RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,55
his expression all business. “Pax, if you so much as look at a single one of the women in this room tonight, I will personally castrate you and feed your testicles to my father’s hunting dogs.”
Pax adopts a grumpy air as he, too, grabs himself a glass of champagne. “People don’t have hunting dogs in America, Lovett.”
Dashiell clinks his flute against the one in Pax’s hand, cheersing him. “Yes, they do. But either way, I’ll happily fly back to Blighty with your balls in a mason jar, buddy.” From the outside, Dash doesn’t look like the kind of guy who’d deign himself to get his hands dirty. There’s a soft, well-heeled vibe to him that has people betting against him in a fight. Looks can be, and are, very deceptive, though. Dashiell’s as fierce as they come. Irrespective of his breeding and his education, he’s not afraid to throw a fist or two. I’ve seen him shove his finger up a dude’s nose and rip his nostril wide open in a brawl before. Guy really does not give a shit.
Pax grumbles unintelligibly under his breath as he drains his drink in one. He doesn’t doubt Dash’s threat. He will steer clear of the women at tonight’s event, but that doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it.
“And don’t drink too much, either,” Dash says, surveying the room. He looks cool and collected, but he’s on edge, I can tell. He looks like he’s casually taking in the chandeliers, and the antique furniture, and the handsome people, dressed in all their regalia, but Lord Dashiell Lovett the fourth is looking for his father. It could be said that Dash is always looking for his father. For his approval, that is.
“Remind me again why we agreed to come to this travesty?” Pax growls. His eyes are steel-grey tonight, the color of the angry North Sea.
“Because you both owe me,” Dash answers brightly. “And because I asked you to. And because you’re good friends who would never fuck over their mate.”
Urgh. Doing things I don’t want to do in order to make someone else happy is not in my nature. “I need to send a text. I’ll be right back,” I mutter.
“Don’t wander too far, Jacobi. I need you back here in ten.”
Smiling thinly, I sketch a mock bow. “Back in five.”
Outside, the night air is brittle in my lungs. The chatter from inside still rings in my ears as I become accustomed to the deafening silence. The manor house is on a hundred acres, which might not be a lot of land in the grand scheme of things—even Wolf Hall sits on three times that—but it’s as though the dense woodland stretches on forever into the dark, and it feels like we’re the only living things for a thousand miles. Right on cue, an owl screeches in the distance, and the sound is eerie and piercing, as if the creature’s indignant that I forgot about him.
Grim as an undertaker, I pull out my phone and power it on, waiting for the screen to light up. I could fidget and tap at the display to hurry the process along, but that’d be ridiculous. Technology can’t be expedited by willful human impatience. So I stare at the phone instead, grinding my teeth together as I wait for the illuminated Apple logo to blink out and the home screen to appear.
There.
Finally.
Working quickly to avoid the inundation of texts and notifications that begin to pour in, I open up a blank message and tap out a quick message.
+1 (819) 3328 6582
Did you get it?
Niceties aren’t required here. Even if they were, the recipient of this text wouldn’t be getting any. I place the phone down on the flat railing that skirts the balcony, and I turn back to face the building, blankly observing the people through the windows, wondering what they could all possibly be so happy about.
The woman in the gold, sparkling dress has so much credit card debt, she’s about to lose her house.
The guy with three fingers of whiskey in his cut glass tumbler, even though it’s only seven thirty and we haven’t even sat down to our four-course dinner yet, has just been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
At the back, near the bar, the couple fawning over each other and making a show of their affection as they talk to an elderly gentleman wearing a smoking jacket have just filed for divorce.
The dude by the piano fantasizes about touching his wife’s twelve-year-old