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He reached past her then and freed the latch on the club’s front door. A gust of cold, damphe f cold, December wind sifted in around them. Street noise intruded, an unwelcome savior that jolted Danika out of the stupor that gripped her as she stared up into the face of someone she’d once considered a beloved friend but who was now worse than a stranger.

“Go,” he said, and stepped back to give her space and keep himself out of the wan daylight that was reaching into the vestibule.

Danika looked at him one last time, searching for words that wouldn’t come. Then she turned around and numbly walked back into the bustle of the street outside.

Chapter Three

“Boss wants to see you in his office, Bran. Doesn’t look happy.”

Another of Reiver’s personal security detail, Thane, leaned against the doorjamb of Bran’s quarters at the club. The vampire was built like a tank, tall and immense, his massive shoulders and arms straining the fabric of his dark suit, the muscled bulk of him filling the doorway. Tonight, his shoulder-length black hair was pulled back in a short queue, the vee of his sharp widow’s peak and slashing ebony brows giving his cool green eyes a hawkish quality as he watched Bran finish cleaning his pair of Glock 20s. The guns didn’t need the attention, but after the day he’d had, if Bran didn’t keep his hands busy, he was liable to punch someone. Starting with the bastard he worked for.

Taking his time on the weapons, he angled a scowl in Thane’s direction as he reassembled the second of the pistols. “Tell the boss I’ll be up in a minute.”

“And tempt him to shoot the messenger?” Although he gave a low chuckle as he said it, Thane’s shrewd eyes showed no humor. “You got a problem with Mr. Reiver, you take it up with him yourself, man.”

Bran casually inspected both of his service weapons, then shoved them into the cross-body holsters that rode over the top of his graphite-gray shirt. “I’ve got no problems with him.”

“You sure about that?” Thane stared, letting the question hang between them.

In the seven months since Bran had entered Reiver’s employ, Thane had proven the hardest of the other guards to read. Tough, smart, hardcore when needed, if anyone were to suspect Bran’s true motives where Reiver was concerned, it would without a doubt be Thane.

Bran stood up and crossed the small room to retrieve his black suit coat from the back of the wooden chair where it hung. He felt Thane’s eyes on him as he shrugged into the coat, completing his thug’s uniform, and prepared to face his boss.

“I don’t know how you do it, man. Living here at the club, day in day out.” Thane studied him. “Don’t you have a place of your own, or kin somewhere to take you in?”

Bran cast a bland look at the thin cot and sparse furnishings of the room that had been his home since he’d come on board with Reiver. He shrugged. “I have a place to lay my head. I don’t need anything more.y sp01D;

Not for now, at least.

Not until he had what he came for: vengeance.

Then, perhaps, he would return to his true home. Try to find some way to live again, in the empty place where Reiver had left nothing but death.

He brushed past Thane into the hallway. “The boss say what he wanted?”

“Nope. Just told me to find you and send you up to see him.” The big guard crossed his arms over his chest. “Better hope you’ve got nothing to hide.”

Bran ignored the warning and strode through the main floor of the club, past the members’ lounge and gaming tables, where a few of Reiver’s wealthiest clients had recently arrived to begin their night of deal making, debate, and discreetly arranged debauchery. Reiver’s office was upstairs, a lavish suite that spanned the entire third floor of the building. The pair of vampires posted at the door admitted him with expressionless nods.

He walked in and found Reiver standing in front of a large flat-screen monitor, remote control gripped in his hand. “You sent for me?”

“Yes.” The word was little better than a hiss.