The Governess (Wicked Wallflowers, #3)(2)

Self-loathing for the weak boy he’d been soured his mouth and renewed his purpose.

Broderick fished out a small purse and tossed it over. Her reflexes were slowed from drink, and the sack slipped through the woman’s fingers.

Like the rats the men and women of the Dials were forced to be, she tossed herself prostrate upon the meager offering and then scurried off, her figure disappearing within the swirl of grey fog.

Broderick resumed his hunt.

He stopped at the corner of Monmouth Street. Holding his dagger close, he worked his gaze over his surroundings. In no more than three hours, this place would be brimming with barefoot children hawking fraying boots and old shoes they’d filched from dead bodies or slumbering drunks. Pickpockets would be weaving amongst a crush of bodies out to buy or sell their wares.

But at this hour, battered souls surrendered to the grip of exhaustion and a too-brief respite from the hell that was the Dials.

The Wood Yard Brewery stood, an impressive redbrick structure, as a deceptive facade of respectability lent to a godless, soulless place.

At the entrance of Mercer Street is where you’ll find them . . . They rise at three and start thieving at three thirty . . .

The Runner’s report echoed in his mind as he slipped along the Seven Dials’ cobblestones.

Life, after all, had taught him there were greater dangers to face than the physical hurts to be dealt in London’s East End.

Rats chirped the Dials’ symphony as Broderick moved deeper into an alley the Devil himself knew not to enter . . . and then stopped.

The half-moon’s glow slashed down between the narrow slats of the buildings, casting an eerie light off the heavily scarred bastard stretched out on the hard stone.

He’s here.

Broderick resumed his march over to that prone figure.

With every step, hope—a rare emotion to these streets—spiraled through him.

He’d found him. The bastard who’d kidnapped Broderick’s youngest brother, Stephen. The man who’d passed off that same boy, a nobleman’s child, as a street orphan. And now Broderick’s very existence hung on a thread because of it.

But I’ve found him . . .

Broderick stopped over him. He kicked the prone man in the side with the tip of his boot. A hiss of pain whistled past the drunkard’s lips as he jerked awake. Broderick took a perverse pleasure in the fear that replaced the confused glint in the man’s eyes.

“You,” the man rasped.

Broderick smirked. “Me.”

“Oi didn’t think ya’d find me.” The faint slur hinted at a man with a weakness for cheap spirits and a carelessness that should have seen him with a blade in the belly long ago.

“You should think less and run more, Walsh.” Broderick gleefully doled out the first advice Mac Diggory had given him, a blubbering mess of a boy scared of his own breath.

The greying man struggled up onto his elbows. “Why would Oi run?”

“Because you kidnapped a marquess’s son.” A boy who became a brother to me. Broderick forced an icy smile. “Because I now intend to drag you to that very marquess himself.” Only this visit would not be one of empty words about what had happened that no nobleman would ever trust, but one with the thug truly responsible for those crimes in tow.

Except . . .

There was a marked calm to Walsh.

He was . . . too calm.

Broderick swiped his blade back and forth over his gloved palm. “You are not the only one I’m searching for.” He did a sweep of the narrow alley, all the while knowing the other wretch he sought had gone. But he had one, and for now, that was enough.

A cocksure smirk marred Walsh’s gaunt face. “She ain’t ’ere.”

Bloody fucking hell. Broderick flashed a hard grin. “I’ll find her later, then. For now, I’ll deal with just you.” He ground the bastard’s hand under the slight heel of his boot.

“Ahhh!” Those cries carried forlornly and familiarly around Monmouth, cries that would be heard and invariably ignored in these merciless streets.

“You deserve this.” Broderick buried his foot in the bastard’s stomach. He’d brought a stolen child into Broderick’s life, and that same boy who’d become a brother to him would now go on to another—to his rightful family.

Agony spearing him, Broderick kicked Walsh again.

The street rat rolled onto his side. Clutching dirt-blackened hands around his middle, he glowered up at Broderick. “Ya think torturing me will make a bloody difference,” he panted. “Ya’re strong, but ya’re nothing compared to a bloody nob.”

Aye, that much was true. Having been born to a powerful nobleman’s man-of-affairs, Broderick had known precisely how the world was ordered and his place in it. “Ah, but you see . . .” Leaning down, he stuck his blade against the man’s enormous Adam’s apple. Walsh’s throat bobbed wildly, and Broderick reveled in the scent of fear that clung to Walsh, more pungent than even the cheap whiskey on his breath.

“I don’t need to be more powerful than a nob,” he whispered, trailing his knife tauntingly back and forth. A crimson bead pebbled on Walsh’s skin and trickled a winding path down his threadbare, stained white shirt.

“P-please,” Walsh sputtered. A damp circle formed on the front placket of the coward’s pants.