And they were watching me with that same unnerving stillness. One wrong move, one nod from Starr, and I was one splattered puppy, of that I had no doubt.Starr clapped his hands, the sudden sound making me jump. Well-built men wearing skimpy thongs and little else appeared, all carrying either wine or food. It was a decadence I would normally have enjoyed, except for the fact Starr was so close. He watched them appreciatively for several seconds, then turned in his seat so he could look at me. And he wasn’t looking at me appreciatively—far from it.
A chill ran down my spine. This man suspected I was not who I was pretending to be, and I had no idea why.
“So tell me a little more about yourself.”
I shrugged, wishing like hell I had a coffee to hang on to, and yet at the same time, glad I didn’t. My hands were trembling so much I probably would have scalded myself. “I’m sure you’ve read my file.”
“I have, but it’s all dry details. I’m sure there is more to you than that.”
“And I assure you, there’s not.” I shoved my hands under my knees and let my gaze drift to the nearest waiter. I just couldn’t look at Starr for very long without my stomach turning at the vileness of his aura. At the deadness in his eyes. “The life of a thief is not very exciting.”
“These people you stole the jewelry off—Jamieson was their name, wasn’t it?”
I shrugged again, and did my best to ignore the sick trembling in my limbs. Sitting on my hands helped them, but it didn’t do much for the rest of me. “I have no idea. I don’t study the people before a job. I just study the house.”
“And the jewels? Who was your fence?”
Fucked if I knew. If it had been in the files, then I’d managed to skip that section of it. I glanced at him briefly. “Who said I’ve fenced them yet? Maybe they’re a little too hot right now.”
He grinned. He had an awful lot of teeth, many of them pointy. And not just the canines. “A nice safe answer.”
“The truth always is.” I thanked a dark-skinned man as he placed a platter of meats and bread in front of me. His gaze met mine, and the warm brown depths were haunted. This man might not be physically dead, but deep down where it really counted, only ice existed. Everything else had been ripped away by the perversity of the man beside me.
I blinked at the sudden insight, and had to clench my hands against the urge to reach out and touch him—reassure him—either physically or psychically. There was nothing I could do for this man, nothing I could do for the others in this room. Nothing other than destroy the foul thing who had ripped away their self-respect. Their humanity.
“But how do I know you are telling the truth?” Starr said.
My nerves were so bad I jumped at the sudden sound of his voice.
“You don’t.” I reached forward and plucked a slice of beef from the platter. “I don’t have the jewels with me, so there is no way I can prove anything right now.”
The beef was butter-tender, but it tasted as dry as sawdust. I swallowed with some difficulty, and reached for a glass of wine to wash the taste away.
“How very true. Unless, of course, you have a psychic at your disposal.”
He clapped his hands a second time. The elevator doors slid open, revealing Dia and a guard. At least she hadn’t lied about that. Which maybe meant she was playing this whole thing completely straight. Maybe it was just my suspicious nature suggesting otherwise.
She stopped in front of the table. Her stance was neither compliant nor aggressive, but somewhere between the two. “You called for me?”
She wasn’t looking at me, wasn’t looking at anyone except Starr. Never turn your back on a tiger snake in mating season, my brother had once warned me. Obviously, someone had told Dia the same thing.
“I want you to read this woman.” Starr’s hand came down on my forearm. It was only a brief touch, but even so, his flesh burned mine, leaving red marks long after his fingers had gone.
Dia nodded and glanced at me. Despite her stance, her expression was serene, businesslike. “Hold out your hand.”
Given I had little other choice, I obeyed. Her cool fingers wrapped around mine, and electricity leapt from her fingers to mine, tingling warmly across my skin. Something flickered in her unseeing eyes, and just for a moment, there was a tightening around her eyes and mouth. What that meant I had no idea, but I sure as hell planned to ask her later.
“I see much anger in this one.” She hesitated. “She has already fought with several of the women. She will fight with others before her time here is over. Rebellion is part of her nature.”
“A given, seeing she’s here as an arena whore,” Starr snapped. “Tell me who and what she is.”
Tension ran through me. If his instincts were suggesting I was a fake, why wasn’t he just getting rid of me? Doing this made no sense. But then, when did psychos ever play by the rules of the sane?
Dia’s fingers briefly tightened against mine, as if in reassurance, then she said, “She is a wolf who has been rejected by kin. She has fought to survive, and will continue to fight through the many life changes that are on the horizon. Her path will not be easy.”
“The who, Dia. Stop hedging.”
Dia hesitated, and for a moment I was so sure she was going to give me up that my heart lodged somewhere in my throat and every muscle twitched with readiness to leap from the chair.
“She is who she says she is,” Dia said softly. “A no-good lying thief. Lock up your valuables, Merle. She has already noted the gold watch resting on your side table.”
Starr laughed. It was an uncomfortable sound that itched at my ears. “Then the thief has taste problems. That watch is gaudiness at its worse.”
“But it would have a good street value.” Dia dropped my hand and stepped back. With her touch gone, the tingling sensation of electricity quickly died. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or sorry about that. At least her touch offered warmth in a room that was so, so cold.
She rubbed her forehead wearily and looked at Starr. “Is that all?”
“For now. I will have my reading later. After we go for our little walk.”
Though her expression didn’t change, a wave of anger and hatred rolled across my skin, drowning my senses for too many seconds. Dia wasn’t playing games—not with me, anyway. And she would do anything to get her child free and destroy this man.
She nodded and walked back to the door. Once she’d gone, Starr looked my way. “Perhaps we should have some entertainment while we eat?”Though it was phrased as a question, he didn’t wait for an answer, simply clapped his hands again. Talk about taking the role of a king to the extreme. The curtains on the door to our left swept open and two men entered. The first was a black giant, so tall he had to bend almost at the waist to get through the doorway. And he was big width-wise, too, with hands and feet the size of paddles, thighs thick enough to support a jetty, and shoulders that just seemed endless. Unfortunately, the old saying of big hands, big dick didn’t apply here. My thumb would have been bigger than his appendage. Maybe that was the reason for all the muscles—maybe he got tired of the jokes.
The second man, though not small, almost seemed dwarfed by comparison. He was lean but muscular, a man who walked light and with understated power, like that of a predator on the hunt. His brown skin glowed like dark honey in the subdued lighting, and his expression was that of a man confident in his own strength, his own power…Shock rolled through me as he drew closer.
This wasn’t a stranger. It was my brother.
My stomach sunk to a new low, and fear—sick fear—ran through me. Why was he here? Was it merely a coincidence, or did Starr suspect not only who I was, but who Rhoan was? If so, how? Who was this man in our lives that he suspected us instantly?
And if he did suspect us, why the hell was he stringing this out?
Did he want to see how far he could push it before we broke cover?
I tore my gaze away from Rhoan to look at Starr. The hints of self-satisfaction and anticipation in his expression suggested the answer to that particular question was yes. He intended to push and push and push until one of us broke and admitted the truth he suspected. Which meant, from here on in, we would be totally supervised.
Or maybe we had always been supervised. Maybe that was the only reason Moss had made his appearance in the forest in the first place.
We had to get out. Somehow, we had to get out of here. The mission and revenge and Jack’s plans could be damned. None of those were worth the weight of Rhoan’s death or mine.
My gaze went back to my brother as he and the giant walked closer. Sitting there, doing nothing, holding in my reaction, my dread, was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life. I’d been trained to fight and defend, not sit around and role-play. And while I could sometimes act with the best of them, this was different. This was our lives. And I was afraid that I would be the first to give something away, that I’d betray Rhoan and get us both killed.
My brother stepped out of the giant’s shadow, and his gaze met mine briefly. Though his expression didn’t flicker, I felt his unease like it was my own. Rhoan might be mind-blind, and therefore unreadable via psychic means, but that had never stopped me from sensing his presence or knowing what he was feeling. Or him sensing the same in me. We were twins. Our bond went deeper than mere flesh and bone and mind. We were two halves of a whole.