Page 12 of Wicked Union

I closed the door after a few minutes, not wanting to wake her, and entered the code to lock her inside. The security door was an extra precaution. While she slept, the door remained locked. Grace had a bathroom and a mini fridge, so she didn’t need to leave her room at night.

She looked too peaceful when she slept to disturb her. Besides, I didn’t want her to know I’d been doing this every night since she arrived last week. I couldn’t sleep without knowing she was okay.

That she was safe.

As a member of The Devil’s Knights, my duty was to protect her. She was the only granddaughter of the Grand Master of The Founders Society, and since The Knights answered to The Founders, I had to follow orders. But Grace was more than a job to me.

I crept downstairs and headed toward the back of the house. The hallways were dark, lit only by the wall sconces that provided very little light.

“Where are you going?” Dad asked as I walked past his office.

Despite spending the last ten years together at York Military Academy, we didn’t have the best relationship. Because he was the commandant, it only complicated matters. Instead of having a dad, I had a commanding officer.

I popped my head into his office. “I’m meeting The Knights at the temple.”

“To discuss Grace?”

I nodded. “And Alex. She’s still listed for sale on the Il Circo auction site.”

Alexandrea Wellington was the soon-to-be Queen of The Devil’s Knights. She was the first and only queen we would ever have. It was the only way Carl Wellington, her grandfather, would allow Alex to marry one of The Salvatore brothers, the leaders of The Devil’s Knights.

Instead of choosing one brother, she was dating all four, including Grace’s cousin, Bastian. I wouldn’t have agreed to an arrangement like that with my brothers, but whatever worked for them.

“Drake will find a way to get Alex off the site,” Dad said confidently.

Someone added Alex to a site on the Dark Web where men from the depths of the criminal underworld could bid on anything.

Only the person who added her to the auction could remove the listing. Even with our money and resources, we couldn’t track down the person responsible. No one knew who ran the auction.

Dad scrubbed a hand over the dark stubble on his jaw and sighed. “Drake will have to get over his issues before he can see the only way out isthrough.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What issues does Drake have?”

My cousin was three years older than me and one of the youngest CEOs in history. He owned Battle Industries, the world’s largest manufacturer of technology-based weapons. I’d never met anyone more intelligent than Drake. He graduated from MIT when he was nineteen and made the cover ofWIREDby twenty.

I planned to work for him at the end of the summer because I loved how his mind worked and had admired him since I was a kid. I could learn more from him in one month than I did in four years of college.

“He has a deadly weapon in his possession and refuses to use it,” my father said with disdain in his tone. “He could easily solve our problems with The Lucaya Group.”

We suspected but couldn’t confirm that Grace’s biological father was the leader of The Lucaya Group. For that reason, The Devil’s Knights had to protect her.

Fitzy hid her when she was eight. Her name change became essential at eleven when her father escaped imprisonment on Skull Island, where The Devil’s Knights locked up the worst offenders.

That day, she became Grace Hale, and Katarina Adams Romanov died. If you were to do a Google search—or any search for that matter—you wouldn’t find a trace of Grace’s former identity. It was as if she were never born.

“Drake isn’t like you,” I told my dad. “Or like the other Knights.”

My cousin had a kind heart and genuinely wanted to change the world. Maybe he could, but his personal beliefs contradicted our current situation.

“No, he’s not,” Dad agreed. “But one day, he will change his mind, and when he does, it will be too late.”

If anyone could take down The Lucaya Group, it was him. But he let his conscience guide him. My dad and I hadn’t told any of The Knights about some of Drake’s developments. Because we knew if the Salvatore brothers found out about it, they would force him to use his work for evil.

Drake believed the only way out was to find a backdoor. He thought like a hacker, not like my dad and The Founders. So, for now, his secret stayed within the family. No one but us would ever know he could stop this war.

And that meant I had to pay extra special attention to Grace. Until her adoptive father returned from his assignment, I wouldn’t let her out of sight—only on the rare occasions when I met with The Knights.

“Can you check on her if our meeting goes longer than expected?” I asked him.

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