Page 51 of Paris and the Reaper

“Ten minutes,” she replied.

“Question is,” Robin mused, “do you want the money for yourself or for the cause?”

“Which is it, Robin?” Paris snapped, irritated to outburst. “You don’t believe me because we thought they’d all fallen in line? Or because they didn’t?”

“Hey,” Mac said, stepping between them and cupping Paris’s cheek, waiting for his brown gaze to settle back on his. “I know it feels like he’s the enemy, but he’s not.”

“We’ve all been there,” Icarus said, earning a growl from Robin. Which in turn earned a raspberry from Icarus. And like a popped balloon, the tension in the room deflated, everyone except Robin chuckling.

Paris inhaled deep, then exhaled, letting more of the tension go as he shook out his shoulders. When he righted his gaze, he was calm once more, confident, the spat with Robin doing somegood it seemed. “We’ve seen it already. When we talk to people, when we let them be heard, we get more information out of them. We add allies. We learn how to win this.” He nodded. “I can do this.”

Mac was sure of it. Sure of him. And sure that if he didn’t kiss him right then, he’d regret it. In front of everyone, he pulled the man he loved into his arms and kissed him deep, hoping Paris sensed all the pride and confidence Mac had in him. To pull this off, to pull anything off he set his mind to.

Paris kissed him back, his lips curving into a smile against his, the two of them parting when cat calls and whistles erupted. In his arms, Paris laughed with the joy, the warmth that had brightened Mac’s world these past few weeks. And more, according to Paris. “You should see your aura right now,” he whispered at his year. “I can’t wait to get home so I can paint it. So you can see it too.”

Mac couldn’t wait either.

And neither could reality, interrupting the happy moment. “Eyes on Taylor,” Mary said.

Lounging ceased. Adam and Robin shot to their feet, Icarus too, the latter coming around the table to hook his arm through Paris’s. The both of them were stylishly suited, though Icarus stood several inches taller in his stilettos. “You ready to go?”

Paris would meet Charlotte with Icarus, their best fighter, at his side. Jason was already in the main room, behind the bar with Kai, and Adam, Robin and Mac would join them, fanned out to block the exit doors. Jenn and Abigail would shift from their positions on the floor to the room here with Mary, as guards and backup.

“Last line of human defense,” Paris said with a sharp nod, then tucked the folders Mac handed him under his arm. Ammunition, for when he needed it. One last stolen kiss, and then their group strode down the hall to the main room, Parisand Icarus continuing to the lone table in the center of the dance floor where Charlotte Taylor waited, two men—shifters they’d already identified as her usual entourage—standing guard behind her.

“This is the company you keep now?” she said, her dainty nose turned up, her brown hair twisted in a bun at her neck.

“This was always the company I kept.” Paris lowered into the chair Icarus pulled out for him and set the folders on the table. “You’re holding my money hostage.”

“Your money?” She scoffed. “You think you should be the heir? A worthless layabout who stole from his own father? You don’t know the first thing about running a business.”

“So you want the money for yourself, then?”

“We’re the ones who earned it.”

We, Mac noted. As in the royal we, or the we that included the two shifters behind her, or a larger we of more defectors?

Didn’t matter for Paris’s response, though, the strategy planned. “You’re right,” he said, and Charlotte reared back, her eyes wide with surprise. “I don’t know how to run the finances,” he said to her, then to the two shifters and whomever they were also standing in for, “And I wasn’t the one my father sent into battle. So no, I don’t know how to run his business, as he did. I’ll need your help,allof you, to run it a different way.”

“And how’s that?” she asked, leaning slightly forward, giving away the interest she hid behind her skepticism.

“The way my father should have. By affording you the protection you came to him for in the first place.” He opened one of the folders, pushing it toward her, and Charlotte paled. “You came to my father for protection for your daughter, a witch who inherited your late husband’s magic. What did Vincent make her do instead?”

She hesitated, fingers splayed on the edge of the picture of her daughter.

“He’s gone, Charlotte,” Paris said. “My father can’t hurt your family anymore. Let me help you. Let me help her.”

“Potions,” she said after another moment. “Killing ones. They’ve made her sick too.”

“And you, Frankie,” Paris said, as he glanced up at the blond shifter behind her. “You’re a psychopomp. You should be delivering souls to peace, not to the highest bidder.” He opened a different folder. “My father found you and offered you protection from a gang who sought to kill you instead of having their souls delivered. What did my father have you do instead?”

He cast his hazel gaze aside. “Deliver them to a giant.” Wallace Boyle, if Mac had to guess, another reason Paris had lobbied for recruiting Charlotte and her guards.

“I won’t do that,” Paris said, conviction and earnestness in his voice. “I’ll give you the protection he promised.”

“And if we disagree?” the other shifter asked.

“You leave here unharmed.”

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