Queen of Quarantine (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #4) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,251

was a shame, but I had come to the conclusion a few years ago that my son would have to die if I ever wanted to reclaim my empire. Once I’d achieved that I supposed I’d have to work on creating another heir, though the tedium of taking a new wife had slowed my progress on that idea.

"What advice was that?" Saint asked curiously, coming to stand behind the black widow who had lured him to her side.

But perhaps I had been wrong to balk against the idea of him aligning himself with this girl. The look in her eyes said she was just as determined and dangerous as him, so despite the weakness I knew this love he claimed to feel for her caused him, it was possible she provided some strength too.

"To always go after what you want and never give up until you have it in your grasp,” I supplied.

"Well, he has a point there," Tatum said as Saint took her hand and lifted it to kiss the back of her knuckles. "You are very tenacious."

My son smiled as he pulled her to her feet and my skin prickled as I watched them together. Whatever they'd done to get in here, they certainly didn't seem in any hurry to achieve their goal. Which only gave my men more time to get here. In fact, I was surprised they weren’t rushing into the room already.

"I always get what I want," Saint agreed with her, grasping her throat in his hand as he drew her close and kissed her hard.

The heel of her designer shoes bumped against the bottle of scotch, knocking it over and my gut dropped as the priceless liquid spilled out across the tiles.

"I assume you didn't just come here to paw at the girl who destroyed my club?" I asked in a bored tone, my fingers twitching with the desire to pick that damn bottle up while they just left it there to empty out.

"Of course not," Saint said, slipping his arm around her waist and ignoring the ever-growing puddle of scotch between us even as the thought of it made my jaw tick. "But I thought you might appreciate the time to realise your men aren't coming."

"What men?" I asked, my gut dropping as I resisted the urge to press the button on my watch again.

"It's actually rather simple to jam the signal from a panic device such as yours," Saint said, lazily reaching out to arrange a lock of blonde hair over Tatum's shoulder while she smiled at him with a dark hunger that made me wary.

"I don't know what you-"

"And hired thugs are all well and good," he went on, talking over me like I hadn't spoken at all. "But in the years since you ran away like a frightened rat down a storm drain, it has only become more and more clear to me that you had a fatal flaw in your grand design."

"What's that?" I asked, the accusation rankling me. There were no flaws in anything I did or created other than him.

"Would you like to tell?" Saint asked, and it took me a moment to realise he was addressing the girl and not me.

My upper lip twitched with the urge to peel back at that insult, but her sapphire eyes had moved to capture my gaze and the smile on her red painted lips made me hold my tongue on insulting her. I may have despised his feelings for this girl, but I couldn’t deny the strength of them and I would have been a fool to bait him over her now.

"A bear may surround himself with coyotes," she said slowly, taking another sip of my scotch as she held my gaze without so much as the sign of a flinch. "But their loyalty will only ever be bought by the scraps they can steal from him."

"A bear is still the most powerful creature in the forest," I replied calmly, realising what she was saying. My men weren’t coming, they’d been bribed into betraying me and letting these rats into my home.

"And yet, it can be taken out by a wolf pack," Tatum said, smiling predatorily.

"That's where you went wrong," Saint added, pausing to take a drink of the scotch as Tatum lifted the glass to his lips and I couldn’t help but stare at the way they moved together, like two parts of the same being, utterly in sync. "You believed that ultimate power was something to be