Chapter 48

Sandesh’s truck idled before the Mantua Home’s front gate. Armed guards checked his credentials. They had some serious campus security. How could people not realize just how serious? Did every school act like they expected an attack by armed gunmen? Okay. Stupid question. Every school in America probably expected armed gunmen.

Still, none of this mattered if the threat was already inside. His cell rang. He picked up. “You ready for my family?”

“Ready and willing.” Knowing their phones had end-to-end encryption, he asked, “What’d you find out today?”

“Dada’s sleeping with her Brothers Grim informant.”

Maybe he should take back the ready part of his statement. “Can’t be good.”

“Yeah. Betting money’s on her or Bridget right now.”

The guard approached his truck. “One sec, Justice.”

The guard handed back his ID and a printed pass with a barcode, and told him to put it on his dash. He did.

Another guard withdrew the mirrored pole she’d used to check beneath his truck. They waved him inside.

He entered slowly, necessitated by the speed bump, and came to rest at a stop sign. To his right, the campus stretched over rolling hills. Brick school buildings, dorms, the library, and cafeteria hub, and winding among all of them, walkways lined with elegant streetlights. The overcast and misty afternoon couldn’t lessen the beauty of the campus. Of course it would be beautiful. A school this prestigious had a reputation to uphold.

Girls of varying ages walked here and there. They all looked so young. Innocent.

Was it possible for Walid to find his way here? Sandesh tightened his grip on the steering wheel. No. Mukta Parish had kept this school safe for forty years. He had to remember that.

“So we’re not thinking Gracie?” Having to send away your son and the love of your life because he found out the family secret could be a reason to try and expose the group.

“I don’t know. Bridget said some weird things today. She thinks she’s got some kind of super-brain that can tell what people are thinking. Or something like that. It was really weird.”

That was strange. Turning left on School Drive then right on Parish Court, he headed up the hill to the big house. BIG house. “And your brother, Tony?”

“He thinks the League is reverse sexist. He told me that he’d given Momma a plan before the BG mission, to take out the Brothers separately. She never brought it up to the team. He seemed pissed about it.”

“Have you seen the plan? Could we use it to get Walid?”

She paused as if that hadn’t occurred to her. “I’ll reach out to Leland. Ask to see it.”

He crested the top of the hill. “I’m out front.”

“Almost ready. Be down in a sec.” She hung up.

He pulled around the fountain and parked in one of the few open spaces. He turned off his truck, got out, and surveyed the 1914 stone mansion.

He’d heard they’d done a massive renovation thirty years ago, but he couldn’t tell the old from the new. The three stories, finely crafted cornices, arches, and long, elegant windows fit together seamlessly.

With enough money, you could do anything. Even run a secret society of vigilantes in your huge mansion.

A lean, sixtyish woman with a military-straight posture, shiny silver hair, pale-blue eyes, paler-white skin, black suit, and a jagged scar across her nose approached him. A butler?

She greeted him with a brisk, “Welcome, Mr. Ross. My name is Martha. I’m head of home security. I’m here to show you to the dining room.”

Okay. Not a butler. Head of home security. So, if he had it right, there was home security for the house, internal security for underground ops, and external security for the grounds and the school.

Huh. Seemed pretty damn secure.

* * *

In many ways, going to dinner at the Parish residence felt like going to a dance at an all girls’ school.

Lots of beautiful dresses. Not a lot of guys.

Sandesh matched Martha’s brisk stride down the richly carpeted hall. She led him to a long dining room that looked more like a banquet hall, complete with multiple doorways.

Martha gestured toward the table. “Would you like me to show you to your seat, or would you prefer to wait for Justice?”

Seemed wrong to sit without her. “I’ll wait.”

She nodded and moved away.

Inside, the rectangular runway of a room had to be three thousand square feet. Multiple smaller side tables, with seating for two or four or six, flanked the walls. A thick-legged wooden beast of a table that could seat at least forty dominated the room.

Above this fortress of a table, old wood beams crossed a fifty-foot vaulted ceiling. A gleaming row of mismatched crystal chandeliers hung from the central beam and ran the length of the Goliath table.

Thick, hand-carved chairs abutted the table, which was dressed with crystal glasses and yellow roses and gold-edged plates.

Mukta and Leland were already here, walking around the table, addressing children here and there, directing others to take certain seats. They then took their own places, two seats at the head of the table. How very royal of them.

Girls of varying ages, and one out-of-place teen boy, slipped past Sandesh like he was a rock in a stream.

He watched as the groups, what Justice had told him were units, automatically sat together. No one acknowledged him. He felt almost unwelcome, standing at the doorway of a banquet room with heavy chandeliers and ceremony and community.

A warm arm slipped around his waist.

The heat that shot through him was answer enough, but he looked down anyway.

She wore an apple-red, juicy-as-sin, off-the-shoulder, like-a-second-skin dress. Damn memory was so inadequate when it came to this woman. His arm went around her, drew her to his side.

Justice rose up and whispered hot into his ear, “Hungry?”

The message delivered within the waves of heat milking his body had nothing to do with food and everything to do with the feeding of his lips against her skin.

Yes. Starved. His eyes feasted on the pert, juicy curves. He swallowed. “Where do I sit?”

She winked at him, winked at him with lashes so lush they seemed made of silk and sleep. Looking into her eyes reminded him of the dark. Of the dark covering bodies. Of the dark covering their intertwined bodies.

She grabbed his hand and pulled him after her. “Keep looking at me like that and we’ll never make it through dinner.”