Page 109 of Prodigal Son

Raven snorted. She’d never met Mercy’s wife, but she’d always suspected she’d like the girl. “Are the others coming? I’ve got everything ready. Miles said he’d hook up all his computer stuff.” She gestured to the table, where Ryan had been sitting for the past half-hour, staring down into a cup of tea that had long since gone cold.

Walsh leaned in closer. “That’s the fashion woman, yeah?”

“Yeah. She’s…a bit shaken.”

“More than a bit, it looks like.”

“Anybody had a go at Clive yet?”

“Mercy’s doing that now.” Walsh’s expression got caught between amusement and disgust. “The less you know of that the better. In the meantime, I want to know what she knows.”

Shane came in, then, and Raven surprised herself by going to hug him. He still had that gentle look about him, his cut sitting on his shoulders wrong. Physically, he was no less capable than the others, but there was a haunted sort of sweetness in his eyes that had always made her think he wasn’t cut out for the outlaw life. Putting her arms around him – and having him hug her back – filled her with warmth, but it didn’t make her want to cry like Walsh had.

Phillip might have been the eldest, but it was Walsh she’d always believed in the most. The one who had the power to make things right.

They sat down at the end of the long table, flanking Ryan, who lifted her head with a bewildered look. Raven wondered if she’d taken a sedative while they weren’t looking, that glassy disconnect in her eyes.

“Ryan, these are my brothers. Well, two more of them. King, and Shane.”

Both greeted her with near-identical smiles that managed to be sympathetic, but not warm.

“I’m sorry you’ve had to go all through this,” Shane said, resting a hand on the table just beside hers – but not touching. It was a thoughtful distance, and Raven could see that Ryan appreciated it – that and his kind blue eyes too, probably – her posture relaxing a fraction. Shane uncapped a pen and flipped open a spiral notebook with slow, careful gestures. Nothing like a cop whipping out a legal pad; he had the demeanor of a therapist instead. “Do you think you could tell me everything you know about Pseudonym?”

Ryan nodded. “I can try.”

Slow and halting at first, cheeks coloring with shame, she eventually settled down to the bare-bones facts of it. Stopped trying to defend her own worries and actions and just spelled it out.

Ryan Anders was, without question, the most influential name in the London fashion scene, and had been for several years now. She’d clawed her way up from lowly seventeen-year-old model, to forty-five-year-old mogul, and everyone in the business spoke her name with a blend of fear and reverence.

It was only natural that companies tried to use her agency – both businesses, really; she owned her own clothing line and the most elite modeling agency – to get their own products into the hands of potential clients. Everything from hair straighteners, to nail polish, to double-sided tape for slinky dresses got dropped in gift baskets at Ryan’s events. Products like face cream, from Gleaux. From Pseudonym.

“Gleaux wanted me to advertise their product; wanted shots of me holding it and peering into flattering mirror reflections on magazine ads and billboards, and they wanted it to be an exclusive deal. Clive was very charming, but I knew something wasn’t quite right. The negotiations were drawn-out and very tense at times – this business is cutthroat, yes, but I could smell a rat.

“After Raven came to see me, I knew there was definitely something illicit going on.”

“Me?” Raven asked, offended.

Ryan sent her a wry look. “Oh, please, Raven. Everyone knows you have ties to–” She bit off what she was going to say with a tight press of her lips.

Raven felt like she’d been slapped. “Everyone?”

“It was mostly rumors. Now it’s more or less a sure thing.”

Raven groaned and dropped her face into her hands.

“Then what happened?” Shane prodded gently.

“I called Clive, and told him about Raven. I didn’t say anything exceptional, I didn’t think, just that she was interested in samples. And twenty minutes later he showed up at my office.” The heaviness of her voice told everyone how that had felt, seeing him standing in her doorway.

“I’d seen that sharp edge in him the time before, under that posh veneer,” she said. “But then, that day…” She shuddered. “He pulled out pictures of my kids. He started saying that I had to cooperate, if I knew what was good for me, that I was never to contact you again. He thought I might try to warn you, or something, that we were friends – and that’s when I…took a gamble.”

“What sort of gamble?” Walsh asked.

“I told him I knew what he was doing, and that I wanted in on it. I wanted to help him – he and whoever he worked for. I’d do whatever they wanted, in any way, and in return my agency would become the only agency in town.”

Walsh let out a whistle.

“And he bought it?” Raven asked, incredulous.

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