Page 97 of Beautiful Prey

“Then stop threatening the miners and come for the man who fucking took it from you.”

I taste blood and laugh through it, because there’s a cry of pain sitting behind my teeth and I’d rather choke on it than give Vasco the satisfaction of hearing it. I’ll bleed out in this street before I give him that.

“That’s exactly your problem.” Vasco takes a drag. “You came all the way out here chasing one man and made your little rebellion everybody else’s problem. You leave. I stay. His neighbors stay. His coworkers stay. That sick brother of his stays.” He blows smoke toward me. “Go home, Clement. Do your duty. Get leashed, and all this goes away.”

Leashed. He has no idea. I won’t wear Dad’s collar, won’t stand at his altar to take the Imperial’s son and become a good little asset. I’d burn the Reach down first. So why does the only version of a collar I can even stand thinking about belong around a throat that isn’t mine⁠—

Not fucking now. One of Vasco’s men shifts closer on my left, and I force my attention back to him, flexing my bloody hand.

“You don’t know a single fucking thing about me.”

Vasco takes another slow drag. “Don’t I?” He taps ash onto the road. “You remind me of myself when I was young and stupid, coming to another planet, claiming some foreign mining rat with a sick⁠—”

I lunge, but two of his men hit me before I reach him, driving me back a step.

Vasco watches them stop me. “Touchy, touchy.”

Tires screech up the street, making all of us look up as a car swerves onto the curb, tears through the ring of men, and slews to a stop. The door flies open before it’s finished moving.

Ryven climbs out from behind the wheel of a battered runabout I’ve never seen before, something that looks like it was stolen straight out of the eastern block. The look on his face isn’t the one he shows the world. He shuts the door behind him. “Now this looks like a game worth showing up for.”

The nearest man goes for him. Ryven grabs him by the throat, walks him two easy steps into the side of a car, and leaves him folded on the ground.

Seren comes around the passenger side. One of Vasco’s men turns toward him, and Seren catches the man’s arm and breaks it at the elbow. The next one swings. Seren catches the fist and looks him straight in the eye. “No.”

He drives his boot into the man’s knee. Bone cracks, and the man goes down screaming.

We barely have time to finish it before a siren starts somewhere up the street. Doors open along the block, faces appearing at windows and on balconies. Vasco looks from the people gathering above us toward the sound coming closer.

“Pack it up,” he tells his men, glancing at the gathering crowd before looking back at me. He brushes ash from his cigarette, then flicks it at my feet. “We’ll be back, Mr. Clement. Your father’s paying by the week, so as far as I’m concerned, take your time getting home.” He turns for his car. “No point making a public spectacle of it.”

His men peel away without another word, climbing into their cars. Engines growl, tires spit dust, and a moment later the street belongs to the eastern block again.

A few groaning men are left behind as my blood drips from my jaw into the dirt. Somewhere up the street, a siren keeps wailing in the distance.

The runabout door swings open. “I told them!” The clerk’s voice breaks on the word, and it takes me a second to place him. Seren’s blushing little acquisition is halfway out of the back seat, both hands clamped over his mouth. “I saw the men outside the hotel. I counted them. I told Seren something was wrong. Is that blood? Oh Light, that’s a lot of blood.”

He lets out a strangled noise and folds sideways. Seren catches him around the middle with one arm like this happens every day. “He saved your life tonight, Clement. Say thank you to Emre later.” He shifts the clerk upright and points him back toward the car. “Inside.”

Ryven is on me before I can answer, catching my shirt in both fists. “Are you out of your fucking mind? Alone? Down here?” His hands are shaking against my chest, and I’ve never seen that before. “You didn’t tell anyone. Seren found you because his terrified hotel boy sat counting cars in the lobby. That’s it. That’s the whole reason you’re not dead in this street.”

“I know.” Scrubbing a hand back through my hair, I come away sticky with sweat and someone else’s blood.

“You know?” He releases me and drags a hand down his face. “Dude, you had eight men and a busted lip. That’s what you had. ‘He’s got it handled. Handled.’ Listen to me, because I’m only saying this once. When you started throwing Calder onto that card table, I thought you’d finally lost it. I told Seren you’d cracked. But you know what? I get it now.”

“Oh, do you now?” I wonder when that happened. Or is it something Onyx has been quietly doing to him?

He looks me straight in the eye. “If this is the man you want, just fucking take him.”

Seren steps up beside him, still holding Emre around the waist as the poor bastard stares at the blood on my shirt. “For once, Ryven’s right. We go back tonight.”

When I open my mouth to argue, Seren lifts a hand like the dominant fucker he is. No wonder the clerk boy’s been in his bed every night since we got here, tied up.

“Your father already reached Calder. He’s got Vasco in his pocket, which means we’re well past the warning phase. As we just learned, this wasn’t a fucking warning. It was a bill coming due.” His eyes move over the mess in the street. “Vasco knows where Jade sleeps. Your dad knows exactly who he is, and I’m not giving either of them another night to make the next move. We go tonight.”

Blood gathers at the corner of my mouth. I spit it into the dust and look back at the dark windows of Jade’s flat.

Vasco came here to take back what he thought was his. Too fucking late.