Jacob picked up. “Thorne,” he said.
Rage skimmed cold and clammy over Adam’s skin. How that monster could still use the family name—
Didn’t matter. Not anymore. He calmed himself with a controlled breath.
“Hello, Jacob,” Adam said. It was some comfort that he could still guess Jacob’s movements. Jacob would’ve needed a place to stay after his escape from Segue. The family compound had everything he required, including the satisfaction of rubbing Adam’s face in the painful dissolution of the Thorne family legacy.
Silence on Jacob’s end, then, “It’s only a matter of time before we find you and your…harpy.”
Adam bit back a retort and stuck with his plan. He’d rehearsed several tacks in his mind; this seemed the best way to go.
“Well, you can consider me found,” he said. “I need to speak with the demon. Talia wants to cut a deal. I’m acting as her intermediary.”
Jacob grunted. “Whatever she has to say, you can say to me. I’ll get him the message.”
“No can do. I have to speak with him directly. In person. Nonnegotiable.”
“Come now,” Jacob said. “You’ve been fighting The Collective for years. Caged me all that time. I doubt very much that you would capitulate now.”
Exactly so. This kind of change of heart would require a tremendous inducement.
“Talia’s pregnant,” Adam said. He wished it were true, too. Something of her, something of him to leave behind. A little hope for the future.
“Not likely,” Jacob drawled. “Even if she did screw your pathetic, mortal self, it would be way too soon to tell.”
“Talia’s half fae,” Adam explained. “The rules of mortality don’t apply to her. She says she can sense a spark of life within her when she’s in shadow. She bled some after the attack on my loft and it scared her. We’re willing to cut a deal, the specifics of which I’ll save for the demon.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t need to. Just contact the demon and ask him what he wants to do. You’ve got my mobile number.” Adam ended the call. No more arguments. No going back.
Adam jogged down a row of cars parked along the street. He’d need something without an alarm system, easy to hot-wire.
He stopped short at a rusty piece of shit, window cracked for summer ventilation and begging to be stolen. Too easy. Adam stuck his fingers in the partition and forced the glass down just enough to reach his arm over and open the button lock. He sat in the driver’s seat and took the screwdriver from his rear pocket that he’d lifted from the stash of random tools near the DJ station at the club.
His mobile phone rang as he inserted the screwdriver into the ignition and turned it like a key. The car started right up.
Adam answered, “Thorne,” same as his brother.
“He’ll see you,” Jacob said without preamble.
Good. “Where do you want me to meet you?”
“Come on up to the house. We’ll take a stroll down memory lane.” Jacob’s tone was upbeat with sarcasm. This time Jacob hung up on him.
It had been six years since Adam drove the two and a half hours of summer traffic to Southampton. At that time the gridlock was extremely tedious—he’d had better things to do than answer his mother’s summons for some trouble over Jacob. What trouble could Jacob, businessman extraordinaire and favored son of the Thorne legacy, possibly have? No trouble was too difficult for Jacob’s ambition and ego to surmount.
It was ego and ambition that was the problem.
But now the drive went quickly, traffic at night was thin and fast, speeding Adam’s way out of the city and into oblivion. The greenery of Sunrise Highway blurred on the edge of his vision as time melted the distance to a reunion with his brother.
No, not his brother. His brother was dead.
Suddenly Adam was on Gin Road, the narrow lane of tall walls and hedges behind which New York elite lived during the summer season. Neither he nor his brother would be going to any of the formal parties anymore.
The gate to Thorne House parted before Adam could buzz his arrival, and he started down the gravel drive that led to the beachfront compound. The main house was lit up, every room ablaze so that the sweeping lines of the white summer home gleamed against the deep sky.
The message was clear: No shadows welcome here. Only Life.
Jacob was right to be suspicious.
Before Adam parked the car in the wide circular drive, he took the vial of L-pills from his pants and popped one into his mouth to hold in the pocket of his gum line. The rubber coating would protect him until the moment he was introduced to the demon. Then a quick grind between his back molars. Death would be uncomfortable, but relatively quick.
Adam’s heart leaped once, a last-ditch complaint against its planned demise, but he thought of Talia. He wouldn’t have her bleeding and ruined like Custo. Not when there was something he could do about it.
Adam got out of the car and started toward the front door of the house.
Déjà vu. Six years. Full circle. Home.
Mom and Dad wanted an intervention. Well, Adam was about to intervene.
Four steps led to the elegant front door. That was Mom—elegant and formal, even on vacation. Adam gripped the handle and opened the door, each movement an echo of the memory of the last time he was here.
No. This was the last time, Adam reminded himself.
The entryway was white. Clean. Graceful. A chandelier sparkled overhead like suspended drops of magical rain over a round marble table, where Mom would’ve had a bowlful of colorful flowers to break up the coldness of the space. And beyond, the living room, the panoramic windows of the night-black ocean brightened by the lit series of decks that led to the sand. Everything in its place. So much of Mom here.
And Jacob, the new Lord and Master of the Thorne family summer home, where was he?
“In here,” Jacob called.
Dad’s study, where Jacob had killed him.
Adam walked the long hallway to the French doors of Dad’s private space, his refuge of “work” when Mom’s friends were over.
Steeling himself, Adam pushed open the door.
Jacob sat, straight-backed, behind Dad’s desk, as if he thought he belonged there. Adam’s vision went red. If he had carried a weapon, he might have used it.
Instead, he fisted his hands, his knuckles aching with the pressure. Talia. He didn’t fight for Mom and Dad anymore. They were gone, lost to the past. Talia was the future.
Jacob wore a gray pin-striped vest, white shirt, and tie—Adam had called him The Banker long before any of this happened. Jacob threw a pen onto the papers spread about on the desk and relaxed into Dad’s leather chair.
“I’m just going over Thorne finances. By my rough accounting, you’ve spent nearly fifty million in six years.” Jacob mimicked Dad’s tone, the one he’d used whenever Adam had exceeded his allowance and drew on his company account for whatever lark he was up to that week.
“Closer to a hundred, I should think. I tapped the overseas accounts,” Adam said. His current pursuit was far from a lark.
Jacob sneered with distaste. “What a waste. And now you want to play house with that little whore?”
A cold wave of rage rolled over Adam. His voice was rough, almost broken when he spoke. “Talia is not a whore.”
“Well she spread her legs for you, and her mother spread her legs for Death.” Jacob smirked at having finally hit a nerve. He laced his fingers across his stomach and rested his elbows on the armrests of Dad’s chair.
Adam’s tongue touched the little pill in his mouth. A bite, a grind, and Death himself could answer Jacob’s taunt. But his brother was no longer his responsibility. Talia was.