Page 80 of Knot for Sale

Curran

MY NETWORK IN the old neighborhood wasn’t nearly as good as it had been twenty years ago. Looking back, it had been a tactical mistake to let things slide as much as I had. Mostly, I’d been worried that having a connection to me might put my contacts in danger.

Now, I could’ve used a few more contacts than I had left.

It took several days and some creative incentivizing to finally find the person I needed. I’d made an executive decision not to loop Gabriel in on what I was planning. For one thing, there was no guarantee it would amount to anything. Emma’s nan—one Clarabelle Allen, by name—might be dead, or she might decide to spit in my face and tell me to go hang. For another, Gabriel would just try to stop me going in on my own.

I wasn’t an idiot, though. I took Onyx aside and clued them in, so I’d have some backup in case my little sojourn to the East End went tits up.

Emma had given me an address and a phone number, along with as much of a bio as she knew about. I’d never met Mrs. Allen in person. No reason I would have, mind you—she was one step down from being crime family royalty back in the day, whereas I was a sniveling gutter rat from the council estate. She’d been Jimmy Huntwell’s mother-in-law. I’d done odd jobson the wrong side of the law for would-be gangsters who were too precious to get their own hands dirty.

Even so, we’d lived in the same world. We might’ve inhabited different ends of it, but it was all beneath the umbrella of the Huntwell syndicate. I knew if I could get her alone, we’d at least have a common language.

Onyx leaned against the kitchen counter with folded arms. “You realize if I have to tell the boss you’ve gone missing in Huntwell territory, he’s going to rip out my liver.”

I didn’t pause in packing my duffel bag. “Horse shit. You’re more than capable of defending yourself.”

“Fine. He probably won’t rip out my liver. Instead, he’ll just fire me on the spot.”

I looked up and cocked an eyebrow. “Tell him if he fires you, I’ll quit too.”

Onyx huffed. “I mean... if the issue comes up, you’ll likely be dead, so I don’t know if that’s a very compelling counterargument.”

Now it was my turn to scoff. I gestured vaguely at my face. “Give me a break. Look at this ugly mug. You think anyone in the old neighborhood even remembers it? Not likely.”

“If you say so,” Onyx replied dryly. “Now, just to make sure I’ve got all this right, you got someone to bribe the bloke who’s supposed to take her to a doctor appointment, so you can take his place and talk to her alone in the car. Then you’ll try to set up a separate meeting between her and Emma.”

“Assuming she’s amenable, yeah,” I agreed.

Onyx nodded. “Right, then. Can’t say I’m happy about it, but I can see the potential payoff if she turns out to be a good gran who cares about her daughter’s little girl.”

“Let’s hope so,” I said grimly.

Emma had been tight-lipped about the details of her issues with her grandmother, but I gathered they involved somecombination of Emma having been born an omega and deciding to go into fashion modeling. The first was more worrying than the second. Even forty years after the Alphomic Accords, prejudice still ran deep in some places.

I zipped up the duffel bag.

“All ready?” Onyx asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” I said. “It’s been a minute since I was back in the old neighborhood. Can’t say I’ve really missed the place.”

Black SUVs with bulletproof glass and armored undercarriages would be ever-so-slightly conspicuous where I was going. I borrowed one from the garage at the back of the house rather than using public transit to get where I was going—but only so I could meet the bloke whose car I’d be borrowing for the job.

Well, Isayborrowing. In reality, a hell of a lot of cash was changing hands in pursuit of this mission. Fortunately, cash was something none of us were short of. Not around Gabriel.

It bothered me more than I cared to admit hearing him put himself down as an alpha. That was something that needed to change, and I wondered how much it had to do with his apparent resistance to welcoming Emma and Elijah into the pack. I guess no one had ever told the little twat that founding and running a billion-pound company was every bit asalphaas punching someone in the teeth.

I put it out of my mind as I pulled into the public car park where I was meeting my contact. This wasn’t the time for distractions.

A few minutes later, I drove out with a late-model gray Audi A3 that smelled faintly of green tea and coconut. Other than the lingering scent, it was clean but lived in. Just the sort of car you’d use to ferry an octogenarian lady to an appointment with her GP.

The streets in this part of London were still familiar to me, even after so long spent away from it. As I got closer to the docks, some areas that I remembered as being basically derelict showed signs of recent renovation, while others had been bulldozed completely.

I clamped down on any intrusive nostalgia and followed my phone’s directions to the run-down terrace housing that Clarabelle Allen called home these days. Parking the car outside, I jogged up the concrete steps to a red-painted door pockmarked with chips and scratches. After straightening my jacket, I cleared my throat and knocked.

Minutes passed, but eventually the door creaked open, revealing a stooped beta woman with a walker, clad in slightly threadbare Burberry. Clear gray eyes set in a wrinkled face fell on me and narrowed.

“You’re not Jeffrey,” Nana Allen said, in a tone rife with suspicion.

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