The Hellion (Wicked Wallflowers #1)(87)

His guards hesitated, then filed from the room. When they’d gone, he leveled his stare on Ryker. “I give you my word that Brewster is not responsible.”

“He took the blame for it,” Niall retorted.

Stepping past his brother, Adair hung on to the unspoken admission his brother was too blinded by hatred to hear. Words that suggested Killoran knew. “Who is responsible, then?”

Killoran’s features screwed up in a pained mask.

“Who is the owner of the dagger?” Adair prodded, and Niall removed the blade in question from his boot, brandishing it for Killoran’s inspection. “Who—” He stared unblinking at the glittering tear-shaped stones. His heart beat to a slow halt, then picked up a frantic rhythm.

“Adair?”

Ignoring the worry in Calum’s voice, he stalked over to his brother and grabbed the dagger. He turned it over, inspecting the familiar symbol upon that hilt. His stomach dipped. The blade was a replication done in different stones of Cleopatra’s. “Whose is this?” he demanded, hoarsely, not truly wanting an answer. For it could only be someone who mattered to Cleopatra.

After she . . . was gone, I took over caring for me and my family . . .

And you’ve been taking care of them ever since.

He briefly closed his eyes. And she’d of course known as soon as she’d read the file. Her quaking fingers and ashen skin had revealed as much. “Whose is it?” he asked thickly.

Killoran gave his head a slight shake, a pleading one.

The door flew open, and a golden-haired child stumbled inside. Unmindful of the pistols turned on him, he tripped over himself in his haste to reach Killoran. “Oi did something bad,” he rasped, falling into him.

Killoran caught the boy as he collapsed against him. “Stephen—”

Stephen. Cleopatra’s youngest sibling, a brother of nine.

“Not now,” he said quietly, with more tenderness than Adair had believed him capable of.

“Y-you d-don’t understand,” the boy cried as Killoran all but dragged him to the door. “Oi set a fire at the Hell and Sin.” Cleopatra’s brother stopped in his tracks.

That admission sucked the life from the room.

Stephen yanked his arm from his brother’s. “And Cleopatra is inside.”

Silence met that pronouncement, and then the room exploded in an incoherent cacophony of noise and sound. Adair stood numb; the boy’s frantic admission plunged him into hell. With jerky movements, he rushed over and grabbed the soot-stained child by the shoulders, bringing him up on his tiptoes.

Stephen squeaked.

“Where is she?”

“An office above the mews.”

“Calum’s office,” Ryker said quietly.

Adair quickly released Cleopatra’s brother and dragged shaking fingers through his hair. Turning on his heel, he staggered away and then raced from the room.

Cleopatra.

“Adair, wait.”

He ignored Calum’s shouts and raced through the corridors, past confused guards, and out into the busy gaming hell.

A sob caught in his throat. How damned important it had all seemed. He and his brothers had carried on as though nothing mattered more in the whole bloody world than the rivalry between their club and the Devil’s Den. What had any of it mattered? He shoved past the guards at the front and spilled out into the street.

Quickly locating the street lad holding his horse, he bolted over and ripped the reins from his hands. With calls for another promised purse trailing behind, he kicked his mount into a hard gallop.

She’d known.

She’d known it was her youngest brother, and knowing her as Adair did, she’d intended to stop the boy from doing any more damage.

None of it matters, Cleopatra. None of it . . . It could all burn.

All of it could be replaced, rebuilt, and restored . . . but not her—the only person who mattered. The only woman he loved or would ever love.

Time continued in a peculiar pace where it alternated between rolling together in rapidly passing moments and dragging at a never-ending pace. With every cobblestone that brought him closer to his club, the burning sting of smoke grew, until it permeated the air, thick as death. It was the same demon that had destroyed his parents and sister and then crippled his club.

His pulse pounding loud in his ears, he urged Hercules on. The mount whinnied nervously, but the loyal creature galloped ahead.

Adair brought him to a stop three buildings away. Hercules pawed and scratched at the air before settling his feet upon the earth. Adair jumped down, dimly registering one of the builders coming forward to gather the reins.

Oh, God.

Panic clogging his brain, Adair did a circle, scanning the crowds of people lining the streets of St. Giles for just one. One bespectacled spitfire whose life had come to mean more than his own. “Cleopatra,” he shouted hoarsely, the conflagration that ravaged the entire front facade of the club muffling that plea. Good God, where is she . . . ?

Phippen rushed over. “. . . it’s spread to all floors, Mr. Thorne. The fire brigade’s been unable to . . .”

Half-mad, Adair stared at the other man’s mouth as it moved, unable to put together those words. For one endless moment, he was plunged back into the hell of his past. The scorching heat of the flames destroying his family’s bakery, consuming his parents and sister. A tortured moan spilled from his lips as he was reduced to the boy he’d been: helpless, frozen in fear and horror.