Black Collar Queen (Black Collar Syndicate Book 2) (30 page)

Chapter 42.
Morgan Estates. New York
City. December 19

The
Office Is Quiet And Dark
. It’s a thick, waiting silence. Two 1911s are sitting on the desk
behind him, cleaned and loaded. A phone sits dark next to them. He hasn’t
spoken to anyone since he hung up with Vera, curtly informing her that two of
his men would be there to keep watch.
 
She’d been pissed, and he’d hung up. That would need to be fixed
later.
 

If Beth would go after
Emma, he didn’t think she’d bother with Vera. But taking her to the gala had
painted a target on her back, and he couldn’t ignore that.
 

Behind him, the door
opens, and his temper, already high, shifts furiously. That anyone would dare
intrude on him now. In the window’s reflection, he sees his allies approaching
him. Aleja is dressed down in black, tight pants and a simple long sleeve top
that hugs her form. Twin Baby Eagles rest low on her hips, and for the first
time since she came to New York, she looks like the assassin he knows she
is.
 

Rama stands next to her,
none of the long-held calm evident. His hair is tousled, his silk business
shirt wrinkled and bloody. He’s almost vibrating with fury as he stands in the
doorway, his liquid black eyes harder than Seth has ever seen.
 

“How is he?” Seth asks,
and he’s surprised at how calm he sounds.
 

“He will live,” Rama
says, and he sounds almost disgusted. That the bodyguard will survive while the
princess is missing.
 

Seth doesn’t acknowledge
the Thai prince’s fury. There is nothing to meet it with but his own anger, and
feeding rage will do nothing in this situation.
 

“Will the mother kill
her?” Aleja asks, and his anger breaks. He jerks around, glaring at his ally.
She stares back, her gaze icy and remote. She doesn’t have the hot anger of
Rama, or even the slow burning temper that Seth has cultivated. Her anger is icy
and remote, but he can see the depth there, in the chilling blankness of her
gaze.
 

It hits him, suddenly,
that Emma is loved. Even now, when the family who has protected her is dead,
she is loved. He is conscious of the tattoo that gleams dark against Rama’s
honey gold skin. “No. Not until she is sure she can kill us both. Emma is a
tool to draw me out,” Seth says. He walks to the bar, and selects a bottle of
vodka, pouring a shot without fanfare. His hands are steady, which surprises
him—he feels like he is shaking apart.
 

Rama curses, soft and
vicious in his own tongue. Seth sends a quelling stare at the young prince, and
Rama bares his teeth in a vicious smile.
 

“When she calls—and she
will—I will go. I will do whatever she demands, until Emma is safe. No one will
touch Beth until that is true.” Seth says flatly.
 

“And then?” Rama asks,
his voice softly menacing. This side of the Asian is new—a vicious brutality
that is startling. And reassuring.

Seth tosses back the
shot, and gives Rama flat stare. “She killed my people. She betrayed my family.
And she stole
my
queen. What the fuck
do you think I’m going to do?”
 

Aleja makes a low,
satisfied noise, some of the tension easing out of her as she moves, taking the
vodka and spilling two more shots. She nudges one to Rama, and then sits on the
couch, rolling it between her hands. “So we wait.”

Seth nods, and Rama
hisses a soft curse. “We wait.”

The silence is what
pulls her to waking. An empty, echoing absence of sound that strikes a chord
even in her fitful sleep. She sits up abruptly, for a heartbeat forgetting
everything. Panic claws into her belly and it rushes back to her on a wave of
nauseating remembrance. She shudders, and looks around quickly. Pain pushes
through her, and she gags. Swallows hard as she breathes through the wave of
dizzying agony.
 

She hears footsteps and
she forces her eyes open.

The room comes slowly
into focus. She's on a hard concrete ground, barefoot, with her hands bound in
front of her. Her ass feels wet and she's shivering.
 

"You’re
awake."

"Where are
we?" Emma croaks, pushing herself up awkwardly.
 

Beth looks around and
Emma takes a moment to take in her surroundings.
 

They're in a small pool
house, the weak winter light coming through the glass. It's dirty, long since
abandoned, a door open to the elements, and she knows exactly where they
are.
 

“Why are we here?” she
asks, her eyes wide and scared.
 

Beth crouches, kneeling
on the edge of the yawning, empty pool, her back to her daughter. "Because
this is where it happened. Where his birthright was stolen."

Emma shivers
convulsively. She's scared suddenly. Beth has never been rational when it comes
to the son she lost, but this…

“Mom, that’s not true.
No one stole anything from Isaac. It was an accident.””
 

Beth stiffens. “They
killed him.”

“Why would they do that?
Uncle Gabe loved him. Caleb worshipped him. Why the hell would anyone want to
hurt Isaac?” Emma demands, jerking on her handcuffs.
 

“Gabriel didn't trust
him,” Beth murmurs. “He refused to trust me, and without knowing his father,
Gabe always suspected him.”

“That's not true,” Emma
whispers. “Uncle Gabe loved Isaac. He was the heir to everything.”

“Then why is he dead?”
Beth snaps suddenly. “He's dead and I have nothing. And that pompous little
shit took it all.”
 

“Mother, it was an
accident. Even in our family, accidents happen!” Emma shouts.
 

Beth scrambles to her
feet, and Emma flinches back, stunned. She has never seen her mother like this,
all fury and frantic motion. Beth has always been cool and calm, with a cold
dignity——it only ever slipped with her oldest brother and Gabriel's sons.
 

“Not to him. Isaac
didn't die in some freak fucking accident. It was an assassination. Gabe killed
him.”
 

“You’re insane,” Emma
says clearly. “Does Remi Oliver know that you’re doing this? We have a truce
with him.”

Rage twists Beth
features, and she draws back, kicking Emma hard in the stomach. Once. Twice.
The third time, Emma feels something snap and she screams, a high, pained
noise. Beth pauses. “He was supposed to kill Seth. He swore it when you
murdered Nic.” Fury twists her classically beautiful face. “But he lied. He
fucking took blood money.”

It makes sense
suddenly—the rage and the reckless behavior. Emma laughs weakly. “He doesn't
know you're doing this. You're dead, Beth. If Seth doesn't kill you, Remi will
for violating the truce.”

Beth shrugs. “Or I kill
Seth and renegotiate.”

She turns abruptly and
stalks away, leaving Emma alone in the empty pool house.
 

She's always known that
Beth put Isaac in a special place. Growing up with the ghost of her dead
brother, it was impossible to miss. And she never questioned that, because in a
family that dealt in death and violence, Isaac was an anomaly. A freak accident
during a weekend at the family's beach home.
 

Morgans don’t die by
drowning. Even when the newspapers report that—they die by bullets, as
grandiose and brilliant as they live.

Isaac drowning in a pool
while his girlfriend slept upstairs never made sense.
 

Emma takes a deep
breath, shuddering at the sharp, stabbing sensation. She knows her rib is
broken. It occurs to her that she could die here, in the same place as the
brother she never had the chance to know.
 

It hurts to think about. Seth will be devastated—but Rama. Tears
sting her eyes.
 

It isn't fair to die. He
has already lost one Morgan he loves. None of what she's done with Rama is
fair. She grits her teeth and pushes herself upright, gasping as pain in her
side shifts, stabbing furiously. She slumps against the cold ground and stares
at the pool, hoping like hell that she lives long enough to fix the
relationship she ruined.
         
 

Chapter 43
.
Morgan Estates. New York City. December 19
^th
 

Aleja
Is Curled In One
of the freestanding chairs, her eyes closed, fingers drumming on
the arm of her chair. Rama is pacing, his quiet zen long since shattered.
Tinney stands in the shadows, almost trembling with quiet tension.
 

Seth is talking softly
into the phone and he rubs his eyes as he says goodbye and hangs up. Aleja
lifts her head and eyes him. Seth ignores the stare as he pushes away from the
desk. It’s been twelve hours since the phone call from Rama, and morning is
starting to break over the city.
 

He’s kept calm, because
anger won’t help here. Retained his cool in the face of Rama’s fury and
Tinney’s stoic rage. Stayed quiet, because there is nothing to say—not right
now. Not until Beth makes her move.
 

His hands shake as he
pours a glass of water, and behind him, he hears Aleja moving. He glances at
her and see the coke in a neat pile in front of her.
 

For a moment, he sees
Emma, dressed in a white suit, her hair hanging over her shoulder as she cut
lines before the dinner party where everything changed. It’s all too
similar—except that night, Emma had been the furious bundle of energy, Rama the
quiet counterbalance for her and Seth’s quiet fury.
 

The stakes are higher
this time—because losing Emma will mean losing everything. He takes a deep
breath, steadying himself, and shakes his head. “None of that,” he says softly.
Aleja pauses in the middle of cutting lines, her eyes wide and startled.
 

The phone rings, jarring
all of them. Rama breathes out a curse, but it barely registers as Seth moves,
scooping the phone up and hitting speaker.
 

“Hello?” he growls.

“You never did learn how
to politely answer a phone, Seth.”

His grip tightens on the
phone until the plastic casing creaks. “Where the fuck is Emma, Beth?”
 

“Language,” she snaps.
“She’s fine. She isn’t yours—she can see her mother.”
 

“Her mother is a
traitorous bitch that she hates. Where?”
 

All the false warmth and
chiding seeps out of her tone, leaving her brisk and businesslike.

“You come alone. Leave
the Asian whore and your assassin in the city. Understand?”
 

Seth’s gaze flicks to
Rama and then to Tinney. He can see the protests beginning on their faces—but
none of that matters. Not until she’s safe. “Fine. Where is she?”

“Where Isaac died,” Beth
says, and her voice shakes a little. Seth’s eyes close. “If I think you’re
bringing anyone with you, I’ll kill her. Do you understand?”

“I want to talk to her,”
Seth says sharply. “I want to hear for myself that she’s alive.”

There is a moment of
hesitation and then, “I suppose that’s fair.”

Seth waits, listening as
Beth walks. Aleja shifts as a door opens and her steps seem to echo. There’s a
cough, and then, weakly, “What do you want?”

His hands shake and he
drops into the desk chair as Tinney takes a single step forward.
 

“Emma?” Seth whispers.

There’s a moment of
silence, and then Beth snaps, “Talk to him.”
 

“Seth, don’t come here,”
she blurts out quickly. There’s a sharp crack of skin hitting skin, and Rama
spits a foreign curse. For a moment, there is tense silence. “Is he there?” she
asks, and he can hear the emotion she’s fighting.
 

“Yeah, Em,” Seth says,
his voice low. “Rama and Aleja are both here. Are you ok?”
 

She manages a weak
laugh. “Sure. Just having a heart-to-heart with Mother. I might have a
concussion. Maybe a broken rib. Nothing major.”
 

“
Mali
,” Rama breathes, and she makes a strange, half-aborted noise.
It hurts to hear her sound like that, physically hurts. He gives the Thai
prince a sharp look, and Seth clicks speaker off and pulls the phone to his
ear.
 

“Can you hang in there a
little longer, sweetheart?” he asks, worry leaking into his tone.
 

“Seth, don’t come here.
She wants you dead,” Emma says, and her voice is steel, an order. She has never
given him an order.

There’s another flurry
of motion, and Emma screams, loud and painful.
 

“Sorry,” Beth says
pleasantly. “She’s done talking.”

“You fucking bitch,”
Seth snarls.
 

Beth
tsks
. “You were never good at talking to
your elders. Be here by noon or I’ll kill her.”
 

Beth hangs up before he
can respond, and Seth lowers the phone slowly. Aleja is sitting up, all of them
staring at him expectantly. His hands start to shake, and the quakes are enough
to work the thread of his self-control from its seams.
 

He lets loose a
half-strangled roar as he chucks his phone against the door of his office. He
is tornado, a force of nature as he whirls on one of his office chairs, swipes
it up, and hurls it into his minibar. Glass goes flying, along with all his
expensive liquor. The chair loses a leg and bounces across the room.
 

Aleja jumps to her feet,
scrambling toward Tinney and Rama. She doesn't quite believe that Seth would
hurt her, but she also doesn't believe he's exactly cognizant at the moment.
Her wide eyes find Rama, who's watching the scene with a pained expression. The
Thai has heard of Seth's wreckage, but he's never seen the breaking point
before. He watches Seth launch a lamp into the wall with a pang of envy. If
only he could let himself go like that, maybe he'd feel a bit better for it.
Tinney just sighs.

In a matter of about
sixty seconds, Seth is surrounded by a radius of destruction. Somehow, he looks
as natural there as in any upscale setting. His back is to the others, and his
shoulders heave. His hands have stopped shaking.
 

Finally, he says, “We
need to leave if we're going to make it by noon.” His words are low, strung just
above a whisper, but they're steady.

“She’ll kill you both if
you go,” Tinney says.
 

Seth turns to the
others, his expression a chilling portrait of determination. He says, “Which is
why we kill the bitch first.”