Chapter 3
Do not say anything. Do not say anything. Do not say anything.
As Cleopatra Killoran stalked through the pale-pink-carpeted corridors of Ryker Black’s townhouse, she focused on the rap of her heels striking the floor. It was a trick she’d mastered as a girl, when her mind had tried to take her to dark places. Mayhap another person would have been awestruck by the lavish wealth on display in the Grosvenor Square residence. Cleopatra, however, was no ordinary person, and she certainly wasn’t the manner of woman to walk the halls of a viscount’s home.
She was the manner of one who knew the taste of blood in her mouth and the feel of a blade in her hand and the echo of nightmares of long ago.
And so, she allowed herself to hear nothing but the tread of her own footfalls.
Anything to keep from thinking of the bloody brother who walked close behind, who’d all but groveled at the feet of a lady for the chance to mingle with the blue bloods. She gritted her teeth.
Broderick Killoran had come into her family when she was a small girl and he a boy on the cusp of manhood, just orphaned and new to the streets. With his fancy speaking and nourished frame, but with fear showing in his eyes, Cleopatra had hated Broderick on sight. That loathing had lasted all of a month before she saw his worth and benefited from his protection . . . and from that point on, love. Or it had been. Now she was quite back to hating him all over again.
They reached the foyer. Ryker Black’s butler and an unsavory lot of servants stood in wait with cloaks in hand. One of Black’s guards came forward. He made to drape her cloak over her shoulders, and she yanked the muslin garment from his hands. Cleopatra pulled it into its proper place. She reached for the bonnet in another waiting guard’s hands, and he wisely handed it over and backed away.
The butler drew the door open, and she gave silent thanks. The Blacks had accused Cleopatra’s family of setting their hell ablaze. It was a crime they bore no guilt for . . . one of the few times they could claim that luxury in truthfulness. In this instance, she would sooner burn this place to tinder, too, than linger in the fancy townhouse any longer. Bonnet in hand, she strode from Black’s residence and stomped down the stairs.
“Cleo,” her brother said after her.
“Not a word,” she gritted out, weaving around a fancy lord and lady out for a stroll.
They flicked cool, condescending stares over her, and she paused, turning her fury briefly toward them, glowering.
That pair hastened their steps.
Bloody nobs. Another woman might be cowed and hurt over that disdain. Cleopatra, however, had hardened herself long ago to the world’s opinions. She’d seen those same fancy lords bugger children in the streets and beat whores inside their clubs. As such, she’d hardly credit a single one of them with any moral standing of which she cared about or after.
Cleopatra reached the carriage and, ignoring the hand held out by Finnett, hefted herself up.
“That bad, Miss Cleo?” the older driver asked, glancing back at the townhouse.
“Worse.” Her lip peeled back in an involuntary sneer, and she fought the urge to wheel back and plant her brother a facer to break his damned perfect nose. She took up a spot on the plush pale-blue squabs and glared at the doorway.
His damned affable-as-always smile on his face, Broderick climbed inside and settled into the spot across from her. A mutinous battle of silence waged between them as Cleopatra and Broderick locked gazes.
A moment later, their carriage lurched forward and rumbled away from the fancy streets of London to the gutters where the Killorans belonged. Only her brother Broderick was the one who seemed incapable of knowing as much. Or mayhap he was accepting it.
When Mac Diggory, the ugliest, blackest rotter in St. Giles and the Dials combined, had brought Broderick into their gang, he’d become the first person in her then-miserable existence who ever smiled. That smile hadn’t been the street-hardened grin that promised death and retribution . . . but rather something . . . genuine. Something that she’d never known or identified with because of the hell that was life.
In time, that smile had shaped and twisted and transformed, and even as he wore that grin in amusement still, sometimes . . . now she recognized it for the practiced expression it was. Damn him for his control just then. Where had that bloody pride been earlier in Black’s townhouse? That snapped her patience. She hurled her bonnet on the bench beside him. “What in blazes was that?”
He winked, that slight, silent acknowledgment of her defeat. “What in blazes was what?” he asked with a nonchalance that brought her hands reflexively curling into fists once more. “That victory over the Blacks?” He stretched his legs out, knocking into her knees.
She whistled. “You’re nicked in the nob.” He was and always had been. “You’ve become mad with a lust for respectability.”
His cheeks flushed red. “There is nothing wrong with wanting a better life for all of us.”
She scoffed. “You still haven’t accepted that we’ve been born with the stench of the street on our skin. And it can’t ever be scrubbed away, no matter the fine bath oils or fragrances we use.”
When he said nothing, Cleopatra kicked him in the shins. He winced, drawing his long limbs back into their proper place. “Furthermore, that back there was not victory. That was you licking the boots of our enemy.” The smug, satisfied triumph on Adair Thorne’s face as Broderick had all but pleaded for a restoration of the vow struck between their families. She tightened her mouth.
A vein throbbed at the corner of her brother’s eye. “I lick no man’s boots,” he whispered with a steely edge that had sent countless people running in the opposite direction.
“No,” Cleopatra conceded, and some of the tension left his shoulders. “This time it was a lady’s slippers.”
He surged forward. “It is for our family that I do this. We’ve built a fortune to rival Croesus, and once we secure noble connections, we can ensure the Devil’s Den’s place in this damned uncertain world.”
She’d not humble herself with the truth that she didn’t have a jot of an idea who this Croesus fellow was. She’d learned long ago to listen to Broderick’s fancy talk and not reveal her own ineptness on those ends.
“Once we have those noble connections, nothing will stop us, Cleo.” A glint hardened his blue eyes. “Nothing.”
Forcibly concealing her disgust, she lifted her chin and got to the heart of it. “Who?” Who of the Killoran sisters would he sacrifice like a lamb upon the altar of his aspirations?
He set his mouth.
“Who?” she repeated, laying her palms on her knees.
“It should be Gertrude. She’s the eldest,” he said, tugging off his gloves. “The order of things matters to Polite Society,” he explained, stuffing the elegant leather scraps inside his jacket.
“Gertrude,” she repeated slowly. The eldest of their siblings, blind in one eye, and the quietest, meekest of their lot, she’d be eaten alive by the lords of London, and worse . . . destroyed by the nob who took her as wife. The carriage hit a bump and knocked an already unsettled Cleopatra back. She shot a hand out, catching the edge of her seat. Except . . . one word gave her pause. Should. “You won’t send Gertrude.”
He shrugged. “A gentleman doesn’t want a spinster bride, and she’s nearly on the shelf.”
Cleopatra growled, those tonnish words he tossed about only highlighting his sick obsession with the nobility. Which could only mean . . .
“Ophelia is the logical one to send.” Because with her ethereal beauty, any lord would wed her in an instant.
“You’d sell her to achieve your own gains?” It was a naive question that left her mouth before she could call it back where it belonged. Of course, that was the way of the streets. One did what one must, including selling one’s soul—or in this case, one’s sister—for their own gains.
Broderick scoffed. “This is as much for me as all of you. Look at the Blacks. Look at what became of them—”
“Because those bastards thought to marry into the nobility.” She jabbed her index finger against her gloveless left palm, punctuating her words. “Our place is not among the nobs, Broderick.”
“You would not understand it, Cleo.”
She growled. It didn’t matter that he was correct in that she didn’t understand the ways of the ton. No one, man or woman of any station, put her own ignorance on display.
“Lords in need of a fortune always welcome a marriage to a lesser—”
“Think before you finish that, Broderick Killoran,” she said with the same deathly calm she’d used on the first man she’d slayed in the streets.
Wisely, her brother fell silent. He scrubbed a palm back and forth over his forehead. “Cleopatra,” he tried again as she prepared to beat him back with her words, “this will make us stronger.”
She froze. There it was . . . the goal they’d always striven for. Power allowed a person not only to survive but to thrive and lead. It kept one from a hungry belly and safe from death. Now Broderick would place that mantle upon the shoulders of one of the Killoran girls.
“Look how quickly Black and his crew fell from power,” he pressed. After Diggory’s death, Broderick had set the Devil’s Den on a path of respectability. Noblemen had become patrons, and the Killorans’ wealth had grown . . . and just as he did in every aspect of life, Broderick—and all the Killorans—flourished. They had lured away Black’s members, and then his club had been taken down by a fire. “That could very well be our fate,” her brother murmured with an uncanny reading of her thoughts.
Noble connections would make the Killorans stronger. They had their club . . . and that was all. What else were they? He’ll not relent until one of us makes a match with a nob . . .
“Not Ophelia.” Hauntingly beautiful, she’d be prey for every desperate, lecherous nobleman.
He made a sound of impatience. “It has to be—”
“Not. Ophelia.”
“Gertrude, then,” he gritted out. “She’s the eldest.”
“No.” Power grab be damned, the Killorans wouldn’t grow their empire at the expense of their weakest member. From the King of England to kingpin of the underworld, there wasn’t a man of any station she couldn’t control. She might be the youngest, but she’d killed long before Broderick had ever stumbled into their midst, and she’d always looked after her sisters, so she’d be the one who did it now. Cleopatra tipped her chin up. “It’s me.”
Broderick blinked. “But . . .” There was a world of wealth to that single-syllable utterance.
With her dull brown hair, elfin frame, and tendency to wield her tongue like a knife, she’d never be any gentleman’s first choice for a bride. “It doesn’t matter what I look like. It matters what they need. They need our wealth,” she said with the same pragmatism she’d used when doling out meal rations to Diggory’s gang. “It will be me. You’ll have your connections to the nobility and then your entry into society.”
“Our entry,” Broderick murmured, his gaze the same contemplative one as when he had a book in hand, lost in absorption to those pages.
The carriage drew to a stop, and they remained seated on the benches.
“I’m not afraid of a bloody toff.”
“Your sisters aren’t afraid of anyone, either,” he reminded her.
He was wrong. For the bond between them, there had been too many years where Broderick had not been a part of their existence. As he’d pointed out, their siblings might have managed to battle demons and hide their fears. Cleopatra, however, knew the monsters that lived within still . . . for each of her siblings.
Finnett drew the door open.
“Not now,” Broderick snapped, and the old servant instantly slammed it closed.
“This isn’t a discussion, Broderick,” Cleopatra said flatly. “This isn’t a debate or a decision you are making.” She thinned her eyes into narrow slits. “This is one I already decided. For everyone.” Gertrude and Ophelia.
He shook his head. “You despise the nobility.”
An inelegant snort burst from her lips. “And do you believe our sisters have an affinity for those lords?”
“No.” Broderick grinned, his first real expression of amusement that day. “But you’re the only one I suspect would stick a blade in a nobleman’s belly for even an unintended slight.”
She tightened her mouth, content to let him believe her that ruthless. It meant she’d crafted a flawless facade for herself over the years. One where not even her family knew the depth of what she was capable of.
Relentless, Broderick shook his head. “It cannot be you. You’re too val—” He cut himself off.
Valuable. She’d been his second as long as he’d had ownership of the club, and guided him long before that. “Gertrude was nearly buggered by one of those ruthless peers you’d now marry her off to,” she snapped. That had been the first man Cleopatra had stabbed, and she’d do it all over to help any one of her siblings. “I won’t let you send her into a den of those bastards. It will be me,” she said in chilled tones.
Her brother opened and closed his mouth several times, and then he cursed. “Oh, bloody hell. Very well. It will be you.”
Grinning at that triumph, she shoved open her own door. Cheeks flushed, Finnett jumped back, taking care to avoid either Cleopatra’s or Broderick’s eyes. “F-forgive m-me. I was waiting, and . . .” He cleared his throat and dropped his guilty gaze to the cobblestones.
This time she let him hand her down with a word of thanks. He’d been listening. As one who’d become adept at reading a person’s furtiveness, she knew as much.
Marching ahead of her brother, Cleopatra bounded up the seven steps leading to the impressive establishment. From the corner of her eye, those gaslight sconces in their crystal casing snagged her attention. Those impractical adornments her brother insisted on, which were broken over and over and always promptly replaced, served as a mark of Broderick’s love of that noble connection. The ornate oak doors were flung open, and she swept inside.
Since Cleopatra had long moved freely about the gaming hell floors, the gentlemen and guttersnipes who tossed down their coin here had ceased staring whenever she or her sisters wandered around. With focused footsteps, she made her way through the crowded club. Her sister Ophelia, hovering at the hazard table, caught her gaze with a question in her eyes.
Cleopatra shook her head once. She didn’t care to speak about the meeting with the Blacks. Not now. And her siblings knew enough to honor that.
Cleopatra exited the gaming floors and continued down a long corridor with an intersecting hall. Pausing at the back wall, she found the clever switch of the hidden door and let herself in. The wise in St. Giles never forgot that danger lurked in every corner. One would be a fool to let one’s guard down, and as such, regardless of the wealth or powerful connections one had, danger was always at hand. She reached her rooms and, loosening the fastenings of her cloak, kicked the door closed with the heel of her boot.
Cleopatra dropped the fine garment and stalked over to her armoire. Yanking the doors open, she proceeded to draw out gowns and dresses of satins and silks. Finer garments than any she’d worn while Diggory had been living, which largely hadn’t been worn outside the streets of St. Giles until now. For it hadn’t been until that bastard had taken a deserved bullet to the belly by Black’s crew that she’d known a hint of the fineries he had with the club’s success. All the bastards Diggory had whelped and the street thugs who’d taken on employment here had found a roof over their heads and food in their bellies and nothing more. That had been the truest debt they owed Black’s family—offing that cruel bastard. Cleopatra gritted her teeth. Not that she’d ever given a rat’s arse about the fineries. It had only and always been about security. She tossed a dress on her wide four-poster bed.
But in this—God rot his soul—Broderick was correct.
Their establishment could crumble as easily as Black’s club had. The difference between them? That man had a title behind his name and a fortune beyond his gaming hell. What do we have?
She stopped and eyed the mound of clothes she’d heaped upon the bed. This would be nothing more than a business transaction struck between Cleopatra and the peerage. It was no different from the contracts they signed with their liquor distributors or wheat suppliers. For the gentleman who sold his title for their fortune would be a partner in a business endeavor and not much more.
A knock sounded at the door.
“Come in,” she called.
Regina Spark, affectionately dubbed Reggie by their family, rushed inside. “What happened?” The ethereal woman who swept in had been more like a mama trying in vain to tame her unruly daughters. Concern gleamed bright in Reggie’s aquamarine eyes. “Cleopatra?” Reggie demanded impatiently, moving over in a whir of noisy, drab skirts. That sudden movement knocked her chignon loose, and several loose curls fell down her back. “What did he de―” Her gaze alighted on the stack of garments, and her words trailed off. “It’s you,” she breathed.
“It has to be me,” Cleopatra said tightly, and resumed gathering her belongings.
“It does not.”
Cleopatra glanced over, and Reggie flattened her lips into a hard line.
“Why need it be any of you?”
Older than Cleopatra, Reggie had been rescued years earlier by Broderick, and she had devoted her loyalties, services, and friendship to him and his siblings ever since.
“You know my brother,” she explained matter-of-factly.
“Yes, I do,” the woman muttered. The details surrounding that night Broderick rescued Reggie from the streets were ones Cleopatra had never gleaned from either of them, and she’d lived long enough in St. Giles to know not to pry or probe. “I will speak to him.”
“I’m not afraid of a man, Reggie.” Civilized society might be bound by laws and rules, but Cleopatra and her kin had gotten on without those societal dictates. “I’d kill a man before I let him hurt me.” She’d done it before . . . for herself and her sisters.
Reggie’s expression darkened. “Sometimes it is beyond your powers, and spending a life forever bound to one is vastly different than what you speak of.”
What I speak of. Cleopatra knew not what the other woman’s life had been like before she’d joined their gang, but her tendency to skirt descriptive words and truths told of a different rearing than Cleopatra’s.
“I am going to speak to him.” Reggie spun on her heel and stomped over to the door.
“You’ll not speak for me, Reggie,” she said in solemn tones, willing the other woman to understand that this was Cleopatra’s decision and she’d own it.
“I’ll not let him send you there—”
“I volunteered myself.” No one made Cleopatra Killoran do anything. Not even the siblings she loved and would sacrifice her very life for.
Reggie opened and closed her mouth several times, and then a sigh slipped out. “Of course you did.” She strode over. “Here,” she said with her usual mothering, taking the blue satin striped gown from Cleopatra’s fingers. She proceeded to organize the piles into day dresses, undergarments, and ball gowns . . . ball gowns that had been useless scraps before, but now served a purpose. “I have it,” she muttered, slapping at Cleopatra’s fingers. It spoke volumes to the bond between them.
Cleopatra hitched herself to the edge of the bed and allowed Reggie to oversee the task at hand. They all had their distractors. Cleopatra’s was the tread of her own steps. Reggie had always been an organizer.
“What happened?” Reggie asked, fetching Cleopatra’s trunks. She dragged one back to the bed.
Cleopatra lifted one shoulder in a negligent shrug. “They tried to renege.”
Stooped over that massive trunk, Reggie awkwardly lifted her head.
“Black’s wife was determined to honor their word,” she explained, answering that unasked question. She proceeded to share the details of that meeting.
The door exploded open.
Both women looked as one to the glowering boy. He’d already found out. Another Diggory bastard without a definite birthday, Stephen was likely just nine or ten years old, but he possessed a temper to rival most men.
Reggie released the gown in her hand and wordlessly backed out of the room.
Stephen slammed the door. “I hate you.”
Regret suffused her breast. “You don’t hate me.” One of Diggory’s many bastards, Stephen had been a snarling, snappish, beastlike boy until Broderick had taken him under their care. “If you did, you wouldn’t be here,” Cleopatra said with more gentleness than she’d ever let another person hear from her. She shoved her armoire doors closed.
“Well, then I hate you . . . for now,” Stephen snarled. That she believed. Her youngest sibling had a temper to rival a once-beaten dog. “I knew you’d be the one. I knew you’d not let anyone else do it. You’re always protecting everyone else.” With an angry shout, he pulled his dagger from his boot and hurled it at the opposite wall.
Despite herself, she gasped. A knife in the wall had long been Diggory’s unspoken seal. “Stop it,” she said tightly. Stephen was spoiling for a fight, and when he was in one of his tempers, one had a better hope of reasoning with Satan himself than the boy.
Cleopatra strode across the room and, bracing one palm against the plaster, wrestled free the buried tip. “You need to control your temper.” It would see him ruined, and if they hadn’t been provided security at the Devil’s Den through Broderick’s efforts, he’d have been destroyed long ago for it.
“I’m declaring war.”
“On who?” she snapped. “Broderick?”
“On them . . .”
“Do not say it.” Cleopatra glowered him into silence. The last thing their family could afford was a heightened feud with Black’s family, particularly now that their rivals had links to the nobility.
In a bid to defuse his volatile rage, Cleopatra tossed his blade aside and returned to her bed. “It is done, Stephen.” She knelt and withdrew a small valise from under her bed and set it atop her undergarments. Dropping to her knees once more, she peeled back the Aubusson carpet and partially rolled it back. She found the loose floorboard, and lifting it, she reached inside and drew out several daggers. “Put those in my valise.”
Stephen stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I ain’t your lady’s maid.”
Cleopatra grabbed her two pistols and shoved them across the smooth floor so they landed at his feet. “Certainly not. After all, which lady’s maid would be helping a lady pack an arsenal of weapons?” She followed that with a wink.
Despite the earlier fury that had blazed in his eyes, Stephen’s lips twitched. This was how she preferred her youngest brother—with a teasing light in his eyes and a smile dimpling his cheeks. “That’s better,” she said.
He quickly tamped down his grin. Mirth had so long been a sign of weakness for all of them that it was too foreign to trust oneself over to any emotion. That was something Cleopatra well understood.
“You’re mad,” he grumbled, then proceeded to help her pack her weapons.
“It is just marriage.” They’d all sold their souls more times than even the Devil wanted anymore. Broderick had simply found another part to sell. So why, practical and rational as she was, did that knot her insides? She lowered the floorboard back into its proper place and reached for the corner of the carpet.
“You don’t have to go,” Stephen said gruffly, looking up from his task.
She froze midmovement. I don’t want to . . . I have to . . . Not because she gave a rat’s arse about a connection to the nobility but because if she didn’t succeed in the goal Broderick had for them, then he’d turn to another one of their siblings to oversee his goals. “It has to be me.”
“Let Gertie go.”
Cleopatra frowned. “No.” It wouldn’t be Gertrude.
“Because she’s weak,” her brother muttered.
Blinded in one eye because of a fist Diggory had delivered to her head, and silent as the grave, Gertrude had greater strength than most men. Cleopatra would be damned on Sunday if she let her elder sister sacrifice all for their brood. “Marriage to a lord would shatter Gertie,” she said quietly to her brother. Cleopatra, however, could battle any man, woman, or child and emerge triumphant.
“Because she’s no spine,” he spat again.
And even with the deep bond between Cleopatra and Stephen, and for all his grumbling, he loved Gertrude and Ophelia just as much. Cleopatra quit her spot on the floor and joined her brother at the bed. She took his hands in hers and gave them a squeeze.
“Look at me,” she commanded when he directed his focus at the floor.
He slowly lifted his head.
“There are different kinds of strength.”
There was a wavering in his blue eyes, and then the steel was back in place. “You marry one of them, you’re never coming back.”
And despite what she’d resolved to do, and matter-of-factly signed on for, Cleopatra reeled as the weight of her brother’s words slammed into her. If she did this—nay, when she did this—her sisters would be spared from sacrificing themselves, and yet she’d be bound forever in that fancy end of London . . .
“Send Ophelia, then,” Stephen entreated. “Anyone but you.”
“I cannot do that.” Her throat worked, and she damned her weakness. “I won’t do that,” she corrected. She would not sacrifice any of her siblings.
Stephen wrenched away and, turning on his heel, fled her rooms. Cleopatra stared at the door long after he’d gone, the ormolu clock ticking down her remaining moments here.
I’m never coming back . . .