Dancing With Danger (Goode Girls #3) - Kerrigan Byrne Page 0,30

Raphael couldn’t read his brother’s expressions, he’d learned to pick up on other cues, some as subtle as mere vibrations in the air between them.

The set of his boulder-sized shoulders, the number of times he cracked his knuckles, as he was wont to do when brooding. “I still don’t know if we can pull this off without bodies to confirm our deaths.”

Raphael elbowed his brother, feinting at shoving him into a gas lamppost. “Find me a body that could pass for yours, and I’ll gleefully murder him and enjoy pretending it’s you.”

Gabriel didn’t even pretend to be amused. “It is hard for me, knowing I will not be awake to oversee things.”

Clutching at his heart, Raphael acted as though he’d been skewered. “Your lack of trust wounds me, brother. Fatally, I expect. I should not have to fake my death.”

“Keep your voice down,” Gabriel snarled, searching the empty night for interlopers.

The Fauves didn’t haunt this part of town.

Sobering, Raphael rested his palm on Gabriel’s shoulder, the one from which the real mantle of leadership rested.

As the face of the Fauves, Raphael was an effective figurehead. Sleek and elegant, dangerously charismatic, cunning, and collected.

And, admittedly, not difficult to look at.

But few knew that he was the tip of the blade wielded by his brother.

Gabriel wasn’t just muscle, as most suspected, he was might.

He was master.

Because of the rules by which they’d always lived.

The rules they now carefully planned to leave behind.

“I have it well in hand, brother.” Raphael squeezed the tense muscle before releasing it, wishing he could say more.

Wishing he had more time with the only person he loved in this world.

Gabriel’s chest expanded with another measured breath. “Tell me again.”

“Once you are recovered enough to travel, you will retrieve your new papers from Frank Walters and go to the Indies. I have transferred our enormous fortune to St. John’s Bank in Switzerland, where I will retrieve it. After, we will meet in Antigua and from there go to America using our new identities.”

“You’ll telegraph the villa if something goes awry,” Gabriel reminded him unnecessarily.

“That goes without saying, even though you’ve said it twenty times too many.”

A grunt from his brother was as close as he ever came to a laugh.

“The extra days will serve us well,” Raphael continued. “It gives me time to make the arrangements to have Mathilde’s ashes go with us. We can spread them from the Brooklyn Bridge. She’d like that, I think.”

Gabriel’s gait changed, which was how Raphael knew he was about to say something that made him uncomfortable. “I know she was difficult... but I am sorry Mathilde is gone.”

“As am I.”

They fell silent as they stopped at the back-garden gate of the mansion no one knew they occupied. Their fountain tinkled in the background, mingling with the sounds of an approaching couple.

Raphael thought back to the day when his father had told them that the only way to escape their destiny was death.

Well...turned out the bastard had been right.

As the couple approached, the man deftly moved his lady to the opposite side of the walk, placing himself between Gabriel’s bulk and her body.

Though they were in the part of the West End that was well patrolled, and where street ruffians rarely dared to venture, it was Gabriel’s bulk and general air of menace that ignited the man’s protective instinct.

Besides that move, the pair paid them little mind as they swished by, chattering as if nothing could touch them in the infatuated world they’d created.

Raphael would not have even marked them, if not for his brother.

Gabriel watched them with undue intensity. His fingers twitched as the man ran his hand along the woman’s face.

Shifting uncomfortably, Raphael second-guessed his own plans for the evening.

All he’d desired in the hours since he’d left Mercy’s side, was to return to it. Once the sun had gone down, he’d been nearly vibrating out of his skin with anticipation.

Walking around half hard at the thought of having her, hoping no one would notice.

Especially his brother, who had never so much as touched a woman.

He’d been born and bred a machine of violence. And nothing more.

Where would Gabriel fit in this world when they were through? He knew nothing else.

He was nothing else.

Raphael thumped Gabriel’s chest to catch his attention. “Don’t be worried, yeah? The doctor said that big dolts like you don’t die in surgery often.”

“I’m not nervous.”

“Then what is wrong with you?”

His neck swiveled back to the woman. “Nothing.”

Raphael took in a gigantic breath, bracing himself for extreme