front of your mother, brother, and you. That can’t be forgiven. But that was one man’s act, not the choice of his entire family.”
Fraser never blinked, so Max surged up close and very personal, nose to nose. The glitter of malice in his eyes widened the other man’s.
“You look at this boy beside me and tell him any part of you wanted to see his mother, your brother, and your mate die the way they did. Look at him, not me!” The sudden roar of Max’s voice made Fraser clear the seat of his chair.
A reluctant cant of focus. Joe tried to hold his gaze steady, but soon it overflowed. His words trembled. “It’s no secret I was jealous of you, boy. The life you led. The privileges you took for granted. You had those because my father died!” When his nephew flinched but his direct stare didn’t flicker, Joe’s words softened.
“I didn’t blame you, Chris. I never blamed you. It was him. Bram the Beast. He just had to have it all.” Breath rattled between clenched teeth. “I never got the chance to settle that score before your new king put him in that cushy prison. Not until now.”
Kip’s eyes popped wide, dread building in his expression. “What did you do, Uncle Joe?”
“I paid them with the money I took from your accounts.” The older male’s features tightened with fierce slyness. “I needed him out where I could get to him. These people promised a diversion so your brothers could free him.” A pause. “They didn’t tell me what they were going to do.” His expression fractured, chin quivering. “They didn’t tell me, Chris.”
“Would it have made a difference?” Kip’s harsh demand struck hard as any blow.
“What was your plan, Mr. Fraser?” Max asked, tone gently coaxing now that the dam of emotional truth had cracked.
“I wanted to kill him,” the elder male sobbed. “I wanted to look in his eyes when I did it and tell him who it was for, for my father who wanted his first grandson to lead a normal life instead of one inside Terriot’s gilded prison. It’s all I’ve wanted since I helped my mother and brother mop up his blood.”
“Revenge is a costly pursuit,” Max murmured, expression now neutral. “Was it worth it?”
“Worth their lives? No.” That moaned from him as he stared wretchedly at the tabletop. “Worth all those innocent lives? No. But they’re gone, and he’s still alive. How am I supposed to carry that?”
Max pressed his shoulder and offered absolution. “Help us. That’s a start.”
“How, shackled to this chair?”
“We need to find my brothers.” Kip leaned in, stare both fierce and urgently compelling. “And my father.”
“And when you do,” Joe sneered, rubbing at leaking eyes and nose, “what then? Another jail suite in a high-rise hotel as punishment for all his sins?”
Kip brushed that aside for the moment to demand, “Who were these people you spoke of? The ones who offered to help you?”
“I don’t know. Your brother Stephen said they met in Reno. They talked and offered a solution to both our problems.”
“What was their problem, Uncle Joe?”
Carefully avoiding a glance in Max’s direction, he put it plain. “Your new king joining with New Orleans and Memphis. An unnatural alliance that’ll crush us under their control.”
“Whose control?” his nephew pushed.
“Them in the North.”
Kip and Max exchanged quick glances. When Max would push for more on that, Kip turned to his uncle once again, focus intense. “Can you get ahold of Stephen or Lee if you need to?”
“Lee. Him and me had a number of talks ’bout how we’d change the direction our clan’s going.”
“How would you contact him?”
“He was seeing a waitress at a club in Vegas. She’d reach him for me.”
With her name and that of the club, now so could they.
Looking pathetically old and tired, Joe slumped over folded arms, eyes downcast, voice hollow. “What happens to me?”
Kip pushed up out of his chair, sending it screeching back against the linoleum. He laid palms on the table to glare down at the older male as he growled through gritted teeth, “Whatever it is, it’s less than you deserve. Think about that and what you’d do in my place.” He shoved off the surface and stalked into the other room as a deflated Joe looked up at the leader of New Orleans.
“You gonna kill me?” His heavy tone sounded almost hopeful.
“Not up to me.” Max leaned in, eyes flaring with sparks of red and silver. When he