Page 3 of Dukes of Peril

The summer after third grade,I had this phase where I followed Leticia everywhere. It was partly just to drive her crazy, piss her off, make her lash out so I could lash back even harder. It was our cycle. Lucias being Lucias. But it was also partly because there was no place or purpose for me. Leticia had dancing lessons and friends and duties–alife–and all I had was her and my father. So I’d follow her to her friends’ houses, to the dance studio, to the river, waiting for the moment where she snapped, erupting like a volcano. The phase didn’t last past that summer, but the effect of it did. Even well into our teens, before she’d leave for the night, she’d throw me this venomous look, full of mascara and threat, before saying, “Don’t follow me.”

Now, she’s on the other side of the river.

I can see her across the water, so small over the distance that she’s barely more than a blonde wisp. She’s too far away to make out any details. It could be anyone, but somehow, I still know it’s my sister, the moon reflecting off her shiny hair like the edge of a knife. She doesn’t call out for me. She doesn’t wave her arms. She just stands there, watching, just like that dream I once had of her on the swingset. A snapshot in time. An echo of a memory. A reminder that she was here once, too.

Don’t follow me.

I jolt into awareness with the memory of those venomous words throbbing through my head, a low hum occupying the space where they should be.

Only, it’s not the memory humming.

I lurch up and whirl toward Remy, a spike of panic lancing through me at the pale, slack look on his face. “Remy!” I hiss, grabbing his face. “Wake up!”

Luckily, his eyes flutter right open, dark swirls of green and pupil. Strangely, the second he registers me in front of him, the corner of his mouth lifts into a lazy smirk, and for a split second, it’s almost as if we’re just waking up in his bed after a good, slow fuck.

“Someone’s coming.”

The smile plummets.

His eyes harden as they scan the water, but he’s already rising, tugging me up off the ground with him. He moves stiffly, shoulder still sagging, but he doesn’t falter in lifting me, gentle but strong. My legs wobble and I can no longer feel my fingertips, but I’m just as desperate as his words sound when he whispers, “Get ready.”

“Ready?” The hum grows louder, filling my ears like a buzzing bee. I try to tug Remy back into the shadows. “What if it’s your dad?”

He just stands there with his chin raised, looking for all the world like a man ready to meet anything. “To the victor, Vinny.”

“For the record,” my jaw clenches in frustration, “I’m getting really sick of the spoils being our own fucking lives.”

But try as I might to tug him back, Remy doesn’t budge, and why should he? He’s right.To the victor. Remy is a Duke, and Dukes don’t hide in the shadows like snakes, coiling under rocks and waiting in damp holes. They fight under the sharp heat of a spotlight.

Fog hovers over the dark water, but as the sound increases, ripples of water wash against the shore. A light emerges, and then the front of a small boat. Fear grips me. Maddox isn’t our only enemy here. What if it’smyfather? He’s the one that put out the hit—the contract Maddox was simply willing to take. Nick making me their Duchess wasn’t just an act of defiance. It was the start of a war, like we’re the fucking Hatfields and McCoys.

Remy hooks his arm around my waist, holding me to him, but it doesn’t stop my knees from buckling when the fog finally parts, cutting two broad-shouldered silhouettes that I’d know anywhere.

I burst forward, almost collapsing in a frantic attempt to wave my arms. “Nick! Sy! Over here!”

Nick jumps into the water before I even finish saying his name–before the boat even reaches the shore.

Remy catches me, saying, “I told you they’d come.” There’s no smugness in the tone, only relief and weariness. The shiver that wracks though my body is intense and Remy shudders next to me. I’m not sure how much longer the two of us would’ve lasted out here, wet and exhausted, but I should have known. These two wouldn’t leave either of us behind. Fleetingly, I wonder how anyone can function in this town without having what the Dukes do. A brotherhood. A surety that when you’re too tired to go on, there’ll be someone there to carry you the rest of the way.

Suddenly, the Royal houses make a little more sense.

Nick splashes across the distance with a wide stride, running through the water to us, and every yard he gains brings the hard edges of his face into sharper relief. What I see in his eyes makes me shiver just as hard as the temperature.

Death.

Mine and Remy’s. Our fathers’. Maybe even his own. There’s death in Nick Bruin’s eyes, and when he finally reaches the shore, his stride doesn’t even falter. He marches right to me, waterlogged and full of that Bruin fury that still makes me shrink back.

He grabs me before I can, two wide palms clutching my face, and then his mouth is devouring mine, hot and hard, painfully demanding. “I saw you,” he says, panting with the exertion of the run. “I saw your tracker in the river, and I–” Any other words are poured into the crest of a bruising kiss, and then I understand.

He didn’t know what he was coming for.

Me, or my body.

I try at first to kiss him back, but it doesn’t last. It’s not that kind of kiss. It’s brutal and claiming and too intense, and I cling to it like a tether. Being loved by a psycho like Nick Bruin might mean hurting sometimes, but there are some advantages to knowing he’ll never let me go.

“Are you okay?” He releases me just to grip me even harder, fists tangling into the wet fabric of my shirt. “Tell me you’re okay. Tell me who to fuckingkill.” Up close like this, I can see the bright ring of panic in his eyes, the worn crease in his brow, the stiff set of his jaw. I bet he’s been like this for hours.

“I’m fine,” I say, curling like an animal toward his heat. I nuzzle my mouth next to the tattoo of my kiss-print on his neck, hoping it soothes him. “Just cold. Really, really cold.”

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