4. Thomas

CHAPTER 4

Thomas

I wait in the darkness outside Clara's door for a minute, listening. There's no sound of the doorknob turning or being tampered with. I hear one low thump, like she's punched weakly at the wall, but nothing else. After another minute, I go to the next door down the hall and slip into my own room.

My suite is a mirror of the guest room across the little courtyard from me, except mine has curtains to cover the two walls of windows. I press a button on my room's control panel, and the curtains on the wall facing Clara's room slide smoothly open, letting the moonlight in. Through two layers of glass, I peer into her room as I unbutton my suit jacket and kick off my brogues.

Because this special guest room located directly next to mine is the only one in the house that wasn't given one-way windows. What looks at first glance like a very comfortable suite is actually a terrarium for humans, one that I can look into at any time from my own bed. And what I can't see from here, I can see through half a dozen cameras whose feed is sent directly to my computer .

Clara is pacing. Her hands rub furiously over her face as she goes back and forth down the length of her own window wall. Only when she lowers them do I see she's crying, her pouty lower lip twisted into an angry grimace. I pause on my cufflinks, remembering and immediately disregarding the secondary brush of my thumb over that lip when I'd gripped her chin.

Even as a teenager, she was pretty. Her red hair, vivid and unforgettable, was always the first thing that caught my eye, but her infectious smile—how could anyone be so happy? It made me want to get to know her, to be around her someday. Now, with those womanly curves and that sultry, breathy voice, she nearly drove me to the edge, and being up against her took every ounce of willpower not to fall over.

Finally, Clara's legs seem to fail her, and she stumbles over to the bed and sits down heavily on the edge. Her hair flops over her face as she hides her face in her hands once again. I watch her shoulders tremble with sobs for a moment longer, then go to the computer at my desk.

With the press of a few keys, I've activated the cameras and microphones hidden in the room. Clara's hoarse tears spill out of the speakers, and I grimace at the different angles I have of her slumped on the bed. For the first time, I notice that she's been barefoot since I pulled her out of Raleigh's house. I'll have to see about getting her replacements.

There's a beep from the control panel, and Iris's voice from the speaker breaks through my thoughts.

"Let me in, I've got coffee."

I glance at the computer's clock. It's creeping toward four in the morning, and I sigh. The two of us would be rolling out of our beds in an hour anyway, so Iris has the right idea. I open the door for her and she walks past me with two mugs in one hand and her phone in the other. With her thumb, she furiously taps out a message .

When I was young and my father was at the height of his power, Iris Agostinelli was her own brand of legend among his enforcers. She was twenty-five, four years younger than I am now, but she had more kills under her belt than men twice her age. Even better, she had a knack for keeping her crime scenes spotless and poking holes in the ones left by others. In my opinion, she deserved to be promoted to my father's right hand long before it finally happened. Maybe Morgan Speare wouldn't have gotten away with his treachery if Iris had been in charge.

When my father finally lost his battle with lung cancer, there were a number of his old generals who expected me to choose them for my right hand. Iris was my only candidate. I'd grown up watching her kill men with cold efficiency. She taught me how to determine a person's weaknesses through their body language alone. She's as meticulous and level-headed as I am. Even better, she isn't afraid to tell me when she thinks I'm moving in the wrong direction. There isn't a person on the planet whose hands I'd rather put my life in.

And right now, there's no one whose read I want on this situation more.

Iris finishes whatever text she's working on and stows her phone in her pocket. Her eyes go to the window, and her frown goes from irritated to contemplative.

"Has she said anything?" she asks, passing me my black coffee and cradling her Assam tea in both hands.

"Nothing but lies," I reply. The coffee is scalding, but I sip it anyway, letting the heat shock my body into more wakefulness. "How is Raleigh?"

"Unhurt. Mad as hell, but she won't talk to me. I've given her some tea with honey she probably won't drink, and ordered her to stay in bed." Iris shrugs. "What lies?"

I shake my head. "She wants me to believe that she ran away from Morgan. That she wants to leave the mafia life."

"And do what exactly?" Iris asks, one prim eyebrow raised.

"She didn't say. Apparently, her cover story didn't get that far," I say, taking another sip of coffee. Clara's cries are quieter now, but her face is still hidden. I hear myself say, "Tell me Raleigh just forgot to unplug her hairdryer."

If it was an accident, the truce can hold a little longer, maybe even as long as I need it to. I can leverage Clara against Morgan and get some useful concessions from the negotiations.

Iris takes a long swallow of her tea, eyes pensive. I already know what she'll say. "The fire did start in the hallway bathroom between Clara and Raleigh's rooms, but there was a hell of a lot of gasoline spilled in there for it to be an accidental electrical fire."

I sigh through my nose. "Fuck."

"Indeed," Iris agrees dryly.

"Signs of entry? Footprints?"

"Nothing. No locks broken or tampered with. And footprints are a bit harder to determine now that an entire crew of firefighters has been through the place, but our people found no signs of anyone else staking out the house."

We fall quiet, listening to Clara finally cry herself out. Iris's fingertips tap thoughtfully against the side of her mug.

"What do you remember about her?" I ask, not taking my eyes off the woman two windows away from me.

Iris hums. "She was a very warm child. Didn't seem to know she was growing up in the middle of a mafia family. If you asked her, the old house was a palace, and your father was the king of a small country. So naive. Very close to her mother, Terra… and her uncle Morgan, despite his tempers. She asked about where her father was, once, and when Terra told her about the car accident, she didn't shed a tear. Instead, she offered her mother a comforting smile and said, "I'm so grateful to have you, Mom. We're so lucky to have each other." She and Raleigh were inseparable. The older they got, Terra and I would catch them in each other's rooms at all hours of the morning. They'd be painting their nails and giggling over gossip rags they got from God only knows where." She looks over at me, her eyebrow quirked again. "She had a massive crush on you, don't know if you knew."

I give her my driest look. "That's hardly relevant now," I lie, because of course I knew. Fifteen-year-old girls aren't subtle, even to eighteen-year-old boys. I'd noticed Clara, too—her shy glances and lingering looks didn't escape me or my quickened pulse. And I'd used that knowledge against Clara hardly ten minutes ago.

Iris purses her lips, and I can tell she's seen through me, as usual. I turn back to the window.

"So why would she try to kill Raleigh, her best friend, who she was inseparable from?" I ask.

"Ten years is… a long time," Iris says, and there's an emotion in her voice I didn't expect. Sorrow. She takes a long draught of her tea, then continues. "Morgan is not a stable man. I'm sure he's poured enough vitriol into her ear to last a lifetime. Whether she eventually started to believe it, or whether hearing it day in and day out turned her into her own brand of monster, it's hard to say. But from what I can tell, someone inside that house started the fire. They could have been a professional who got in and out before the alarms went off. If Clara went into that house planning to kill Raleigh, there were easier ways to do it, and I find it hard to believe she would have made the mistake of getting herself caught."

"Could she have had an accomplice? Someone who betrayed her and left her for dead?"

"That's possible," Iris muses. "Morgan never cared for his niece like she cared for him. Maybe he decided to kill two girls with one stone- destabilize us while giving himself a perfectly decent reason to plead innocent. "

I sigh again and finish the last of my coffee. "I need more time, Iris," I tell her. "If Morgan is this determined to restart the war, I've got to distract him somehow."

"I wouldn't advise leveraging Clara," Iris says immediately. "Morgan never gave two fucks about her before. Now that she's potentially botched an assassination, he'd sooner kill her himself."

I frown into my empty cup. There goes that idea.

Across the courtyard from us, Clara finally drags herself out of bed and starts wandering around her room. Iris finishes her tea and turns for the door. "I'll be back. I have some calls to make."

"At this hour?"

Iris pauses at the door, her lips quirked in a grim smile. "He'll pick up at any hour if he knows what's good for him."

After she's gone, I sit at my desk and stare at the cameras in Clara's room. My eyes itch with fatigue, but I can't let them rest. The horizon is just beginning to lighten, and I've got a very long day ahead of me.