Road To Fire (Broken Crown Trilogy #1) - Maria Luis Page 0,23

changed all that.

With a soft cap pulled down over his ears, my brother clicks through a series of pages on the monitor, so fast that I’m unable to keep up. Doesn’t help that we’ve dimmed the overhead lights to the barest glow, so Barker, in the interrogation room, won’t realize that he has company stalking his every move.

“I sent Jude to follow his family this afternoon,” Damien says, extending a hand to tap the computer screen. Pinching his fingers, he glides them apart and the picture he’s uploaded grows larger. It’s a blurry shot, taken at a park somewhere in the City, by the looks of it, but there’s no mistaking the two little girls that a nanny is corralling toward a swing set.

Damien pauses, his fingers falling to the mouse. “Cute kids.”

“Don’t get attached.”

If I’m the frozen tundra, then my brother is a volcano. At first glance, he’s just another figure in the Holyrood landscape but with the added potential to destroy everything in his path with a single touch of a button.

Not that he would.

“You sent Jude?” I ask slowly, running my gaze over his frame. “Or you went out on your own?”

Damien’s shoulders visibly tense. “I sent Jude, like I said.”

“You’ve fresh dirt caking your trainers.”

“Get your head out of your fucking ass, Saxon,” he hisses, spinning his chair around to face me. Blue eyes, a mirror image of Guy’s, stare me down. “I’m not Jude, not Hamish. You don’t get to run my life and bark out orders. I’m not some bloody animal and I won’t be confined to this goddamned place just because—”

“We’re not the one who’s wanted.”

“And whose fault is that?” His gaze, usually so clinically impersonal, burns with mirthless fury. “Not mine.”

“I know.”

“You say that like it’s been you stuck in this house for months on end. Except that luxury belongs to me.” He shoves a finger into his chest. “And, to make it worse, you won’t let me rip his fucking heart out.”

“You can’t kill the police commissioner. There’ll be questions.”

“As if that’s ever stopped us before.”

I don’t move away from the desk. Arms still crossed, I shoot a quick glance over to Barker, who’s yet to realize that the key for the handcuffs sits beneath the cup of tea we offered him. Intimidation is not always about brute strength. Sometimes it’s subtle, a game of deceit, the sinister process of removing a person’s options, one by one, without him realizing it at all.

The key may unlock the cuffs, but the door leading from the room is barred shut.

Blinding hope leads to crushing disappointment, which leads to further desperation.

I turn my attention back to my brother, picking my words with care. In all my life, they’ve never come easily. I go mute when I should speak, then speak out of turn when silence would be best. I suppose a therapist might place the blame squarely on what happened at St. James’s Palace, how my terror yielded to nothing but more violence and death and tragedy.

I blame the world we live in where words are meaningless.

People lie, people cheat—but not with them—my brothers.

Quietly, I say, “You’re seen as a terrorist. You can erase every article that pops up online about you, but it still won’t change the facts.”

Damien’s lips tighten. “I was doing my fucking job.”

“I know.”

On the desk, his hand clenches into a fist. “How long do we let the world see me as the Mad Priest, then? The man responsible for breeching parliament’s security. A year? Five? The rest of my goddamn life?”

In the other room, Barker’s head snaps up, as though he’s heard Damien’s escalating frustration. I bite out a curse beneath my breath.

“Keep your voice down,” I growl, pushing off the desk to head for the outlet on the wall. I dim the lights even further, until we’re nearly encased in darkness. Only when Barker’s returned to uselessly trying to pick the handcuff’s lock with his fingernail do I continue, “You don’t punch out at this job. There are no exit points.” Against my better judgment, I reach up to skim the branding behind my ear. The king destroyed the nerve endings when he scarred me, and although I’ve told my brothers that I can still feel the slightest touch, it’s yet another lie that I’ve given to keep up appearances. The skin there is numb, much like the rest of me. “This job takes, brother, and it rarely gives back. You either accept it for what it is,