"What has he been through with his mum?" I breathe the question out, and both girls suddenly still. "You just saidVictoria.That's their mum, right? I've wondered for a while what her deal is."

Shoshanna answers, "She's a bitch."

My brows pinch, and I think about the way she interacted with me. I didn’t understand it. Or her. "Neglectful or something else? She seemed super nice to Clay the one time I met her. And she was… I dunno, pleasant-ish to me.”

"Pleasant-ish?" Shoshanna drawls. "She wasn’t pleasant. Trust me. And she isn’t nice to Clay. She's asycophantwith Clay because he's the Don of thedamnCosa Nostra.Her perfect, fearless heir to this dynasty."

I don't know what sycophant means, but placed in context, I imagine it means she's a brown-noser. I don't argue with her. "She does seem cold."

"Believe us," Cassidy insists. "She's not a good person."

"Dammit, Xander!" A man barks, the words freezing us, our gazes now darting to the closed double doors as our answers lie beyond them.

Shoshanna leaps to her feet like a mother who heard her own son's name screamed. She rushes over to the door and swings it open to reveal the soldiers darting through the corridors, throwing orders to one other.

Something is going down.

Is Clay injured?

Did the plane go down?

"What happened, Carter?" Shoshanna asks, gripping the arm of the biggest man I think I have ever seen. He twists to acknowledge her, unveiling his face from the shadows— I suck a breath in. His skin is curled and cavernous, his expression taut with the kind of anger only dread can provoke.

"Damn that boy! I should have known," he says to Shoshanna. "He's gone. He bloody slipped us."

I move towards them. "What do you mean?"

Carter steps inside at my utterance, stopping before me as a soldier would his commanding officer, with a respectful and orderly manner. It throws me a little.

"My queen."

"Miss Harlow," he looks reluctant as he says, "he slipped us. We don't have eyes on him."

He knows my name…

I'm not Clay's dirty little secret.

"Xander," Shoshanna breathes, the word choppy with concern. "What is he hoping to achieve? To go back?"

Cassidy gasps. "You have to find him, Carter."

"We'll search the city, Mrs Butcher," he says over my shoulder to Cassidy, in a far more familiar way.Her'Henchman Jeeves', I think.

"Carter, I need a juice boxy," Kelly says to him from her pillow fort, either oblivious or immune to the commotion.

"I'll get you one in a minute," Cassidy says, her tone is effortlessly soothing and motherly.

I don't know how she does that. My mum kept everything bubbling shallow—anger, delirium, despair. I experienced them all.

Carter trains his gaze to me, and where I usually experience the shift of the patronising stare from men like him, he’s different with me. He considers me as though I'm somehow taller than his seven-foot goon self.

"This is on me," he offers. "I should have known. I've watched over that boy for his entire life. This is exactly like him. I should have?—"

"No." Craning my neck to see him better, I realise on a closer look that he isn't as monstrous as I first thought. The skin on his face is smooth like melted wax, glistening and silvery like the moon. He is quite beautiful, really, in a tragic way. "It's not your fault," I confirm. "Has Clay been contacted?"

He shakes his chin stiffly. "We only just realised he wasn't in his suite seconds ago. I don’t know how long for. We had men outside the entire time."

I nod. "Call Clay immediately."