Page 25 of In the Shadows

CAMILLA

When my father announced to me that I would be married off to Charles Davenport, I saw my life going a lot of different ways. I could play the dutiful wife and mother, and maybe I would be able to live some semblance of a normal life. Or I could fight for my life, kick and scream until my lungs give out, and I’ll either die trying or I’ll escape. But none of the ways I imagined my life turning out included me being surrounded by the four scariest men in the city.

Each of them is more intense than the last, but it’s fucking addictive being the center of their attention, and I can’t help but blush under their gazes. My skin heats to the point of discomfort, but I don’t dare move. Not when Crew’s large body is pressed to my back and his arms are wrapped around me protectively, and not when Kaos is looking down at me with rapture in his dark eyes. And then there’s Bishop and Kovu, their touches gentle, but there’s no mistaking their intentions.

I’m not sure how we got here or what the road we’re about to walk looks like, but there’s something right about standing between them. It’s obscene how attracted I am to the four of them, especially seeing as I’ve never been inherently attracted to anyone before.

Sure, there were cute guys at school, but they never made me forget how to breathe the way the men of the Legion do. They never made my inside tingle, or butterflies flutter so fast I can barely breathe through them. And not one of them made my core ache for them.

But these four men, each so alike but so different, have set my body on fire, even while I’ve been in unspeakable pain, and even though I know the risks, I’m going to lean into them until I inevitably crash to the ground, because if fate does lead me back to Davenport, at least I’ll have the memories of these men to make life just a little bit more bearable.

The loud shrill of a phone cuts through our trance, and as one, the four men step away, leaving me cold and unsteady. Something tells me being around them will be a lot of that. Getting comfortable, and then right when I allow myself to depend on them, they’ll pull the rug out from under me, and I’ll come crashing back to earth.

“What?” Crew barks down the line, his face showing none of the softness it did only moments ago, the swift change making me flinch unconsciously.

Silence follows as he listens intently to what the person at the other end is saying before a deep rumble tears from his chest. “I want men watching his every fucking move. I want to know when he eats, when he sleeps, I want to know when he takes a fucking piss. Do you understand me?”

He pauses, waiting for the other person’s response, before hanging up without saying goodbye. He grips his phone in his fist so tightly I swear it’s going to break under the pressure.

“I need one of you to work out a way we can wipe Charles Davenport off the face of this goddamn planet,” he growls.

“What’s he done?” Bishop asks, his face neutral as he leans his shoulder against the wall.

“He’s started contacting the other families.”

“Why would he do that?” I ask quietly. I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to know about what they do and how they run the city, if anything, but I can’t help but be curious about the man I’m meant to marry and why he would be trying to take down the only people who stop this city from descending into chaos.

“Because he wants your territory, and we won’t let him have it,” Crew tells me, his jaw set so tight it ticks.

“My territory?” I whisper.

“Yes, Princess. What did you think was going to happen when Daddy De Marco died?” Kaos snips.

I glare at him, the softness I felt toward him a few moments ago all but gone. “Did you forget my father basically sold me? I assumed he had some kind of succession plan that didn’t involve the daughter he married off to the most revolting man in the city.”

Bishop sighs and steps toward me. It’s not until he reaches for my hand that some of the tension releases from my body. There’s something about him that brings me calm and makes it easier to breathe. “We think your father thought he could get out of the contract. He never approached us about it, but there are some things that we can’t make sense of, including the fact he only trained you as his successor. Your uncle doesn’t have it in him, and your cousin is a fucking idiot, he’d have the territory at war within the week, so you were always the obvious choice.”

I stare at him for a moment, thinking through what he’s telling me. I draw my bottom lip between my teeth and worry about it as I process his words. “Why won’t you give it to Charles? It is technically his, or at least that’s the way he’d be looking at it. He would have married me, and it would have become his in marriage, so why don’t you just give him what he wants?”

“Because that’s not how it works, Little Menace,” Crew says. Some of the anger that was beating through his body a few moments ago has released, but his jaw still ticks. “We can’t allow any one family to have more than one territory. It gives them too much power, and we can’t allow that if we want to hold on to our power.”

I nod and cross my arms across my chest. “But like I said, if I married him, it would have been his anyway.”

“And that’s a problem we would have dealt with when and if it happened, but it wasn’t something we planned for,” Crew admits.

“Okay, so what are you going to do about the territory then?” I ask. There’s something in the air that tells me I’m not going to like the answer, and as soon as Crew opens his mouth, dread pools in my belly.

“You’re going to finish recovering, and then you’re going to take your place as the head of the family.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CREW

Panic flashes to life in her eyes, followed by anger, and then finally sadness. I had hoped we would have more time to ease her into this idea and for us to work out how things are going to work once she’s the leader of a territory and we retain our role as the gatekeepers of the underworld, but Davenport has moved up the timeline.

I expected it, of course I did, but I hoped we would have more time. In fact, I was sure we would have it. Charles is someone who likes to dwell on things, allow the anger to simmer, and then he starts making rash decisions. Apparently this time he didn’t feel the need to waste any time pondering and jumped right into action. The asshole couldn’t just be predictable this one time while we started making our moves.

“What the fuck do you mean? No one is going to respect my leadership after I disappeared for however long it takes me to recover, while the family is descending into chaos under my uncle. The ship has already sailed on that.” She believes the words she’s saying, but there’s a sadness in her words that I can’t help but want to take away. She wants that position. She wants to lead the family the way her father did, and his father before him, but for some reason she doesn’t believe in herself. It’s a good thing we believe in her enough to make up for that.

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