Ghost closed his hand into a fist and brought it up under his chin, pensive and intimidating without thought. “What were you doing?”
“I’m sorry?”
“What were you doing here that night?” Ghost’s brows went up a fraction.
“I…” Greg dampened his lips and glanced away. His pulse trembled in the side of his throat.
“What,” Ghost repeated, slowly, “were you doing?”
“I’d…I’d rather not say.”
“Yeah, that’s not an option.”
“We know you’re a Carpathian,” Aidan said, in an effort to smooth things over. “We know that whatever you were doing, it’s gonna piss us off. Just tell us. You gotta be honest if you expect us to trust you.”
Ghost made a gesture with his free hand that saidgo ahead. “Nothing we haven’t heard before.”
Greg took a breath. “Jasper said…well, he thought…if we could get hold of one of…the women…” He shrank down into his shirt, red-faced and miserable.
Ghost’s smile was thin and grim. “Like father like son. Those boys have a real thing for going after women and children, don’t they?”
“We had surveillance photos,” Greg said to the tabletop. “Of the wives. And your daughter.” His eyes cut to Ghost, though his head stayed down.
Ghost sighed. “God, I wish she’d been born a boy.”
“I didn’t want to do it,” Greg whispered. “Honest, I didn’t. But Jasper–”
“Was your president,” Ghost finished.
“And you were doing what you were told,” Aidan said. He clapped a hand on the guy’s shoulder. “Chill. We know it was Larsen, and not you.”
Greg nodded. His eyes had a suspicious sheen to them.
Ghost studied the wall a long moment, that old photograph of the London mother chapter at Baskerville Hall, and then seemed to return to himself, tension uncoiling in his arms. “Aidan, set Greg up in a room,” he said. Over the top of Greg’s head, his gaze was sharper than his voice, the suggestion unmistakable. For the moment, Greg was their prisoner, not their guest.
**
Ghost sat in the empty chapel once Aidan ushered Greg out. This room. The smell of it, the dark energy in its walls, the faces of the men in the photographs. This was his room, his inheritance. All his life, he’d been working toward this chair at the head of the table, the long view down to the end of it. In this sacred room, he’d asked Collier about what was wrong, and his vice president – and friend – had lied to him.
Maybe.
If Greg was telling the truth.
God knew.
Aidan wanted to be in charge of something, the prince taken into the king’s closest confidence. But it was moments like this that reminded Ghost how ill-prepared his son was. Some of that was his fault, if he was honest – always a father, never a teacher – but part of it was the disgusting entitlement of the younger generations.
Ava wasn’t like that. Ava was rational, gathered, self-possessed. Ava was responsible in ways he himself had never been at that age. Not meek – no, her cooperation could never be called that – but secure enough to not be so filled up with questions and rebellion.
Yeah, Ava should have been born a boy – the true prince.
And he shouldn’t have sent her knight away five years ago. He’d always wanted a king for her, someone she could rule beside. But it was the knight who was devoted, who was in her thrall and would die defending her.
He lived and he learned, and wasn’t that a shitty way for things to play out?
Finally, he pushed to his feet and went out into the clubhouse, chest heavy in anticipation of what he now had to do.
In the common room, Rottie and RJ were coming in, smeared with dirt, their hair and clothes chunky with the stuff.
