There are three men and two women in the room with me. And Reya, who is my shadow, hugging the wall in her evening gown and watching everything. Hearing everything. A slim notebook rests in the crook of one of her elbows, and every now and again she writes something down.
She is the only person who knows that notetaking is the first skill to desert me in times of stress.
“The rest of the city,” I say, and they seem like they all breathe at the same time, settling back into their places, faces lit up by screens. “What do we know?”
If I’m wrong, if it’s not the uncle, then it could be someone else. There are plenty of people in the city who resent what I’ve done, and what I continue to do. Very few of them are reckless enough to attack me directly in this way.
“There’s nothing on the police channels,” offers James. “No connection to the police.”
“That would be an extraordinary leap for him.” I lean back in my chair and try to look relaxed. Who knows if they buy it. “We took all the usual precautions.”
A dark look from James at this. I took more than the usual precautions. I didn’t tell him the full plan until half an hour before the party started. There’s no possible way that one of my people leaked this. They couldn’t have. No one knew.
“We need to discuss the judge,” James says, folding his hands over his tablet. “I think there’s an argument to be made in favor of...an indirect response.”
“What the fuck would that mean?” If the judge has taken something that belongs to me, then there is no such thing as an indirect response. I take it back, or I kill him, or both. “You want to set up a meeting for Monday morning and negotiate?”
“No.” He flips the tablet around and shows me the guest list for the evening. My mind automatically sorts them, lighting up the connections between each name in black and white.
Owning a whorehouse is mostly bookkeeping. And the majority of that bookkeeping—unwitnessed by almost everyone—involves keeping meticulous track of the politics in the city. All of them. The gangs that war with each other. The businessmen in blood feuds. Secrets. Affairs. Those pieces of information flow into the building but most of them never resurface.
Except for my purposes.
I ignored John Lowell before, back when I got the police report, because I didn’t think there was any preemptive action to be taken. To refuse him entry would have been to advertise Brigit’s presence here.
She asked me not to let him in.
I rub absently at my breastbone while I look at the list. The pieces won’t fit together, not the way they usually do. And every second that ticks by is another second she gets farther away from me.
From safety. The safety of the whorehouse, which is all I can offer her.
Reya steps up to my side and looks down at the tablet with me. “There will be repercussions for the girls,” she says softly.
I see it then.
The bloc of men who have come to the whorehouse tonight. They all, in one way or another, have connections to John Lowell. Some of them are in the middle of complicated legal proceedings. Some of them are in other organizations with him.
And some of them have daughters.
Daughters who have found themselves in trouble with the law. Reya taps on four different names on the list. Then she puts her notebook down next to the tablet and opens it to a page filled with her neat writing.
She went through the police report, and then she went looking for more.
And fuck, did she find it.
Brigit isn’t the only one who’s caught up in some kind of unsavory transaction with this man, which doesn’t altogether surprise me. He let me walk out of his courtroom with a slap on the wrist after Hades decided to antagonize me. Money speaks to him, but not as much as power does.
And John Lowell’s favorite power to have is over younger women.
So.
To attack him without killing him will have consequences for some of my clients. To start a physical war with John Lowell would do the same. It would upset the balance of the city, which is already teetering under its bouts of random violence. The incidents have been piling up around the whorehouse for weeks.
Since the day Demeter paid me a visit.
“Have we managed to locate my sister?”
“No,” James says.
Not the answer I was hoping for. But there are people who want Brigit more than she does. One person. Brigit’s uncle. John Lowell. A thorn in my side, now an infected wound.
“Are our teams in place along the perimeter?”
I have people all over the city. All fucking over. Somehow John Lowell has managed to thread the needle and get Brigit out of the city. That doesn’t mean the consequences can’t begin here. In fact, they have to begin here, as a distraction.
“Let’s make things interesting for the chief of police—an hour or two, and then I want it quiet.” One of the men gets up without another word and goes to do my bidding. I won’t know exactly what he puts into motion but this is also by design. The news will come back to me. It always does. And I will keep my deniability of power in place, like I always do. “And make trouble in the southeast district.”
In the southeast, by the river, two rival cartels occupy their time with garden variety human trafficking. Our roles don’t often intersect, but when they do, it’s because they’ve taken an interest in one of the women who works for me. On occasion, one of them will get reckless enough to try and take one.
Cover. It’s cover. If I’m retaliating against everyone, he’ll think I don’t know that he’s behind this.
He’ll think I don’t know he has her.
And I do know. Even without proof, I know.
The night drags on and on and on. The party continues. There is no closing time at the whorehouse, only ebbs and flows, men coming and going. They don’t want to seem to leave tonight. On any other night, I would consider this a success. The longer they stay, the more money they spend. The more secrets they reveal.
They are still in the ballroom when dawn breaks.
There are times when my network is slow to respond. It is especially slow now.
Of course it is.
It’s killing me.
I order attacks around the city. I order compromises. I send men out to the dark places to see if there’s information to be had there. It all bends to my will, aside from two elements.
Demeter, who is hiding—or lying in wait.
Brigit, who is lost.
I create and put down an escalation between the cartels in the southeast. More bickering will have to wait, because if businessmen become consumed with asset protection they spend less of their time in my whorehouse. They become unstable. Reckless. Men under duress are more prone to pick up whores on the street. What they fail to understand is that those women are part of an ecosystem that offers no protection. Not from the women, and not from becoming entangled in far darker enterprises than mine.
But desperate men will make desperate choices. Anything to ease the tension.
I cannot afford to be desperate.
“We have the car.” One of the other men, James’s second, peers down at the screen of his phone, then pinches at the screen. I can tell he’s manipulating a map. My blood races. If I could leave without causing an uproar, I would do it right now. If I could leave without compromising my business, I would.