Chapter 30: Make No Mistake

Aria’s POV

I passed by the house, not wanting to see Elle. I wasn’t sure I could face her for telling Knox. Instead, I checked the warehouse behind their cookie-cutter mansion to see if anyone was around.

The sorters had already started their tasks for the day, the tempo of the interior exactly like any other. Several of the sorters glanced up to nod at me before returning to their work of stuffing the bags for delivery.

I ambled through the building until I came to Knox’s office, and my chest tightened. The lights were on inside, but the blinds were drawn. Still, I could smell his overpowering musk through the walls, and the hairs on my arms rose.

Closing my eyes, I drew in a breath before knocking firmly.

“What?!” Knox yelled.

Steeling myself, I let myself into the inner office. The gargoyle perched on the edge of his desk in human form but in statue pose, socked toes curled over the edge, arms drawn together at his chest. I didn’t see Lora until I had fully entered the room, the wolf shifter shaking in her chair. Her dark hair was a mess, her eyes blazing with terror.

“What happened?” I muttered, looking at the soldier. Lora peered at me, her complexion opaque.

“T-they’re dead,” Lora squealed. “All of t-them.”

Oh, Jericho…

I wish I’d known about the casualties ahead of time.

“Did you know about this?” Knox screamed, leaping toward me.

Instinctively, I jumped out of the way, prepped to shift, but I contained myself. Shifting would only come across as a threat to Knox, and I didn’t need my employer on the offensive.

“Knox, stop!” I commanded, rushing to shield myself behind his desk. “I don’t know anything!”

The lies. So many lies.

“That bastard murdered my men!” Knox rasped, glowering at me. “Jericho Walker! I’ll have his head mounted on my bedroom wall where I can fuck in front of his dead, defeated face!”

I shuddered at the image and inhaled.

“Knox, let’s talk about this,” I implored him. “No one wants a war. It’s not good for anyone.”

He hissed, his eyes growing mossy green, and I realized he was about to shift in his ire.

“That’s not true,” Lora mewled. “He only kept me alive to tell everyone that he’s coming for us. He wanted me to send the message.”

Dammit, Jericho! Again, this would have been useful information to have earlier!

My quest wasn’t going to succeed, not when Jericho had laid the groundwork for vengeance.

“You staged an attack on him,” I told Knox urgently. “He was protecting himself—”

“Are you defending the murderer of your crewmates?” Knox snarled, his face twisting hideously.

Gnarled lumps began to form on his face, and I backtracked my position immediately.

“No! No, of course not. The Black Society is my blood, my soul,” I told him. “But don’t forget that Jericho started it.”

Again, the wrong thing to say, and this time, I couldn’t escape when Knox lunged for me. His claws extended to lock around my neck, wings fully extended, the translucent membrane half blocking the view from behind him.

His face gnarled hideously, revealing the pointed, triangle teeth, black eyes sunken and furious in his shifted form.

“After everything I’ve done for you,” he rasped, his fetid breath overtaking me.

My insides began to petrify under his touch, my limbs stiffening.

Oh, gods! He’s turning me to stone!

“No!” I protested. “I’m loyal t-to you!”

“I don’t believe you,” Knox insisted. “Say it. Say you choose me over Jericho. Say it quickly while you still have a voice.”

I blurted out the words, my insides tensing with each passing second.

“I c-choose y-you!”

He released me, and I fell into a pile on the floor, gasping and choking, my organs returning to normal as he, too, shifted back into his human form.

It was the first time he had ever shown any aggression toward me, and it was terrifying.

I’d been wrong to refuse Jericho’s protection, but there was nothing I could do about it now. Knox knew the gig now, and if I wasn’t being watched before, I would be carefully monitored going forward.

“If you go to him, if you see him or make contact with him in any way,” Knox told me, his tone conversational now, “I will kill you, Aria. Make no mistake about it.”

Managing to amble to my feet, I chomped on the insides of my cheeks to keep from screaming.

“Do I make myself clear?” Knox asked me, his eyes emotionless. I nodded, dropping my head. “I won’t stand for treachery in my crew. I would have thought you understood that by now.”

Shakily, I backed away, careful to keep him in my sights until I felt the door handle on my back.

“This is my town,” Knox snarled. “And if your zombie lover wants it, he’s going to have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers.”

\---

Jericho’s POV

Before evacuating the suite, Silver, Draven, Jake, and I hid the five shifters until we could return and deal with them more thoroughly. The fire brigade made no comment about the bloodbath they’d found inside, but that didn’t surprise me; that was well above their paygrade, and they had no interest in involving themselves in whatever was happening.

Their only concern was ensuring that the Sandstone didn’t burn to the ground, and once they were sure that Draven’s fire-breathing had not spread, they packed up and moved on, leaving my small team and me to return.

In the interim, one of the hotel staff had already replaced the splintered door, but beyond that, the suite was in the same disarray that we’d left it.

I was impatient to hear from Aria, my eyes glued to the cellular phone, but as dawn broke over the cloudy horizon, there was still no word.

Silver and Jake took to dumping the gang members. I wanted them delivered to Knox’s doorstep, but that was just an immoderate use of manpower.

“Throw them in the dumpster,” I said flatly. “And hurry back. We have to devise a battle plan. We’re going out today.”

Draven stood next to me at the splintered table, poring over the map of Amestris I had acquired earlier in my travels. I was still wrapping my mind around its growth, so many of the places foreign to my eyes. Without seeing these structures or the residential areas that had formed around there, I had no real sense of what was where.

“This is Aria’s house,” I explained to Draven, pointing to the general area on the map.

Draven cleared his throat and looked back toward the ground where the laptop had fallen.

“What?” I demanded.

“There’s an easier way to get surveillance,” he offered, reaching for the fallen device. Flipping open the computer, he turned it on and grimaced. “The screen is damaged.”

“What does that mean?”

Draven showed it to me. Lines crisscrossed over the surface, but I could still read the information, and the dragon began to enter something into the search bar.

A moment later, a map showed up on the screen, partially marred by the damage. But it was a digital copy of the paper on the broken dining table.

“They really do have everything on here,” I said admiringly.

I had so much catching up to do.

“If you hit this button here,” Draven said, reaching over to show me, “it gives you a view of the area.”

He clicked, and I blinked in shock.

“That’s Aria’s house!” I choked.

Draven nodded. “Where else do you want to see?”

My mind raced as I tried to recall addresses, but after so long, I was sure they had changed.

The door opened, distracting me for a moment as the men returned, but they weren’t alone. Flanked between them was a black-haired female with wide, green eyes. Her scent was familiar, but it wasn’t until she whimpered that I realized who she was.

“You came back,” I chuckled, bemused. “What happened? Knox didn’t like the message?”

Lora’s porcelain complexion was translucent, and if not for the guards holding her, I was sure she was going to collapse.

“A-are you really Jericho Walker?” she whispered.

My smile faded slightly. “You know who I am?”

She nodded, swallowing visibly. “We—I know who you are… M-my father worked for you.”

My smirk disappeared entirely now, and I gestured for the men to sit her down and leave her alone. I joined Lora at the table.

“Your father?”

“Sheldon Cortez. He was—”

“A runner,” I remembered, envisioning the fresh-faced phoenix shifter. It was hard to imagine him as a father. “You stayed in the family business, I see.”

Lora frowned and stared at the table in front of her.

“There’s not a lot of options for females,” she explained. She jerked her head up and eyed me warily. “Not that I’m complaining. Lots of women don’t get the choice of being financially independent at all.”

My eyes became slits. “What are you doing here, Lora?”

She swallowed again. “Why did you come back?”

I pursed my lips and stared at her, pondering how to answer her. She appeared genuinely terrified. Maybe it was me, or maybe she was scared of Knox. I couldn’t say.

“If you know who I am, then you know Amestris belongs to me,” I told her coldly. “You should also know that I won’t let an attack like that go unanswered. Your boss tried to kill me.”

“He can’t kill you,” Lora said quickly. “I mean… can he?”

“I’m not answering your questions, girl. Tell me what you’re doing here and why I shouldn’t kill you for daring to come back.”

Her emerald irises popped. “Y-you offered me a job!” she sputtered. “Before…”

She trailed off, splaying her hands open on the table. “I didn’t come here looking for trouble.”

I sat back pensively and peered at her.

“You’re not very loyal,” I told her. “Jumping ship like that for a complete stranger. How do I know you’re not just spying for Knox?”

Lora’s eyes grew wider, as if she realized her mistake.

“I’m not the spy! Aria is the one playing both sides here, not me!”

I bristled, rising onto my hands.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I spat. “And you’re not winning any points with me by being a rat. Get her out of here.”

“NO!” Lora shrieked as Silver moved to stand her up. “No, please don’t! I’ll be sent off like the other women!”

I held up a hand to stop Silver.

“What?” I demanded.

Lora trembled and exhaled. “Haven’t you noticed that there are hardly any young, single females in Amestris?” she whispered. “Not unless they’re doing favors for Knox.”

I glanced at Draven, who appeared perplexed. They didn’t know. My information was restricted to what I was finding on the interwebs—or whatever it was they called that thing.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I wanted her to spell it out for me, every word. This was the verification I had needed, someone other than Ash telling me.

Lora avoided my gaze, but I slapped my hands down on the table.

“What does that mean?” I barked again. “Look at me.”

She raised her head and exhaled. “There are hardly any young, unattached females in Amestris,” she reiterated.

“Why not? Where are they?” Lora shook her head once more.

“I don’t know for sure,” she mumbled. “I just know that if they aren’t working for Knox, or they offend him in some way, they… disappear.”

“Not Aria. Not you,” I pointed out.

“Not me yet,” she whispered. “But if I go back there, I’ll disappear just like the rest of them. As for Aria…”

She pressed her lips as if containing a secret, but the look in my eyes appeared to set Lora’s words flowing again. “I think Knox has a soft spot for her. Although he wasn’t too pleased with her today.”

“Why? What happened?” Alarm spiked through me. “Is she hurt?”

I balked and moved toward the door before Lora could respond. I should have never let her go, despite her insistence. I should have known that Knox would punish her to get back at me.

“No, she’s fine. She pled her allegiance to him.”

The words stopped me in my tracks. Slowly, I turned back to look at her, the guards tense as they tried to anticipate my next move.

“She did what?”

Lora sighed. “I don’t know if she meant it, but Aria has always been savvier than most of us. She’s been around the longest out of any female. Well, except for Elle, of course.”

My head started to buzz. It made sense that Aria might tell Knox whatever he wanted to hear in order to stay safe, but where was she if he had let her go?

Did she really choose him over me?

I didn’t let myself fall into that and fixated on Lora instead.

“You want a job?” I asked her, retreating to my chair. I plunked down and stared at her. “Tell me what you know about the Black Society. I want numbers, positions, territories—everything.”

Lora nodded, twisting her hands together nervously. “I don’t really know specifics, but Knox has claimed all of Amestris, Naxoz, and Santorini. He wants to corner the market in Calamine and other things. He works with some of the fairies for that.”

“What other things has he branched into?” I pressed, sensing that she knew more than just about the drugs.

Her lower lip drooped. “I don’t know for sure, but with all the missing women, there have been rumors that he sells women, too.”

My brain began to run with this.

“Numbers?” I asked, realizing that was where my biggest issue was going to lie. “How large is the crew now?”

Lora raised her palms outwardly. “I honestly don’t know. In the thousands, maybe? I couldn’t guess…” She hesitated and glanced at Silver, Jake, and Draven. “But it’s more than you have.”

“Don’t worry about what I have,” I told her sharply. “I have quite a few more advantages than your boss, one of which is that I taught him everything he knows.”

I stood again and nodded at Silver. “Make sure she gets home safely.”

Lora blinked, crossing her hands over her arms. She shivered violently.

“You’re sending me home?” she breathed. “He’ll come looking for me.”

“Then I suggest you start recruiting some others to our cause,” I told her flatly. “I don’t have the numbers to babysit you on top of everything else.”

She gave me a baleful look and headed toward the door. But before they could leave, I sent Silver a text.

Don’t let her out of your sight. Kill anyone that gives her trouble.

Silver nodded once to show he had received my message, but there was no need to let Lora know I was watching out for her.

In the interim, she had given me a new battle strategy.

I was losing on the numbers’ end. Despite my immortality, I didn’t want or need to put Ash’s people at risk unnecessarily. The other way to win this turf war was through public opinion.

The drugs were Amestris’s foundation, but the trafficking of the town’s mothers, aunts, and sisters could not sit well with the locals. If I could turn enough locals against Knox, his crew would undoubtedly fall out of his favor, too.

I’d been looking at this all wrong. The way to win this war was not violently, but politically.

Not to say it wasn’t about to get a little bit messy.