“How do you know they’re pretending? You and your brother survived. What makes you so sure someone else didn’t, too?”

She had a point. He could cede that to her, however . . . “Pretty sure if one did, they wouldn’t be so keen on killing me.”

“Why?”

“No reason to. I’m not the heir. My brother is. Why get rid of me while he’s still alive?” Not that anyone could inherit the throne of a dead nation. “Besides, why bother?”

Jayne paused at that. He was right. That wouldn’t make any logical sense.

Trisa was a fallen empire that had been split up and divided among human races. The people living there now would have no loyalty, or any reason to reestablish the royal house they’d overthrown.

“What other enemies do you have?”

“I don’t. Never stay around any one place long enough to make any. For that matter, no one knows my real name. Never mind the names of my dead relatives.”

Yet they’d taken out a warrant while pretending to be his uncle. “You sure?”

She could feel the withering stare he was giving her. “Yeah. Positive. I know what info I let out.”

“You talk in your sleep?”

“Wouldn’t matter. I don’t close my eyes around strangers.”

She arched a brow at that.

“Rare exception.”

For some reason, that thrilled her. It was rare to meet a guy that good-looking who wasn’t a man-whore. One who didn’t trade on his looks.

Yeah, but it’s not like he has a choice.

True. There was no telling what he’d have been like had he not been forced to lie low for the whole of his life.

Jayne took her comm back and stared at the warrant. “This is hopeless. We’ll never figure out who did this.”

“Don’t be so sure about that. I think I know someone who could be helpful.”

Chapter Three

Jayne paused as Hadrian led her into what had to be the shadiest looking dive she’d ever seen. And she should know given that her father had a penchant for hanging out with the sleaziest, most disgusting creatures that had ever belly-crawled out from the primordial ooze.

Her father, Egarious Toole, would have loved this place. He’d have been right at home with the card sharps on her left and the alcoholics at the bar. But it would have been the prostitutes he’d have gone home with, provided the drug dealers didn’t get to him first and sell him something that would have left him unconscious, on the bathroom floor.

She winced at childhood memories neither she nor her sister could quite purge. There were just some images of parents no child should carry.

Her father half-naked and covered in his own filth was definitely one of them.

‘Course hers were mild given that Hadrian would have witnessed the massacre of his. All things considered, she was lucky. When her father had finally died from his excess, she’d seen it coming for years and hadn’t been there for the grand finale.