All Hail - J. Bree Page 0,17
and I want to run away screaming. My fingers tense around Aodhan’s and he pulls away from me slowly, and when I glance back up, I see we’re the last ones to arrive and there’s a few eyes already on us.
Aodhan must have thought I was uncomfortable about being seen too close to him when really, I couldn’t give less of a fuck about what these pathetic criminal lords think.
I can’t voice that now though.
Illi holds out an arm for me to take, ever the gentleman, and I slip my hand into the crook of his elbow. Atticus refuses to look at me, even with the Jackal gone and every line of my body straightens until I’m holding myself up like the ice queen Illi always teases me about being.
Let the games begin.
“There’s no point in running the Game again until the Wolf returns.”
Now that the Jackal is dealt with and the Lynx isn’t here throwing sultry looks at all of the men she’d like to manipulate into her bed, the meeting is much faster and more bearable than they were before.
I’d only been to one meeting before the Jackal turned on the entire institution of the Twelve but Lips had told me they were always like that. Ego stroking men and petty fighting over things that don’t really matter… it’s all sort of pathetic.
Everyone is looking at Atticus like he’s some sort of messiah now, the man who survived the Jackal’s many attempts on his life. I wonder how they’d look at Lips if she was here? She always had their respect but something has shifted in the group, like a veil has lifted and they all see the real danger that they’ve been living and working with for all this time.
My words have the exact effect that I intend on them having. The Bear looks at me with that desperate loathing he now cloaks himself in. He lost everything under the Jackal’s reign of mayhem; his business, his money, and his infamy. No one wants to pledge themselves to the crime lord who put everything into the losing side, only saving themselves by crawling back to the Twelve on his belly.
He’s next on my list of members who need to be replaced.
“You can’t just decide not to run the Game! We can’t be the Twelve without twelve fucking members, that’s not how this city fucking runs! And who the fuck are you to speak at this table?”
Illi’s arms uncross and his palm rests over his cleaver, strapped to his thigh in a holster where everyone can see it. There isn’t a man in the room who hasn’t seen him in action and tension thickens in the air.
I let a smirk take over my lips, one I’ve worn my whole life against pathetic men who question me. “I speak for the Wolf. She was very clear about her intentions to have me as a proxy while she was away on business. If you’d like to question this, I should warn you I have full control of her empire in her stead and I’m sure the Butcher would be very happy to deal with a washed up, useless waste of space who shouldn’t be taking up a seat at this table any longer.”
The air leaves the room.
Atticus purposefully doesn’t look at either of us but Aodhan leans forward in his seat until his chest is blocking the Bear from my view. It’s sweet of him but entirely unnecessary. Illi is the fastest man in the room and I’m wearing Kevlar, there’s no need for him to be attempting to protect me.
The Bear is also a pathetic excuse of a man. He’d never go against the Wolf to try to harm me.
The Ox, who has been watching us keenly, says, “He might be all of those things, Beaumont, but he’s also not wrong. This city has been running under the institution of the Twelve for decades, you can’t just change the rules because there’s been a shift in power. Even one as big as the Jackal’s death.”
He glances at Jackson’s wolf insignia tattoo, right there on his hand in black ink because he’s kind of an idiot who doesn’t think things through.
It was a statement, one that got him kudos with the guys, but one we don’t need the rest of the Twelve knowing… not unless we’re going public with our alliances. With the family we’ve been slowly building.
There’s pros and cons to keeping things quiet, but of course he didn’t