Page 5 of Commanding Blood And Bonds

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Welcome to Bellaton.”

Despite her sweeping gesture toward the hallway beyond, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was anything but welcome. But I needed Reyna to justify my presence here for these final weeks before the war, so I nodded and followed her lead deeper into the estate.

She ushered us into a sunlit room, its warmth wrapping around us like a well-worn cloak. Brody and his brothers leaned against the wall perpendicular to an ornate wooden desk, while Reyna took her place behind it, framed by towering bookshelves. Wasting no time on small talk, she launched straight into the string of flawlessly executed burglaries they’d suffered. As I settled into the plush cornflower blue chair across from her, she detailed the strange assortment of targets—each theft somehow connected, though they couldn’t decipher the pattern. A greenhouse. A manufacturing plant that reported nothing missing. Her antique storage.

And these petty, mismatched thefts were why I was here under the pretense of negotiating an alliance. Naturally.

“I was goin’ to let the rats scuttle home,” she snapped, voice dripping with disdain, “until they targeted my lab and roughed up my doctors. Now, enough is enough.”

With the flourish of a ship captain, she unrolled a map—acrylic nails clacking against the polished wood. I tilted my head, scanning the red markings denoting each heist. If I connected them with strings, they formed a crooked star.

Well. Hello, old friends.

“It appears they’re centrally based in the River District.”

TWO

HAUNTINGS

CYRUS

God fucking dammit.

Sighing, I ceased the steady stroke up and down Carissa’s back, snaking my arm out from under Melody before palming my face and extricating myself entirely. I tapped the icon on my phone, silencing the shrill alarm screeching into the dead of night. Fucking Bellatons. Retaliation was inevitable, but to be sloppy enough to trip an alarm at three in the damn morning?

That was either aggravatingly lazy or simply incompetent.

Yanking my jeans into place, the quiet purr of the zipper was cut off by a breathy, “Cy?”

“Go back to sleep,” I ordered softly, jerking my chin at the bed as Melody sat up, her full breasts popping free from the sheet I’d tucked around the girls. I pulled on my black long-sleeved shirt before running a palm over my hair. “All good. Just some pest control.”

Nodding, Melody snuggled in toward Carissa, her blonde hair nearly iridescent in the moonlight streaming through the window. This wasn’t new to either of them. Hierarchy business was family business. My business. And over my dead body would anybody trip Uptown and not expect a response. Much like our lovely government, the Paladins didn’t negotiate with terrorists, thieves, rival clans, or psychotic twin sisters hellbent on interfering with our every damn move. Uptown was home. Our watchtower. Our space to play as much as work. Anybody within a three-thousand-mile radius with at least two brain cells to rub together knew better than to touch Uptown.

Furthermore, Uptown was mine.

According to the soft blue glow of my security monitor beside the front door, my sister, Calypso, and our cousin, Carr, were already dressed and yanking on their boots as they stumbled into the hallway. The clip of my pistol clicking into its holster cut off my thoughts as my agile fingers marked weapons and mags, all fitted precisely into place.

Straightening, I snagged my black peacoat off the rack and exited the room, clicking the door closed behind me. I motioned for them to join as soon as I caught eyes with my heiress and our third, whose wreathing shadows mirrored my own displeasure, and as one, we shifted into mist and shadow.

The realm between realms whisked us away into the darkness, re-materializing in my Uptown office where alarms blared. The ancient warehouse was lit with the harsh light of rotating strobes, the echo of rushed footsteps reverberating off steel walls as I slowly braced myself over the desk to study the screens. My team prepared for orders, shadows whispering intel between us.

Chaos.

The screens were chaos. Oh, fuck me—Mercury really was in retrograde, wasn’t it?

Cameras were cracked, others blacked out, and those with clear views surveyed absolute destruction. This wasn’t the Bellatons. Too damned sloppy. This was the livid tantrum of a rival or the lashing out of a disgruntled employee. Personal. A growl lodged in my throat as I snatched the steel baseball bat from behind my desk—extracting answers was often accompanied by the pleasure of cracking kneecaps, and whatever rat was in my home would owe us an explanation. Quirking my head as I studied the new squares on the screen, my eyes caught on the center.

“Cali.” She was beside me before the breath could return to my lungs. My sister was the one soul on the planet I trusted without question, the future Queen of our Hierarchy, and it was her analysis I needed now. I nodded at the screen, and she tucked a silky strand of black hair behind an ear, brows furrowing as she studied it.

“Is that a motherfucking…star?” she deadpanned.

“Sure as fuck ain’t a circle.”

“What the fuck?”

Jerking my head toward the bustling hallway, I said, “Let’s go find out.”