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I open my window all the way and lean my face out into the night wind, but my stomach never settles during the silent drive back to the estate.
CHAPTER 23
Thomas
I’m not daydreaming about Clara at the emergency meeting the next morning.
My generals sit around me, repeating the gory details I was there to experience. Speare and Warwick men opened fire on each other in the middle of a crowded party meant to celebrate the recently elected Sheriff. The shootout ended in the death of the District Attorney and six others.
Two of the dead men were Morgan’s, including his right hand, Barnabas Harrow, shot by me through the neck. Three others were part of Lindman’s event security.
The last man dead was mine. Charlie Rowland, a bright twenty-two-year-old who I had planned to promote.
Every angle of this is bad. Having a mafia shootout in the middle of a political event is bad for everyone’s business. If Derrick Lindman can’t keep his mafia ties quiet, it will endanger his career and waste my investment in him. He’s going to be more cautious now. And the longer it takes him to agree to a deal with me, the more time Morgan has to gather for war.
And a declaration of war is exactly what last night became, in front of multiple witnesses. Blood has been lost on both sides. There’s no walking that back.
The Warwicks and Speares are at war once again.
Then there’s the loss of the D.A., who has been on my payroll and my father’s for almost three decades. I’ll have to curate a new D.A. now, which takes trust to do. Trust I blew to pieces last night by bringing trouble right to the door of people who would prefer to forget I even exist.
No matter that Morgan shot first. I brought his niece into the room and paraded her around as an ally and lover. Clara herself claimed that we had that connection in front of her uncle. As much as I admired in the moment that she tried to play along, it makes for bad optics when star-crossed love leads to the death of six people and the traumatization of three dozen others.
I shouldn’t have brought Clara into this. I should have given her cash for a down payment on a house, forged her a new identity, and helped her disappear to the other side of the country. Despite her uncle’s best efforts, there are ways for any person to vanish off the grid if they’re careful and have the right allies.
But no, I wanted to use her against her uncle. I thought I could play the same mind games with her that I have hundreds of times before. I thought that, with the right leverage, I could make her move in the ways I dictated.
And if I’m being totally honest with myself, I wanted to find a way to keep her close, and made edit after edit to my own plans in service of that goal.
The table falls silent around me. The worst of the gory details have been pulled apart, and now they’re all waiting for me to tell them what the plan is. Well, the plan has metaphorical holes chewed through it in a dozen places, but I straighten my papers and look each one of them in the eye.
“We’ll return to the wartime patrol schedule effective immediately. Dispatch a secondary security team to all active depots and priority shops. Morgan has already made the first move, so our job is to be prepared for his second.”
“We’re not retaliating?” one of my generals asks.
“The worst mistake we can make at this stage is to throw away resources on a reaction,” I say. “Our economic position is a strong one, so we’ll focus on holding it.”
“And our political position?” another general posits. “Will you still pursue Lindman after last night?”
Since I need Derrick Lindman’s numbers to make a definitive move against Morgan, I have no other choice. I don’t say it that way, though.
“He still owes us his career,” I remind the table. “If last night has made him forget that, I’ll remind him.”
It’s a confident enough statement to satisfy the table. I can tell that Iris isn’t wholly convinced, but my explanation to her is coming.
I dismiss the meeting for now, with orders for each man to report back to me once our extra security teams are in place. Iris stays in her seat, but I wait until the door closes behind the last of my generals to turn to her expectantly.
“It would be best not to involve Clara in any more of your plans,” she says frankly. “Her loyalties are too divided.”
I don’t disagree, but it’s more than that. Clara was never loyal to me. I didn’t tell her to choose between myself and her uncle. I told her to choose between herself and her uncle. And she still chose him, even after the awful things he screamed at her last night. Even after spending years at his mercy on the Speare estate.
Clara isn’t disloyal. She’s selfless, and selfless people are the hardest to make use of. They’ll sacrifice themselves in most scenarios, taking valuable information and resources with them.
I’ve taken too long to make a response. Iris is watching me too closely, and whatever she sees on my face makes her sigh.
“Unfortunately, I think it’s too late to get rid of her,” she observes. “There is a scenario in which we kill Clara and frame Morgan for it to make him a pariah amongst his business partners. A man willing to kill his own niece when she displeases him is not one you want to be in business with. However, if Clara dies while in our care it could send a message to our own allies that we’re too weak to protect our own-”
“Stop.” My voice is too sharp and too loud, but I can’t contain it any longer. I will not discuss murdering Clara for any reason at all, strategic or otherwise. All I can see is Morgan aiming a gun at his own blood, a young woman without body armor and arms raised in surrender. All I can think is if I’d been seconds too slow, I would have watched her die right in front of me.
