“Ah, David. Thank you,” Rowan told him as he came in.

  Sergio stood and put an arm out to shove Rowan from the way. Instead, she sidestepped—he’d pay for the twinge in her leg as she did—and then gave him two hard shots to his kidneys that sent him back down.

  “Here I am yet again, dealing with a man who thinks with his ego instead of his brain.” Rowan put a hand at her hip. “I’ve mcfucking had it with you. Try me again and see.” She pointed again and then shackled his leg to the rung in the floor designed for that very thing.

  “Do something!” Sergio barked to Felix, who leaned in and attempted to quietly rein his client in, reminding him of what was going on.

  Naturally, Sergio wasn’t used to being reined in, so he reared back, disgust on his face, and turned to Rowan yet again.

  “This is an outrage. I’m a citizen of the United States. I demand to be freed.” Sergio’s breathing sped and his pupils were way larger than they’d been earlier.

  Finally, the elder Procella seemed to sense the depth of trouble he was in.

  Genevieve said in her snootiest tones, “What nation or state you reside in is meaningless. You are a Genetic witch. As such you are governed by the Conclave. To attempt to claim protection from humans would involve them in our business. Which is a crime punishable by death. As this is something you’ve already been found guilty of, you might want to avoid trying that again.”

  Sergio’s mouth closed with a snap.

  Rowan withheld a snort of appreciation for the way that was all delivered. Sergio was sweating again. Felix looked tired. She almost felt bad for him. Then again, his client tried to have her murdered. So there was that.

  Genevieve had occupied every inch of her position. A Senator. One of their most powerful elders. An Aubert. Rowan would sit quietly and let that disturb Sergio while a witch handled witch business.

  “Hiring wolf shifters is not against the rules. Many witches do this for a variety of reasons. We don’t even care about the mildly illegal ones. But this isn’t mildly illegal at all. You, a Genetic witch, have contracted with the Shank family—who in our files are designated a crime syndicate—to murder the Hunter Rowan Summerwaite. With explicit instructions to make it public. Violating several of our most sacrosanct laws. You’re in a great deal of difficulty,” Genevieve said and while her expression was mock sadness, her tone held zero.

  “I will not be interviewed with her in the room,” Sergio said.

  Ignoring him entirely, Genevieve turned her attention to Felix. “A guard will escort you to your vehicle. Sergio will remain here until further notice. Along with Hugo. Their magic will be nullified, and they will be kept in cells that have been altered to make certain no magic other than that of a few recognized witches will be cast. You have been found guilty of the crimes previously mentioned, but a full investigation into the scope of your actions is in process. Should that investigation find more deviations from our law, charges will be added.”

  Sergio attempted to stand, but he was still shackled to the floor, so he didn’t get far. Red faced, he yelled about being outraged, yadda yadda.

  “Understand you won’t leave this building, even if you work yourself into a stroke.” Rowan shrugged. “Throw your fit, but you’ll still be in custody. The more cooperative you are, the less harsh that sentence will be. If you want to talk about things pertinent to this situation, you can let a guard know. At some point we’ll be back. You’re on my schedule now, Sergio. And it’s your fault I’m so busy.”

  “Let me talk to him,” Felix requested.

  Rowan gathered her things one-armed, and headed to the door. “No. I have the wolves in custody too. I’ve got the fake money and the duffel. I’ve got your ass, Sergio. And I’m serving it—and your family—up to the Conclave on a pretty platter. Whether or not you explain to help us understand why you did these things, you’re fucked, and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving person.”

  She walked out to the hall, staring at Felix until he assured Sergio he’d be doing all he could before he scurried around the Conclave guard, one of Konrad’s personal team. The strawberry blond Vampire who materialized to move Sergio—still yelling—to a cell was someone who’d been in Clive’s service for two centuries. She kept her expression utterly blank—Vampires were so good at that—as she hauled the witch out of the interview room and toward the specially prepared cell, Konrad’s guard leading the way.

  Genevieve said to Felix, “Get in contact with Alfonso. Tell him to get himself back here to Vegas.”

  “I don’t know where he is. But,” he added quickly, “I will get word as far as I can to those who might. Are there still charges against him?”

  “That remains to be seen. How can we know if he keeps running away?” Genevieve asked in a silky purr full of violence Rowan approved of greatly. She wasn’t going to tell Felix much because they couldn’t trust him.

  He looked like he was going to argue a moment but remembered himself in time. Point to him. “What of Antonia? Hugo has been found. You were holding her for a reason that no longer exists.”

  “Antonia, much like her father, has obstructed our investigation. But you do correctly point out Hugo has been arrested.” Rowan didn’t say anything else. She didn’t want Felix telling anyone they had plans to search the Procella mansion. And until that happened, Antonia was staying her ass right where she was.

  “Can she at least have her magic back until her fate is decided?” Felix tried again.

  Rowan couldn’t fault the guy. He was doing his job the best he could, even in the face of absolute loss.

  Genevieve’s nose wrinkled a moment as she processed the question. “No. Yours will return once you leave here. The spell in place prevents you from revealing the location of anyone in custody. If you even think about telling anyone, I’ll know. You won’t like the result.”

  “I’m attempting to represent my clients—my family—the best I can.”

  Genevieve straightened her spine and looked down her nose at the other witch. Power seemed to flow from her in wave after wave. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking anything you or the Procellas have or are connected to can get in the way of my duty.” When she paused, threads of Dust Devil magic began to flicker all around her, threading through her own. It locked together like chain mail, adamantine.

  So. Fucking. Cool.

  Genevieve’s kill shot was, “There will be no further appeals to human legal structures. I will execute him myself if he exposes us to humans. If you’re involved, I’ll execute you as well.”

  Oooh. Genevieve was being scary. Rowan loved it.

  Felix remained quiet. He must have sensed Genevieve was at the very end of her patience.

  “We are not humans. We are the Conclave.” Genevieve’s magic swirled around her, mimicking dust devils in the wild. “I am beyond your petty powers and potions. Go and tell them, Felix. They can know and their choice after that will be on their shoulders.”

  Rowan had been watching the interchange, knowing Genevieve was the best person to deliver the scary witch stuff.

  When it was appropriate and Felix had clearly understood the message, Rowan said, “Bess Procella has been interviewed in Auckland, and taken into custody. You could have told us, any of you really, that she was on some swanky ten-month-long world cruise and saved us time. Funny how you all just said she was on a work trip, but you didn’t know exactly where. But we found out anyway. If you take nothing else away here, know to your core, I will always find out, Felix.”

  “I assure you, it was not a plan to hide her. She wasn’t here during any of this. It didn’t involve her in any way. And no one asked me directly.”

  Rowan sneered. “That’s the definition of a plan, fucko. You know a thing is coming up and you decide how you’ll react. To control the flow of information to what you want. And you were asked where she was. All of you were.”

  “She was in the middle of the ocean. I didn’t know exactly where. That much is true,” he insisted.

  Rowan shook her head, disgusted. “This verbal loaf of absolute nonsense might fly with humans, or other dumbassed witches like you, but I’m not human or a dumbass.”

  “She didn’t know of the arrests. No one has been in contact with her.”

  Which she doubted, though Bess had denied any knowledge during her interview. Rowan was very cruise averse, but even she knew they had internet and ways to communicate with the mainland. There was no way a bunch of rich people who could afford some swanky, nearly yearlong cruise would tolerate being inconvenienced by not being able to contact their brokers or whoever back home.

  Hunter Corp. and the Conclave would find out anyway, because all her electronics had been confiscated, and there was currently a major search through the ship’s systems for all incoming and outgoing communications.

  Not that she was going to tell Felix. He must have known they’d look. Maybe he, like his family, thought everyone else was too stupid to find all the clues they’d dropped.

  “Is this a tour run by the Procella family business?” she asked. Might as well use his fear and guilt to see what he’d say. And compare it with what Bess herself had claimed.

  “Not directly. But the family is working on some collaborations with the company that she’s cruising with currently,” Felix answered carefully. “We like to have an understanding of each new venue before we decide to take on any business dealings with them.”

  “Tell me something, Felix,” Rowan urged. “Next in line for the business. Who do you think Sergio will choose? Not who wants to be chosen most. Don’t waste my time with that. You’re their lawyer and some third cousin so you see inside with a unique perspective. You’re not giving away state secrets or anything. It’s a way to cooperate.”

  “It’s not Hugo at all, is it?” Genevieve said quietly.

  “One might argue Bess is ideally situated to take over. The company began with her family back in England in the sixteenth century,” Felix said instead of directly answering that last question.

  “Armbruster?” Genevieve used the name of the family line Bess had come from.

  “Back then they were the Clares. Then Armbrusters married in.”

  Genevieve made no major outward indication of how she felt about that revelation, but Rowan noted the slightest narrowing of her friend’s gaze.

  “Get me the information about those contacts as soon as possible,” Genevieve said with so much finality Felix shut his mouth and nodded his agreement before scurrying off.

  Rowan gave her a sideways look. Something had been revealed and she wasn’t entirely sure but it seemed to have come from that tidbit about Bess and her family.

  “I think we leave off seeing Antonia tonight altogether,” Rowan said quietly. “She’ll still try you with all that big-eyed I didn’t know bullshit. These families are as bad as Vampire families. Just know that.”

  “As it pertains to the Procellas, I totally agree.” Genevieve laughed prettily and slung her arm around Rowan’s shoulder a moment. “Hold,” she murmured and then a shimmering wall popped into place. “Now, your husband will be annoyed he cannot spy. We should talk about this connection Bess has. It could be nothing, but the Clares have come up in another matter. They’re one of the families my team has been quietly investigating. I’m not sure how we missed that link. I’m rather annoyed by that so once I leave here, I need to speak to my team and to Konrad. He’ll have heard that bit with Felix in the hall and made the same connection I did.”

  “All right. I’ll wager David has done the same thing. Hopefully he’s working with Konrad, but I get that your dad will take more time to come to fully trust me and Hunter Corp. the longer we work more closely together.”

  “He’s coming around. He recognizes your nobility. Your honor and power. I will share what I find, regardless. You might see something I don’t.”

  Chapter Five

  “I’ll see you in about half an hour,” she told Clive as they walked back toward his office. They had plans to meet for dinner in a private dining room at Fleur shortly. David had gone into the office Clive had given Rowan at Die Mitte to check in at the motherhouse. Genevieve and Konrad had left. There would be a rotating Conclave guard personally appointed by Konrad should the Procellas manage to try anything.

  “Will you come into my office for a moment? I’d like to speak to you in private.”

  The rest of the way to his office she considered how hard she’d pretend to be outraged by the idea of having sex in there, and then how much time she had to make it a reality.

  Instead, once the door was closed, he leaned close to her ear and said, “Will you take my blood? You might meet with trouble and all progress made toward you recovering your strength, the better.”

  There were times when her spouse could be a supreme pain in her ass. He was a condescending know-it-all with a superiority complex. Mainly because he was pretty hot shit. Still, his attitude could work her nerves.

  And then he’d do something like offer her his blood so quietly no one could overhear because he knew she had...complicated feelings about giving and taking blood from Vampires.

  For a very long time the emotional damage from the way blood had been used to manipulate her as she’d grown up in the Keep had created a wound so great, she was sure she’d never get over it. Vampires tied humans to them using blood. Sometimes to help them. To protect them and keep them strong. Other times—and sometimes at the same time—it was to create a bond so the Vampire could direct the human’s behavior in whatever way they pleased any time they had a notion to.

  Her foster father, the First and oldest of all Vampires, had done all those things. As a result of the blood he’d given her, she’d been stronger and faster. Healthier. No doubt, her lifespan had been extended. He’d taken her blood because as one of the protected humans who’d lived in his household, her blood was a tithe. Her blood, like her service, belonged to him. It marked her so that others within the world the Vampires ruled wouldn’t poach her or take blood from her without permission. Theo’s permission, not Rowan’s.

  Despite the positives, she’d been a possession. Always at the bottom of everything, the fact was, she was not in charge of her own fate. Theo’s blood bond to her meant he could—and did—barge into her mind at any time he chose. She had no real privacy. No real time off. No moment when she wasn’t always painfully aware of her status.

  It had gone on until the Goddess had begun to manifest herself within Rowan. Theo hadn’t liked that at all. But it had shifted the balance of power until the bond between Brigid and Rowan—Goddess and Vessel—was strong enough Rowan was able to keep Theo out more often.

  All of that was to say Rowan had some heavy-duty triggers and hot buttons when it came to blood exchange. And Vampires.

  It wasn’t until she’d been with Clive quite some time when she’d shared blood outside a life-and-death situation. It hadn’t been terrible at all. In fact, it deepened their bond. There were so many ways this Vampire had changed the way she viewed things.

  Rowan smiled up at him for just a brief moment. “Thank you.”

  He took her hand, turning it so he cradled it wrist up. He bent his head and brushed his lips over her veins there. Once. Twice. Then he struck. A slice of pain, gone in a breath as he sipped from her. Just a tiny taste before offering his own, two crimson beads of blood already welling against his skin.

  She only needed a swallow or two. Warmth spread all through her, tingling at her scalp and the tips of her toes. There was a little sting as all that healing power seeped into the still-wounded parts of her body, knitting things back together.

  “That will make walking a lot easier tonight,” she told him before kissing the spot on his wrist she’d just fed from.

  * * *

  He wanted to preen but settled for a smirk designed to annoy—and therefore delight—her. “Try not to break anything else between now and when I join you shortly. Normally I’d say it was only half an hour, but I’ve loved you long enough to know you can find trouble anywhere at any time.”

  “I do what I want, Scion,” she told him after delivering a smacking kiss.

  “Allow me to accompany you downstairs to the garage. I’ve got something for you.”

  “Did you give me a tank? With rockets?” she asked, teasing as the elevator doors opened on the private garage level.

  The replacement for her old heavily armored vehicle was a new, even more protected high-tech fortress on wheels. “Don’t joke. If I could get away with it, I’d do just that.”

  She took in the beefy and yet elegant BMW SUV. Matte black. Not as giant as her previous vehicle, but the smaller size meant she had more maneuverability and speed when she needed it.

  “I had this in production for you anyway.” He’d learned early on that his wife destroyed cars on a regular basis so it was best to always have the next one in production. That allowed for upgrades to allow for advances in technology and weaponry.

  He had trouble getting her to accept diamonds, but expensive weapons were one of her weaknesses so he indulged it however often he could.

  “I like how sneaky and sort of mean it looks. But it’s still classy. That’s your touch, obviously.”

  He opened the liftgate. “There are three separate ways to get into the weapons lockers. So even if you don’t have the keys and the fingerprint locks are shot out you still have another way.” He tapped a panel that slid open. “Retinal scan. You know my feelings about having a point of access without a lock.” Clive gave her a look as they both remembered the ambush and the way she’d been unable to get her weapons because the fingerprint lock had been destroyed and the keys had been lost in the crash.

  He did not much care what anyone else thought about it. A lock slowed her down. Limited her options and he wished very much she’d abandon that altogether and said as much out loud.