Curran strained, flexing. “Sit down, old man. Sit down.”

Finally, Mahon dropped back into his seat. “That fucking prick.”

Raphael collapsed into his chair.

I sat on the table between the plates. Bernard’s manager would have a cow, but I didn’t care. Holding Mahon back took everything I had.

Ghastek and Rowena stared at me.

“Did you know?” I asked.

Ghastek shook his head. “They don’t notify us of what he does.”

“What are you going to do?” Desandra asked.

“We’ll have to go and get him,” I said. I’d rather eat broken glass.

“That degenerate?” Raphael asked. “Why not leave him there?”

“Because Roland can’t take people out of the city whenever he wants to,” Curran said. His face was dark. “And that asshole knew that when he brought the pictures.”

“You should’ve let me twist his head off,” Mahon said. “You can’t let people insult your wife, Curran. One day you’ll have to choose diplomacy or your spouse. I’m telling you now, it’s got to be your wife. Diplomacy doesn’t care if you live or die. Your wife does.”

CHAPTER

2

THE BATTERED CORPSE of I-85 stretched in front of me, winding into the distance, flanked by trees. Brilliant blue sky rose high above it, suffused with sunshine. It was barely six and already the temperatures threatened to slide into the nineties. It would be one hell of a hot day.

I glanced behind me at the ten mercenaries parked by Curran. They came in all shapes and sizes. Eduardo towered over everyone except Douglas King, who was enormous, six five, with shoulders that wouldn’t fit through the door and legs like tree trunks. Douglas shaved his head, because he felt he wasn’t communicating his badassness well enough, and he painted what he claimed to be magic runes on his scalp and the side of his face in black camo paint. The runes were bullshit. I had told him that before. He didn’t care.

Next to him, the five-foot-tall Ella seemed even smaller. Perfectly ordinary, with brown hair about an inch longer than her shoulders and a pretty, pleasant face, which was usually free of makeup, she would’ve been at home in a sandwich shop or a vet’s office. People tended to underestimate her. Petite and wicked fast, Ella liked the wakizashi and she cut things to ribbons with it.

The rest of the mercs fell between these two extremes: lean and bulky, tall and short, some carrying blades, others carrying bows. They were Curran’s elite team, the nucleus around which he was building the new Guild.