Page 55 of Shai

My phone rang and I lifted it to my ear, expecting to hear Taylor’s

familiar drawl. It wasn’t him, but in many ways the voice was just as familiar, given how many recordings of it I’d listened to over the years, and our unsuccessful meeting only a few weeks ago. McIntyre! I didn’t need to ask how he’d gotten my number. I had his too. In fact, had I bothered to check the caller ID before answering, it would clearly have shown up as ‘fat prick.’

He skipped any sort of greeting and got straight to the point. “I have

something of yours that strayed into my territory. Something I thought you might want back.”

“Oh?”

“You may have noticed that your right-hand man hasn’t returned home.

Taylor, isn’t it?”

My fingers tightened reflexively around the phone. “What do you want,

McIntyre? I’m not in the mood for games.”

McIntyre let out a chuckle. “Well, normally I’d just kill him, knowing

you wouldn’t give a fuck. But given that he is, as I’ve already said, your right-hand man, and therefore an important cog in your organization, I thought you might be interested in a trade.”

“A trade?” It was difficult to keep the hostility out of my tone. “A trade

for what? Money? Is this where you charge the amount that I turned down from you?”

“I don’t want money.”

“Then what?”

“It seems you have something of mine. And now I have something of yours. There’s a sweet serendipity to it, really.”

“Something of yours?” I gave free rein to the laughter bubbling in my throat. “I hate to break it to you but Taylor isn’t worth half a city. Not even close. So, if that’s the trade you’re proposing you’re beating a dead horse.”

“What about a piece of river trash?”

Elijah! “How—”

McIntyre’s laugh was full of mockery. “You paraded him around the city. Did you really think I wouldn’t get to hear about it? Apparently, you even shared a sweet kiss in the moonlight. It seems the two of you have grown quite close.”

I forced myself to count to ten, the heat rising in me rapidly approaching boiling point. “So then you’ll be aware that he has his uses to me.”

“I don’t doubt that for a moment. Funny, I never had him down as one of your sodomites. I would have hit him harder had I known.”

“Why would you want him back? You had him thrown in the river. If he’d been of any use to you, I assume you would have kept him in the first place.”

There was a long pause while McIntyre considered his answer. “I ordered his death. He’s still breathing. It bothers me. If you give him back to me, I can rectify that.”

“So… just to be clear. You’re proposing a straight swap, Taylor for Elijah?”

“That’s exactly what I’m proposing.”

“And if I say no.”

“Then”—McIntyre let out a long sigh that seemed to say that that would be a very tiresome outcome indeed—“I will mail you the parts of Taylor as I cut them off him. I imagine it will take us a long time to kill him that way, but I’m a patient man, I don’t always need instant gratification.”

My gaze strayed to the river as I contemplated the choice I was being forced to make. Taylor ran key parts of my operation, and I put a great deal of trust in him on a day-to-day basis. While it was possible to train someone up to take his place, it would take time, time I’d rather not waste. McIntyre had been right about him being my right-hand man.

Who would I replace him with? Wyatt would be the obvious choice, but he didn’t have the same calm and logical approach to situations that Taylor had. Grayson was far too hot-headed, and the rest were simply too green. It would mean finding someone new, and even then, it would take years to build up that same level of trust. And, for what? What was Elijah when it came down to it? A good fuck? Entertainment? Although, he’d been far less entertaining since I’d gotten him hooked on Void. But I assumed McIntyre was unaware of that piece of information.