The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(12)

“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 . . .





Chapter 4

The following morning, Adair and his brothers gathered in Ryker’s Mayfair office. This meeting was not unlike so many others before it: the Devil’s Den and Killoran’s people remained at the heart of their conversations.

Hands clasped behind him, Adair stood at the floor-length window of Ryker’s office while his brothers discussed the state of the scorched Hell and Sin and the impending arrival of a Killoran into their fold. Adair stared out at the Mayfair streets.

For all the sameness of listening to Ryker, Calum, and Niall discuss Broderick Killoran, a suffocating vise squeezed about Adair’s chest in being in this place. The fancy servants and the lords and ladies passing by the Mayfair townhouse served as a reminder of all he’d spent his life hating, and now because Killoran had burned his home down, he’d be forced to dwell among the elite. Bloody Killoran. Sharp loathing coursed through him, and he fed that fury and abhorrence, for it kept him from giving in to the madness of calling this place home—even if it was a temporary one.

So, this is what Helena felt when we sent her away to live with the Duke of Wilkinson. At the time, it had seemed the right decision to keep her safe from Diggory . . . and it had proven the right one, as she’d ultimately found happiness here. But Helena had been born to this existence. Adair would rather gut himself with Broderick Killoran’s dullest blade than ever remain here.

“. . . Adair?”

Calum’s visage reflected back in the crystal panes.

Adair’s mind raced as he sought to put order to what had just been discussed. “I wanted you all to look at this,” his brother elucidated.

Neck heating at having been caught off guard, he turned. Ryker sat behind his desk like the king of this new empire, with Adair, Niall, and Calum awaiting guidance, as always. His brothers studied the sheets of vellum in their hands. Ryker stared expectantly, with one of those sheets extended toward him. Abandoning his place at the window, he strode over and collected that sheet. “What is . . . ?” His words trailed off as he scanned the perfunctory list.

HELL AND SIN

HOTELS

STEAM-POWERED BOATS, SHIPS, AND RAILS

PHILANTHROPY

“What in blazes is this?” Adair breathed, looking up from the page marked sloppily in his brother’s hand.

Ryker folded his hands before him and rested them on the desk. “The future.”

The future?

“Given the fire and our plans of rebuilding, Penelope and I discussed at length the future.” The future. Not the future of the club. “Mayhap some good can come from the blaze,” Ryker continued. “We’ve never thought of a life beyond or outside the Hell and Sin.”

Adair recoiled as his brother’s meaning hit him. “You want us to forget the club.” Was his brother addled? “After everything we’ve dedicated and invested in it, you’d throw it away for”—he looked down at the page—“hotels?” He cringed. And furthermore, what did a single one of them know of anything other than gaming? Those skills they’d learned on the streets. They were the only ones they had.

“It wouldn’t be throwing it away,” Calum said somberly, bringing Adair’s head up again. “Mayhap from the ash of the Hell and Sin, something new can be born.”

Adair studied his sheet as his brother’s words rooted around his mind, and then a dawning understanding slipped in. Ships and rails. Philanthropy. Hotels. Staggered, he glanced around at his siblings of the streets. “You’ve already spoken.” Of course. Niall had taken to traveling with his wife, Diana; Calum and Eve had taken up work on behalf of the Salvation Foundling Hospital. A discourse that had occurred between husband and wife, not the men who’d built one of the greatest clubs in the whole of England. Adair slammed the damning scrap of their betrayal down on Ryker’s desk.

They didn’t even have the good grace to deny it or look away.

“We cannot raise our families in the streets of St. Giles,” Ryker said in his gravelly tones. No. Calum’s wife, now expecting their first child, had moved them out of the club . . . just as Ryker had months earlier. It was a practical move that Adair, even though he had no wife or child of his own, understood and respected. “We spent our lives seeking to escape, and we did.”