The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(2)

The hot-tempered one of their group, Niall shed his earlier control. “This ain’t my fault,” he growled, surging toward Adair.

Calum and Ryker swiftly caught them each by an arm.

“It ain’t your fault.” Adair spat in the street. “It’s all our faults. We all let our guard down.” It was one of the most basic rules for survival, and they’d been lax—and it had cost them their club. Bile stung his throat, and he choked it back.

“Enough,” Ryker gritted out. He looked pointedly at the ashen employees scattered about. They stared on with fear in their gazes.

The weight of responsibility settled heavily on Adair’s shoulders. It was the only thin thread that kept him from giving in to the panic tearing at the corners of his mind. It reestablished purpose. Purpose was good. It kept him from giving in to despair. The men, women, and children behind them depended upon the club for their very existence. They’d been loyal workers and deserved more than this uncertainty and fear.

“We need to see to them,” Ryker said in grave tones.

A large, burned corner of the stucco establishment tore away and tumbled to the alley, falling atop a pile of debris. That crumbling ushered in a new flurry of tears and agonized moans from the men, women, and children around them.

“We’ve survived worse,” Calum said somberly, ever the optimist of their core group. “We will survive this.” He spoke with the same confidence he’d had when they’d been boys without a roof over their heads in the winter months. Calum flexed his jaw. “And we’ll grow stronger.”

Yes, they’d survived worse.

Adair briefly closed his eyes. It surely spoke to his brothers’ strength and his weakness, but the prospect of rebuilding from the ground up set panic rioting in his chest. Selfishly and cowardly, he wanted to dwell at the top of their kingdom and never again know the beginning. The beginning of everything . . . from drawing one’s first breath, to getting on after tragedy, to finding a new family or building a new home was work. It was uncertainty and fear and the unknown.

“Come,” Ryker said again. “We need to see everyone off the streets until . . .” Dark glitter sparked in Ryker’s eyes, the first evidence of the ever-confident Ryker Black’s uncertainty. Ryker strode out into the street, barking out orders and commands for the terror-filled employees.

Adair glanced back over his shoulder at the scorched building, and a feeling of desolation squeezed at his chest. At best, there had been seven years of his life when he’d been capable of innocence and goodness, but that had died with his parents and sister in a different fire. In this instance, grateful though he was that none of the men, women, and children who called this place home had suffered the same fate as his family, he still raged inside. For the club hadn’t been just a building or a place of employment . . . it had been a dream and his home and the only thing he’d wanted in his life. And it was gone.

“Adair?” Calum called out. “We need help organizing the staff into hacks and carriages.”

Adair nodded and immediately turned his focus over to the task, ordering men, women, and children about, and in that, he found a distraction from the tumult of his mind and spirit.

With his brothers at his side, he worked through the long hours of the night until every servant and guard and serving girl and dealer had boarded a carriage and been ushered off to Ryker’s, Niall’s, and Calum’s townhouses. Until at last, the only ones who lingered in the streets of St. Giles, outside the charred remnants of the Hell and Sin, were Adair, Calum, Niall, and Ryker: the men who’d brought this club into existence.

Adair narrowed his gaze on the facade destroyed by fire. Truce. What foolishness.

A truce had been struck between Killoran’s people and the proprietors of the Hell and Sin. That peace had died in the fiery embers that had raged the previous evening.

“The deal is off,” he said quietly, and his brothers looked over to him. “Killoran wanted Ryker and Penny to introduce his bastard kin to Polite Society. The only person a single one of us will introduce them to is the Devil himself.”

His brothers looked around at one another, and then over to Adair. In unison, they nodded.

“The deal is off,” Ryker confirmed, his lips hardened into an unyielding line that promised retribution.

Not a single Killoran would ever benefit from any efforts of the Hell and Sin family. Adair would rather gut himself than give over an inch to that vile crew.

Pledges be damned.





Chapter 2

A thick tension, better suited for an impending battle in St. Giles than a Mayfair townhouse, hung heavy in Ryker Black’s office.

But then, it was not every day the most ruthless fighters and leaders of the darkest streets of London gathered for a meeting.

Adair, Ryker, Calum, and Niall had assembled more than ten minutes ago with Broderick Killoran, a burly, ugly guard at his side, and Killoran’s sister Cleopatra. Since that trio’s arrival, not a word had been spoken. Each person stared mutinously back at one another in a silent dare of who would speak first.

Through that strained quiet, Adair passed his stare over the three people before them. Broderick Killoran sat as comfortable as a king in one of Ryker’s winged leather chairs. With his palms resting upon that fine leather and a familiar cocksure grin on his face, his ease was only belied by a fierce glitter in his eyes. The guard, a towering bear of a figure who looked more like a mountain than a man, stood behind his lord and master, hands planted on his hips. Adair flicked his gaze dismissively over the brute, nearly three inches taller than Adair’s six feet, three inches. He’d learned firsthand from countless street battles that even a child could take down a person three times his size with a well-placed blow, bite, or kick. He moved his focus on to the childlike figure alongside the brute. Not even a hair above five feet, her slender form was draped in fine satin fabric. Bespectacled and in possession of a mop of brown curls, she’d a fire in her eyes that promised death to all who crossed her.