who’d led them to Niall’s wife, Diana, so she might be saved. The one who’d arranged the truce between their families. Bespectacled and in possession of a mop of brown curls, she’d a fire in her eyes that promised death to all who crossed her.Īdair settled a hard stare on her. Not even a hair above five feet, her slender form was draped in fine satin fabric. He moved his focus on to the childlike figure alongside the brute.

He’d learned firsthand from countless street battles that even a child could take down a person three times his size with a well-placed blow, bite, or kick. Adair flicked his gaze dismissively over the brute, nearly three inches taller than Adair’s six feet, three inches. The guard, a towering bear of a figure who looked more like a mountain than a man, stood behind his lord and master, hands planted on his hips. With his palms resting upon that fine leather and a familiar cocksure grin on his face, his ease was only belied by a fierce glitter in his eyes. Broderick Killoran sat as comfortable as a king in one of Ryker’s winged leather chairs. Through that strained quiet, Adair passed his stare over the three people before them. Each person stared mutinously back at one another in a silent dare of who would speak first. Since that trio’s arrival, not a word had been spoken. A thick tension, better suited for an impending battle in St. Giles than a Mayfair townhouse, hung heavy in Ryker Black’s office.īut then, it was not every day the most ruthless fighters and leaders of the darkest streets of London gathered for a meeting.Īdair, Ryker, Calum, and Niall had assembled more than ten minutes ago with Broderick Killoran, a burly, ugly guard at his side, and Killoran’s sister Cleopatra.

The Hellion by Christi Caldwell