle of bear country.”

Roman sent her a grin, his eyes crinkling as they lingered on her. “You’ll be fine, cutie. Me and Jasmine will protect you.”

In the corner of her vision, something carved through the trees—a building blending in almost seamlessly with the dense forestry surrounding it. “Oh,” she whispered, sitting up straighter and feeling her stiff muscles creaking. “I didn’t know you lived in a log cabin.”

Roman scratched Jasmine’s nose as she rested it on his shoulder. He pulled up beside the cabin, the truck’s tyres skidding slightly on the uneven ground. “Come on. Let me show you around before Arturo and Tomas get here.”

The mention of her half-brothers had her nerves rising like the tide. She climbed from the car, stretching her limbs. Her phone buzzed as Roman opened the truck’s rear door to let Jasmine bound out, and Bri pulled it from her pocket.

Let me know when you arrive.

Aldous

Literally just got out of the truck. How’s work?

Your mother is interfering with shipments. Again. It’ll be another late one tonight, but I’d rather be with the two of you.

Aldous

We miss you. Don’t work too hard.

Guilt nibbled at her heels as Roman led her towards the cabin, the warm golden wood soaking up the rays of sunshine thrown down from above. Loose stones crunched beneath their feet, and she surreptitiously glanced around at the clearing in which the house sat.

“Now I know how Goldilocks felt approaching the three bears’ house,” she whispered, watching Jasmine happily dart into the house as Roman punched the code into the door—80085, whatever that signified. She got a brief glance of high ceilings and a large stone fireplace that dominated the living space.

Roman’s boyish grin was contagious. “Are you looking to find a bed that’s just right , then?” He pulled her towards him, taking her lips in a gentle embrace. “Because I have a couple that you can try out.”

Bri half laughed, half squealed as he picked her up. “Do you now?” she murmured against his lips.

“Mmm. Maybe we can take a video to send to Aldous?” Roman kicked the door shut behind him, walking past a large bookcase dominated by what looked to be illustrated editions of J R. R. Tolkien’s books. A framed map of Middle Earth was located beside it. “I think he might appreciate that.”

“If by appreciate you mean try to murder you for making him hard at work, then I totally agree.” She was deposited on a sleek kitchen island topped with granite, with Roman slotting himself between her legs.

“I’m glad he’s beginning to open up,” she whispered, hanging her arms around his neck and fiddling with his hair. She’d arrived back home from lunch with Reina yesterday to find Roman on the couch—with Aldous's head in his lap.

Even thinking of it made her heart want to burst with happiness.

Roman bit his lip, a faraway look in his eye. “Me too.” He blinked. “You’re not angry I was the one to get there first? You’re the one married to him.”

Bri shrugged, brushing his dark hair back with a soft touch. “The relationship between the three of us has always been… different.”

“It has, hasn’t it?”

She nodded, mentally dancing around the word before deciding to release it to the open air. “It makes no difference which one of us was first. He’s loved; that’s all that matters.”

Something lit up in Roman’s scarred eye. “You love him?”

“Yes,” she admitted softly—perhaps even to herself. “Do you?”

He swallowed, his chest rising on an inhale. “More than I can say.”

Clearing her throat and blinking the sheen out of her eyes, she glanced around. From here, she had a good view of the cabin’s living room and kitchen, a single large open-plan space stretching from the front door to the back. Curtains shielded the backyard from her, but there was plenty to take in. The fridge-freezer was full of garish magnets from locations across the globe, but it was the photographs that really made her smile.

“Jasmine is a very well-travelled dog,” she realised, her gaze hopping from a selfie of Roman and Jasmine in front of instantly recognisable locations like the Eiffel Tower and the Grand Canyon—but there were a couple of photos populated by strangers too. She landed on a framed photo on the wall nearest to her, looking at the trio within it: a smiling couple and a baby. “Family of yours?”

“Family of Aldous’s, if we’re getting technical about it.”

“Wait, is this his… brother?” Hopping down from the island, she frantically tried to remember his name but came up short. Aldous’s mentions of his family had been few and far between. With their marriage being less-than-consensual at the beginning, she didn’t blame him, but she was starving to learn more. She perused over the photo—and the tall, dark-haired man in it.

“Close. That’s his cousin, Jensen.” Roman followed her. “That’s Jenny’s fiancée, Talia, and then that’s Felix. Personally, I like the name mini-Jen better, but whatever. It’s their mistake to make. No, they did not consult me before naming him.”

Bri snorted, picking up the heavy frame to take a closer look.

She let out a noise of surprise as she felt something foamy on the back of the photo frame, turning it around to find a small handgun, a knife, and a little drawstring securely embedded within the foam on the other side.

Roman took it out of her hands and placed it back on the wall. “Oh that’s loaded. Careful.”

She was almost afraid to ask. “What’s in the drawstring bag?”

“Dog treats and money,” he informed her matter-of-factly.

Bri suddenly remembered his profession. She cast her eye over his home once more, wondering what else was concealing loaded guns and dog treats. “Anything else I shouldn’t touch in here?”

“Um.” Roman placed his hands on his hips, exhaling a long breath and looking around the room. “Most of my gear is down at the other cabin on the property, but there’s still a few bits here and there. Don’t touch any of the photo frames. There’s a few Molotov cocktails ready to go under that shelf over there, so don’t be setting any fires. That drawer is full of horse tranquilisers. The one next to it is crafting supplies. One of the bricks in the fireplace is loose but that’s intentional. Don’t touch the cactus over there.”

What could possibly be hidden inside a cactus? “What’s in it?”

“Nothing. Cactuses have spines,” he said, with the air of someone explaining something obvious to a child. He pointed to a row of black bulbs above the front door—something she hadn’t noticed before. “Those are all full of gunpowder. Actually, that’s not true; one of them is just a smoke bomb.”

“But… what happens if you turn them on? Gunpowder is pretty famous for—”

“Its gunpowederyness, yes.” He nodded. “But those aren’t connected to the lighting. They’re just for me to shoot at if people break in. The same thing is over all of the exterior doors and windows.” He pointed to a line on the ceiling she hadn’t noticed. “Don’t fuck around with that either. It’s an irrigation system. The first couple of minutes’ worth is water, but after that’s drained, it’ll go to the second tank.”

Bri looked up at the line. “What’s in the second tank?”

“Sulphuric acid.” Roman grinned, reminding her of an over-excited puppy.

“ What the fuck ?” she muttered under her breath. “What happens if you and Jasmine get trapped inside?”

“Come and see.” He took her hand, leading her down into the basement with a skip in his step, to the point where if he had a tail, she was pretty sure it would be wagging. Jasmine’s little footsteps followed them down, and Bri was slightly mollified to see that this part of the building was made of concrete rather than wood.

Something halfway between a bedroom and a storage room stretched out before them, with a large ottoman bed on one side and open shelving on the other. The first shelving unit was occupied by normal household items like an ironing board and a vacuum cleaner, but her eyes bugged to see the second functioned as a gun cabinet filled with a truly worrying number of rifles and handguns, and the third containing a myriad of crossbows, axes, and knives. She frowned when she saw that hundreds of boxes of ammo were neatly stacked at the bottom of the units.

And most of his gear is at the other cabin?!

“So, to set the scene,” Roman began with a grin, “one of my jobs has gone wrong and I’ve been followed back here. I send Jasmine down to the basement, have some fun with my explosives upstairs, and then finally set off my acid cannon.”

“You’re calling it an acid cannon ?”

“I put a lot of work into it, I can call it what I like.” He pulled her over to the ottoman bed, lifting up the mattress with the assistance of the hinges—to reveal what looked like a trapdoor beneath, with a key and a machine gun resting neatly on top of it.

Oh no.

“So.” Roman moved the machine gun off the bed as though it was a common occurrence. “They’re upstairs being burned and cactused and dissolved to death, and if I unlock this…” he murmured, the key tinkling around in the lock.

Bri held her breath as a wave of cold air and dust brushed over her skin. She’d been expecting a panic room at best, but she clamoured forward to kneel by the side of the trapdoor, lowering her head out of the light to get a better look.

A dirt tunnel passed some ten feet beneath her, judging by the ladder’s rungs, encased on either side by rough, rocky walls. Rusted tracks followed the tunnel’s path, disappearing into the eerie darkness beyond.

“It’s an old mining tunnel,” she whispered, her lips parting in astonishment.

Roman nodded excitedly. “Now functioning as my escape tunnel. I built the house over it. There’s a cart a few metres away, and all I’d need to do is hook the cart onto the tracks and follow it down the mountain.”

It sounded terrifying. “Where does it lead?”

“To the other cabin I built a few miles downriver.” He was practically buzzing. “It’s why I bought the property in the first place.”

Bri was seized with the mad desire to slam the trapdoor shut. “What if someone is down there ?”

Roman grinned, and for some strange reason he seemed excited about the possibility. “Like the Miner Forty-Niner from Scooby Doo ? One of mine and Jasmine’s favourite episodes, closely behind the one with the ghost bull. But as cool as that would be, the tunnel is closed off with a shit-ton of concrete reinforced by rebar.”

She opened her mouth to reply—but quickly closed it as the sound of a distant engine reached her ears, alongside tyres crunching over the loose stone outside. “Is that them?”

Roman closed the tunnel hatch back down, followed by the bed. “No one else has the code to get through the gates. It’s either them or we’re going carting in the mine.”

Bri followed him back up the stairs, throwing a suspicious glare at the concealed hatch before it disappeared from view.

This was the entire reason they’d travelled all the way upstate rather than meeting in the city, or simply giving Arturo and Tomas the address to the beach house: to avoid Mom getting wind of who she was meeting with.

Bri guessed Mom intended for her little finding-her-father mission to fail from the outset. Because why else would she give her an address that was twenty years out of date? And if Mom knew that she’d not only found her father, but been in contact with him and her half-brothers?

Mom would be fuming, and so Bri was taking the approach Roman suggested.

“Treat her like a mushroom,” he’d said. “Keep her in the dark and feed her shit.”

Bri breathed a heavy sigh of relief when she spied Arturo through the windows. She had no intention of ever stepping foot in that godforsaken mining tunnel.

She let out a delighted gasp when she realised Arturo wasn’t alone. A dark-haired man trailed behind him wearing a scowl on his heavy brow. He wasn’t quite as scarily tall as Arturo, but he would still tower over her. “Is that Tomas?” she whispered to Roman.

“It is,” he confirmed, his eyebrow quirking. “Although he doesn’t usually look as disgusted as Leonardo DiCaprio on his girlfriend’s 25 th birthday.”

Oh. That wasn’t good.

Bri covered up her worry with a smile as Roman pulled the door open and welcomed her half-brothers in. Arturo, at least, was pleased to see her, ducking beneath the doorway to give her a quick hug. “Bri,” he said, placing his hand on Tomas’s back and steering him forward. “This is Tomas. Tomas, Bri.”

“It’s great to meet you,” she said truthfully, offering him an open smile and going in for a hug.

He stepped backwards, instead giving her a detached nod. “I’m sure.”

Oh, no.

Pretending the awkwardness wasn’t going to haunt her for the rest of her life, her smile curdled into a grimace as embarrassment shrieked in her ears.

It was a relief when Jasmine barged through, her tail wagging furiously as she greeted the newcomers in a furry flurry, her teeth on show in a smile.

Roman closed the door behind them, patting Tomas on the back. “You and Arturo go take a seat with Bri. I’ll fetch drinks.”

Her eyes wandered over to the drawer full of horse tranquiliser, wondering if it could erase rejected hugs from her memory. Surely it’s worth a try.

“So, um, how was the drive?” she began meekly.

Arturo, thank Christ, seemed to take pity on her, regaling her with tales of their six-hour drive. “Dante was sorry he couldn’t make it,” he said eventually.

“That’s okay.” She shrugged. “I’m sure I’ll see him again soon.”

“You will,” Arturo promised, giving Tomas a half glance. “He wrote you cards and letters every birthday. Every Christmas. He’s been wanting to meet you since the day you were born. You aren’t getting rid of him that quickly.”

The thought of Dante writing words she’d never read sent a sickening burst of grief to her heart. “My mother was cruel to keep them from me.” The words squeezed past the lump in her chest.

Arturo cleared his throat at the emotion in hers. “But, uh, Dante said you were interested in a law degree? Just like him?”

She nodded eagerly, wanting to move as far away from sentiment as she could manage. Crying in front of her new half-brother during their first meeting wasn’t a good look. “That’s right. What about you? Did you go to college?”

Tomas laughed, but she didn’t get the joke.

“Not quite,” Arturo replied diplomatically. “I was keen to roll up my sleeves and get to work.”

Part of her wanted to ask Tomas the same question, but she chose to focus on Arturo. He was safer. “That’s why you’re up here, isn’t it? You’re having issues with the Wraiths.”

Arturo accepted the drink Roman offered him, nodding as he took a sip. “We think so.”

“My sister says the Syndicate is having the same issues.” Was she even supposed to tell them that? She had no idea.

“Her name is…” Arturo thought about it for a second. “Reina, am I remembering that correctly?”

“That’s her,” Bri said brightly, as Roman took a seat next to her. “She’s nothing like my mother, I promise. She’s nice.”

Arturo shared a look with his brother. “Your mother isn’t nice, then?”

Roman snorted out a laugh, steepling his hands. “Picture Freddy Kreuger in heels.”

Her lips twisted as she nodded. “Probably not far off, to be honest.”

Twin expressions of shock looked back at her, but it was Tomas who spoke up. “I expected you to be singing your mother’s praises.”

“Why? Because she gave birth to me?” Her voice had lowered with distaste, but there was a hint of begrudging acceptance in Tomas’s eyes. “I’d be happy to wash my hands of her if my sister wasn’t involved.” And if she didn’t have her grubby fingers in Aldous’s company. “She’s a tyrant.”

“Over a dwindling kingdom, by the sounds of it,” Roman added, catching her hand and giving her a reassuring squeeze.

Bri loosened a long breath. “I just hope Reina doesn’t get caught in the crossfire.”

“She knows how to look after herself,” he assured her, turning back to Tomas. “How is the search for your friend going? The one who disappeared after paying to be smuggled across the border.”

Tomas looked away, an irritated muscle in his jaw flashing.

It was Arturo who answered. “There’s a place that we’re running surveillance on at the moment. We think it might be their base, but…” He shook his head, exhaling a doubtful breath.

“You’re not convinced?” Roman asked.

Arturo shrugged his massive shoulders. “It feels too easy. I don’t trust it.”

“It doesn’t matter how easy it is,” Tomas argued, putting his drink down. “If there’s a chance we’ve found the right location, then we should plan a raid.”

“And if it’s a trap?” Arturo shot back. “This is the Wraiths . They aren’t amateurs.”

“So you want to be the one to tell the families that we missed our chance to find their loved one because it didn’t feel right .” Tomas’s voice grew heated, and Bri had the sense this wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation. “This could be the only shot we get. We should take it.”

“And if we get gunned down in the obvious trap ?” Arturo replied.

“If they were going to gun us down, they would have done it already.” Tomas’s jaw ticked furiously.

“Let me help,” Roman offered.

Bri’s gaze snapped to his, her eyes blown wide with fear. “ What? ”

“This kind of stuff is what I do, Bri.” He shrugged as effortlessly as if he’d agreed to dinner with a friend. “I can help with surveillance—and a raid, if necessary. If you guys need my help, it’s yours.”

Fear sliced clean through her chest. “You said yourself how dangerous the Wraiths are, Roman. What if you’re hurt? Or worse?”

“Danger’s a perk of the job, patootie.” He leant in close until she could see the flecks of gold in his eyes. “And if the worst happens, you and Aldous will still have each other.”

The thought of Aldous almost had her feeling sorry for Roman. “When he finds out you want to do this, he’s going to go ballistic.”

“We’d appreciate the help, Roman.” Arturo gave him a nod.

“So...” Tomas’s voice was gentle as he gave her something that was almost a smile. “Have you thought about where you’d like to study law?”

Bri blinked in surprise, but her reply bordered on shy. “There is a couple of colleges, actually,” she admitted. Her worry for Roman was foremost in her mind—both because of what he wanted to do and how Aldous was going to react, but somehow, she’d managed to win Tomas over.

And she hadn’t had to travel in Roman’s haunted tunnel of death, so she was taking today as a win.