All Hail - J. Bree Page 0,34
if I’m now being threatened then they should know about my panic room, custom built and completely undisturbed by the police raid.
I turn on my heel and walk over to the bottom of my huge and very ornate foyer. The grand staircase is made out of what looks to be solid marble.
It’s very impressive, something I spent months designing and then almost a full year to be carved out and installed to perfection.
The opening to the basement is impossible to find but I spent my childhood in the Beaumont mansion, so it’s only right that I know exactly how to hide a basement opening.
Illi and Aodhan both watch me open it and when I straighten up I’ve never seen Illi look so impressed before.
I try not to preen.
“I need one of these. Queenie, who the fuck did you get to do this?”
I chuckle under my breath and step over the small marble lip, startling a little when Aodhan grabs my elbow with gentle but firm fingers.
I smile up at him. “I’m okay, I spend most evenings down here.”
He doesn’t let me go, if anything his fingers tighten and he walks down the stairs into the darkness with me. “Do you come down in those heels? Fuck, what am I saying, of course you do. Staircases mean nothing to the Ice Queen.”
I chuckle and then fight a blush away from my cheeks when Illi starts huffing under his breath about us both. I’m very glad neither of them can actually see me.
“Are there lights done here? I’m almost worried you’re about to murder us both down here,” Illi mutters, which is rich coming from him.
His murder room is also in the basement of his warehouse.
When I mention this to him, he just laughs, that loud and booming sound that bounces around the stairwell. It does mean a lot to me that he’d even crack those jokes with me though, that there was even the possibility that I could kill the infamous Butcher.
If anyone could kill him it would be me.
I’m the least likely to even try out of our family and that means I’d be the most successful in an attempt. That’s the real reason we need to be so careful of who we trust, of who we let into our family because there’s always the possibility that they’ll betray us.
Like Diarmuid.
We didn’t even let him in, not really, we just named him as an ally and he used that to get past Atticus’ men to kidnap me. Everything that happened in the Jackal’s lair is his fault.
Aodhan leans in close to my ear to murmur to me, “You’re shaking, Queenie.”
Right.
No more thinking about that, we have a stalker to find.
That photo might not have been a planned shot but the fact that the person who left it knows where I live? I’ve been careful about keeping my address private so either they have access to police records or one of the Crow’s men have leaked that information.
I’ll have to mention it to him but I’m not chasing it up now.
I hit the lights when we get to the bottom of the stairs and Aodhan rubs his free hand over his face, squinting at the sudden brightness. Illi blinks around at everything and I think I’ve actually managed to shock him with my set up.
One entire wall of the basement is covered with all of my current issues. In the middle, there’s a photo of Grimm Graves. He’s a mean-looking asshole of a man but there’s no mistaking that he’s sired all of the kids in that file that Atticus gave me.
Let’s hope the unmistakable eyes are the only trait of his they all share.
There’s pages and pages of his crimes already pasted on that wall. Drugs, kidnapping, rape, murder, extortion, the man has no sort of moral code whatsoever. I have each of the men on the Chaos Demon council up there too, all of them with rap sheets as bad as their president.
Colt and Chance are currently grouped with the other siblings and their files are thinner than Grimm’s but I’m not convinced that’s only due to age.
Nate and Poe are not there.
We know for sure that they’re both family, no matter what Atticus may suspect.
I expect them both to gravitate to that section of the wall, probably because it’s the most interesting spot in my opinion, but Aodhan heads straight to my intensive investigation on the whereabouts of Diarmuid O’Cronin, his uncle and the man responsible for my