"I'm not scared of you."
He meets my gaze. "You should be."
All of England knows his name.
I’m not looking for a knight in shining armor when I approach Saxon Priest for a job, but there’s no preparing for the reality of meeting London’s most heartless villain in the flesh.
His eyes are cold, his mouth scarred when he dismisses me as fragile, weak.
He couldn’t be more wrong.
Beneath my sunny smile, there’s nothing I won’t do to protect my family . . . even if it means facing off against a notorious killer.
He tells me to run.
I refuse to tremble in fear.
He warns me that I could never handle him.
I can’t help but wonder what it would take to see him break.
Saxon is everything I should hate—
And the last man I should ever want.
But when he risks everything to save me, I succumb to the ice in his veins and the blistering heat that tethers us together.
Saxon Priest may be the devil in disguise but I’m Isla Quinn, and I killed the king.
Prologue
Saxon
London, 1995
The king despised me.
He didn’t need to say so out loud. Didn’t need to breathe a single word whenever Pa brought me to the palace for one of their talks. But I knew.
They always argued and I always sat in the corner, my knobby knees clamped together and my fingers digging into my thighs. Beneath my shoes, a plush, red carpet stretched on forever, winding along narrow hallways and cutting down wide, centuries-old stairwells, before rolling all the way out to the front entrance of St. James’s Palace.
Pa and me never entered through the front.
“We’re special, m’boy,” Pa told me time and again, his hand rooted to my shoulder as he steered me down the alley that skirted Marlborough Road and led to our “special entrance.”
But we weren’t special. We were trouble.
“I told you not to bring him again,” the king hissed, no doubt thinking I couldn’t hear him. I heard it all, each word slamming into me like a round from the pistol Pa tucked into his trousers at the base of his spine. He didn’t think I noticed, but we all did.
Me, my older brother, Guy, and my younger brother, Damien.
The only one who noticed nothing was Mum, but she was sick. Always sick. Just as Pa was always trouble.
“He minds his own business, Your Royal Highness. He’s eight, the same age as Princess Margaret.” Pa looked over at me, his green eyes, a shade so eerily similar to my own, darkening with sympathy. “He has no friends. No one but his brothers and me and his mum, and I was thinking, maybe, that when you summoned me, my Saxon could play with your daugh—”
The king’s fist struck the table with a thunderous crack! that detonated like an explosion in my ears. “You forget yourself, Henry,” King John seethed with enough heat to singe my skin to ash, even as far away as I sat from them now. “You forget your place.”
Pa’s shoulders stiffened. “Forgive me, sir, but I’ve forgotten nothing. I took the oath, the same oath as my father and his father before him.”
“An oath which you failed to uphold!”
The king shoved away from the table, launching to his feet as he stalked the room like a caged animal. The doors were locked tight, the walls—Guy once whispered to me—were soundproof. If the king killed us, no one would hear our screams. Guy told me that, too.
So, me and Pa scurried into this secret room like vagrants, always fearful that someone might uncover us, spot us.
We were trouble.
The king said so.
Mum said so, whenever the sickness eased, and her skin wasn’t so very yellow.
My knees knocked together, and I fixated on the subtle sound.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
“Tell me, Henry,” the king snapped, “you’re worried about your blasted son not having any friends? My oldest daughter—my heir—is dead. Shot during a charity event after your family took an oath to protect us.”
Tap.
“Sir—”
Tap.
“Two months, Godwin. You promised me two months ago that you’d uncover who assassinated Evangeline. Two months.”
Tap.
Tap.
It took me a moment to realize that the tapping no longer belonged to my knocking knees but to the sound of King John’s shoes storming over the old wood floors. Toward me. He was coming toward me.
Fear clogged my throat.
Trouble. We Godwins were always trouble.
The king’s hand circled my bicep and hauled me from the chair. My shoes scraped the floor even as my fingers grappled at the king’s shirtsleeve. But he was big whereas I was small, the crown of my head barely hitting his diaphragm when I stood on my tiptoes.
Let me go. Let me go. Let me go!
The words lodged in my throat, threatening to suffocate me.
“John—sir,” Pa said, his cheeks red. He fiddled with the back of his shirt and I knew he was toying with that pistol. Trouble. Trouble. Trouble. “I understand your frustration,” he went on, his jaw locking tight, every word clipped and precise. “You have every right to be upset. But I’ve done everything to find Princess Evangeline’s killer. I’ve hunted down suspects. I’ve employed every possible source to suss out the damned bastard. Paul, the other men and I, we’re all working on this.”
“You’re not working hard enough.”
Before the stone fireplace, the king forcibly thrust me into a chair. The unexpected jolt made me bite down on my tongue, and I felt the pop of a blood vessel bursting in my mouth.
I wanted to cry out. I wanted to beg Pa to pick me up and take me from this place.
The king hated me.
A flash of steel caught my eye as I tried to spring from the chair to safety. An unforgiving hand yanked me back, and then there was no missing the high sheen of the king’s gem-stoned rings that twinkled on his fingers. Yellow topaz like Saturn. Red ruby like Mercury. Blue sapphire like Earth.
My love for outer space felt like a very bad thing when faced with the sovereign king’s wrath.
The tip of the blade pricked the sensitive flesh behind my right ear, and only then did I beg, plead, pray. “Papa,” I whimpered on a sharp, battered exhale, “help. Papa, help!”
He stepped forward. In his hand he brandished a pistol, and it was aimed at the king.
Trouble. Trouble. Trouble.
“Sir,” Pa ground out, his voice quivering with an unfamiliar strain of fear, “you’ve had a long day. A damn long two months. But my boy Saxon? He’s done nothing wrong. We’ll keep searching. I won’t rest until we find who killed the princess. I swear it on my life.”
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see anything, but for the red sea sweeping over my vision and distorting everything.
Red like the carpet under my feet.
Red like the color of the king’s ring.
Red like the whites of my father’s eyes when he met my gaze and I saw his terror.
“Put the pistol down, Henry,” the king snapped. “Put the pistol down or I’ll teach you the taste of true grief.”
The weapon clattered to a chair as Pa surged past it. “John, fuck, listen to me—”
The blade pressed down on my skin, and a howl climbed my throat.
“Your loyalty,” the king said, “swear it on your son’s life. We’ve had your family’s fealty for years. Prove it now, Godwin. Prove it to your son that the Crown must always come first.”
Pa’s red-rimmed eyes locked with mine, and I saw the apology forming in his expression before the words ever entered the space between us. “Saxon, m’boy,” he whispered, “keep looking at me. Don’t look away.”
The king leaned down to utter raggedly in my ear, “Never forget, Saxon, where your loyalty belongs. With the king. With the Crown. An oath that’s spanned generations between our two families. Don’t break like your father and this moment will never be repeated.”
Pain, sharp and insistent, scored the flesh behind my ear. It sank in its claws, twisting and dragging, and the red sea consumed me, swallowing my thrashing feet and flexing fingers and my mouth that parted for a scream that never came.
It didn’t come then, in that secret room of the palace that existed to no one but us. It didn’t come that night, when Pa sat me down in our small, ancient flat in Whitechapel, his arms wrapped around me as he rocked my body back and forth, apologies coating his tongue and sounding so very faraway beyond the roaring in my ears.
And it didn’t come five months later, when Pa was found dead on the side of Marlborough Road, just yards from St. James’s Palace, his stomach coated red with blood.
Chapter One
Saxon
London, Present Day
The queen enters my pub like she expects to be ambushed.
Not that I’d expect anything less from a woman wanted dethroned by half the country.
Her silver-blond hair is hidden beneath the confines of a black wig that’s seen better days. Wide-eyed, her gaze flicks from left to right, right to left; no doubt she’s panicking that someone might see through her shoddy costume to the woman wearing it.
It’s been twenty-five years since I saw her last, outside of television appearances and snapshots of her in the papers. Only, back then, she wasn’t Queen. Not yet. Just a young princess—a princess who was never allowed to play with the spy’s sons, no matter that the Godwin family has been integral to the Crown’s survival for over a century.
Tossing the damp rag on the bar’s oak counter, I drag my equally damp palms over my trousers. Swiftly, I count every patron seated at the bar, then those camped out in the booths, knowing that every person in here would gladly see her dead before they ever bend the knee.
The queen catches my eye and a relieved smile hitches the corner of her mouth.
Relief should be the last thing she’s feeling. The bloody woman has entered the proverbial lion’s den—and she’s done so alone. No bodyguard tailing her shadow. No weapon of any sort that I can see, and I’ve disarmed enough people in my life to know when someone is carrying, civilian or not.
What the hell is she doing?
Under my breath, I curse her stupidity for coming here. No, her goddamn naivety. Wig or not, if my customers sniff her out, we’ll have a riot on our hands.
They want her dead. They want the monarchy dismantled.
And long before I was born, my family was tasked with keeping the Crown exactly where it’s been since the eleventh century: at the top of the social pecking order.
Hands on my thighs, I duck under the bar. Tell my barman, Jack, to hold down the fort while I take a piss, and then head for the stairs that lead from the pub up to Guy’s flat. Straining my ears, I wait for the telltale sound of a female’s lighter footsteps before I start taking them two at a time.
The first rung whines under Queen Margaret, and there’s no mistaking the hushed, “Oh, do shut up,” that she whispers to God-knows-what.
Sharply, I glance over my shoulder, only to—
Christ.
Is she trying to get herself offed? And me right along with her?
As though primping before a mirror, she readjusts the chin-length wig with a sharp pull. A strand of blond escapes to frame her face like a white flag of surrender, shouting, It’s me! Your Royal-fucking-Majesty! The wig alone is shit, but the fact that she’s messing with it is doing her no favors. Even now, her fingers nervously pat the back, unaware of that piece of telltale blond.
Her only saving grace is the fact that she doesn’t waste time. She scurries up the steps, chin tucked down, like that alone will ward off any curiosity. It won’t. She walks like a royal. Moves like a royal. And, when she utters my name, it’s safe to say that she speaks like a royal too. Posh. Proper. My very antithesis.
“Mr. Godwin, I wasn’t sure if you’d recognize me.”
I’d have to be an idiot not to recognize the most powerful person in the commonwealth. But she’d have to be an idiot to use the surname that the Crown itself scrubbed from every public document after Pa was murdered—and do so in my own pub, no less.
“Priest,” I correct gruffly, my eyes locked on Guy’s front door. I haven’t answered to anything else in over twenty years. The Godwins died right along with my father. Died, and never resurfaced.
“Oh, yes. I—” Rustling echoes behind me, like she’s checking the stairwell for any potential lurkers. “Mr. Priest. I do apologize. I wasn’t thinking.”
Not thinking will land her in the same predicament as her father: dead.
Maybe recklessness is a family trait, passed down through the generations. I can see it. King John was a tyrannical bastard who never thought five steps ahead, let alone one. He single-handedly turned this country back four hundred years. Keeping parliament in place has been nothing more than a case of smoke and mirrors—everyone is all too aware of who’s running this country, and it’s not the politicians who continue to fill the seats of Westminster.
With a father like that . . . Well, no wonder his own daughter thought showing up to a fucking anti-loyalist pub would be a grand idea.
Long live the queen.
Shoving the key into the rusty lock, I turn the knob and push the door open. Immediately, my gaze darts to the tiny kitchenette, where my older brother stands, shirtless, as he pops open a can of beans. “Ready to turn in for the day already?” Guy drawls sharply, barely sparing me a glance.
Barely sparing the queen a glance.
I shut the door behind her, turning over the lock. “We’ve company.”
“You know how I feel about people.”
“Then dust off your manners. I’m sure the cobwebs could do with a breather.”
Guy’s blue eyes finally lift. They land on me, then zero in on Queen Margaret to my left. He says nothing, not at first. But his eyes narrow and his body visibly tenses and then he’s dropping the can onto the counter and sauntering toward us.
Toward the queen.
“Guy,” I growl, my tone thick with warning. My brother has no boundaries. Not with me or Damien, not with the other Holyrood agents—others like us who’ve been recruited to serve the Crown. And sure as hell not with the hundreds of people who we’ve schemed and lied to and stolen precious information from over the years. Information that was never meant to reach the pinnacle of Britain’s power.
Expression stony, my brother ignores me as though I don’t exist.
He reaches out, his fingers grasping the queen’s wig, and tears it straight from her head.
“Mr. Priest,” she hisses, her own fingers jotting upward, as though to make a grab for the fake hair, despite being a second too late.
With casual dismissiveness, Guy tosses the wig to the side, where it slides across the floor and catches under the leg of the coffee table. Only then does he offer a dramatic dip of his head, playing the part of ever-dutiful servant.
For fuck’s sake.
The queen’s blond hair is in disarray, locks strewn this way and that and sticking up like prey confronted by something bigger, meaner. “That—that was unacceptable. If my father—”
“Your father’s dead, Princess.”
Princess. As if she didn’t watch her father be brutally shot down in front of her—and an entire rally—just two months ago. The blood that spattered her face and clothing in the aftermath has been stitched into every highlight reel on the telly ever since. I look at her now, eyeing her expression critically, and wonder how many times she’s tried to eviscerate the memory.
Hundreds, I imagine.
More, probably.
And now my brother, ass that he’s been since birth, is throwing sludge in the already gaping wound.
I elbow him to the side. “What Guy means to say is that you shouldn’t be here, Your Majesty.” I shoot a pointed, fucking-behave-yourself look in my brother’s direction. Nothing in his expression gives me any reason to believe that we’re on the same page. Blowing out a frustrated breath, I give him my back. “It’s too dangerous. You ought to have gone through the usual channels. We put Clarke with you for a reason.”
Queen Margaret flinches, and I nearly start a mental countdown for the inevitable hysterics. “I needed to come here myself,” she says, her voice nothing stronger than a break in the wind. “Your father . . . I remember that he used to visit St. James’s whenever there was something troublesome to discuss.”
It’s my turn to withhold a flinch.
I step back, putting distance between myself and the queen before I do something regrettable. Like remind her that it’s my family that’s been sacrificed time and again for the sake of hers.
Sacrificed, splintered, and forever altered.
“Those days are over.” I move to the sink, then pour myself a glass of water from the faucet. I don’t drink it, but it’s best to focus on something else when I speak, otherwise the words might stop coming. Just as they did when the blessed king branded me. Habit has me wanting to lift my fingers to the raised flesh behind my ear. Self-control, however, wins out. As always. “We run a pub widely known for its political leanings. What do you think would happen if someone caught us at St. James’s? Hell, if someone catches you here?”
“Boom,” Guy answers, his thumb cocking the safety of a fake finger pistol that he touches to his temple. Then, planting his hands flat on the counter, he juts his chin forward and stares the queen down. “We don’t exist to you, Princess. This”—he shuffles a finger between them—“shouldn’t be happening. We’ve spent years establishing this place, its reputation . . . our reputation.”
“Which is what?” she asks softly.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Guy leans in, wordlessly baiting her to do the same—the way I’ve seen him do countless times in the past, just before he snatches a man by the shirt collar and bashes his head against the closest flat surface. But instead of pulling that maneuver, the same one he taught me the summer I turned eleven, he only issues a slow, humorless smile. “We want to see you break.”
She flinches again.
Weak, so fucking weak.
If I weren’t so desperate to keep my country from crumbling, I’d tell the queen exactly what I think of her: she’s timid, as poor a fit for the throne as her deranged father was before her. He ruled as a dictator and, so far, she’s ruled like she’s terrified of her own shadow. We’d all be better off with her still prancing about in the Scottish countryside, doing whatever the hell she’s been doing for the last twenty-some years. With the monarchy disassembled—
No.
The condensation on the glass dampens my palm, turning it slick like the blood that coated my nape when King John carved a number into my flesh.
502.
The fifth generation of spies in my family to work alongside the Crown under the umbrella of Holyrood, an off-the-books agency that was originally named after the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. It’s where my great-great-grandfather was awarded a medal of valor after saving Prince Robert’s life during the Second Boer War.
Over a hundred years later, and here we are.
Guy is 501, Damien 503.
But only I have my life’s purpose branded into my skin like I’m nothing but cattle to be sold at auction.
Prove it to your son that the Crown must always come first.
A hard lesson to learn, but one that continues to hum in my veins like a poison with no antidote.
I force the words from my throat, refusing to succumb to silence: “Putting it bluntly, ma’am, our customers would love nothing more than to see you end up just like the king. Dead. Out of the way. A nonissue. Let your mind fill in the blanks, and then come up with something ten times worse.”
Her cornflower blue eyes widen, then narrow sharply. “I-If the two of you are done with the lectures, I came here today because I have something that can’t be passed through Clarke. There’s no time for that, and I thought . . .” Awkwardly, she fumbles with her handbag, her fingers visibly shaking, and it occurs to me, now, that while my brothers and I have spent our entire lives with the royal family at the epicenter of our respective universes, she hardly knows us.
She knows our names. She knows our history—at least as far back as Pa, I’m guessing—and I’m going to assume that she knows the basics about Holyrood: some of the other agents, our central location, even. But beyond that . . . us Godwins are veritable strangers to her.
Our hopes, our dreams, are nothing but a speck of dust on her gilded radar.
With a hushed curse under her breath, she pulls out a mobile smeared with dirt. “I found this in the gardens while I was walking two mornings ago. The same morning that . . . that—”
I exchange a glance with Guy, who scrubs a hand over his mouth.
“They were caught,” he grits out, voice hard and unforgiving. “Clarke told you that we suspected something was off with them, and—”
“I didn’t listen!” The queen whirls around, her free hand clenching into a fist at her side. Her signet ring glistens under the light. Ruby red, a hand-me-down of her father’s that I well remember. “You can say it, Mr. Priest. Go on. I didn’t listen to your advice to not wander the grounds on my own until you could be sure of them. The only fool standing in this room is me.”
The phone is thrown on the counter where it careens into the wall.
“They were only teenagers, and I couldn’t”—she presses a hand to her mouth, her knuckles whitening with tension—“I couldn’t make myself truly believe that they’d been sent to kill me. That they weren’t anything more than stable hands. I should have listened. I should have listened.”
Soft.
It’s not that she’s weak, it’s that Queen Margaret doesn’t have the heart—the iron spine—to do what needs to be done in today’s tumultuous climate. After suffering the last twenty-five years under King John’s reign, parliament has become the equivalent of a brutal brawler’s match since her father’s assassination two months ago. And, equal to her rabid supporters are the millions who would see the crown stripped from her head and the jewels torn from her fingers.
“The king,” Guy says now, his stare locked on the queen’s face, “is to blame, not you. He ruled with fear after your sister was murdered. Anyone who opposed him went straight into a jail cell—assuming they didn’t disappear completely. You know this, ma’am. You see the polls. You see what’s blasted all over the news every night. Don’t tell me you don’t.”
She pauses, just for a moment, her fingers wringing together in front of her. “All of it, Mr. Priest.” A tick pulses to life in her jaw. “I see it all.”
My brother beats a fast-paced tempo on the counter with his thumb. “People don’t like the amount of power your family still wields, especially after everything that’s happened. With your father gone, they want the same of you. That’s no secret.”
Lifting her gaze to the ceiling, her throat works with a hard swallow. “Tell me what to do, then.”
“Go back to your palace.”
“The mobile—”
“We’ll take care of it,” I say. We’ll take care of the problem just like we’ve taken care of everything else: by leaning into the pub. It was a Holyrood decision for the so-called Priest brothers to open it ten years ago. It made sense. On paper, Guy, Damien, and I don’t exist. A perk, if you will, for being born into a family whose sole duty is to keep the royal family thriving for yet another generation. While the other Holyrood members once had lives, before their recruitment, this is all my brothers and I have ever known.
Survival.
Deception.
Responsibility.
The Bell & Hand is the culmination of all that—a haven for those with a rebellious streak who seek a Britain without the lords and the ladies and the pomp of the royal family.
Absently, I reach up to the scar that I keep hidden with my hair. The pads of my fingers trace the scarred flesh.
As much as I want to tell the queen to piss off—the same way I wanted to tell her father—I never will.
Loyalty to my brothers, both those bound by blood and not, keeps me locked in a prison, generations in the making. The world sees the Priests as traitors, the scum of the earth.
Loyalists see us that way, I remind myself as I turn my back on the queen and snatch the phone off the counter. To those loyal to the Crown we’re radical anti-loyalists, but to others . . . we’re bonafide heroes.
Even if it’s a façade composed of nothing but lies.
Chapter Two
Isla
I’m fucked.
Or, better yet, I’m desperate.
Desperate for a life where I don’t count every quid in my purse, always worried that the lights might be turned off at the flat I share with my two younger siblings.
Five years ago, I was prepared to move to the States. A new fancy job beckoned me across the pond, and then there was Stephen, my fiancé, who, even though he didn’t quite make my heart race, was still the perfect foil to the life I’d created for myself.
Then the riots began. The streets of London lit with anger and hate, and my parents—two middle-aged folks from Yorkshire who’d been in town to visit—were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They were dead before the sun kissed the horizon good morning.
I never made it to America. Never took the fancy job. Never went anywhere with Stephen after that.
Most days it feels like I’m twenty-nine going on eighty-nine.
I tip my head back, lifting my chin so I can scan the black-and-gold sign hanging above the pub’s diamond-paned front window. The Bell & Hand. The ampersand has been scraped to within an inch of its life, the black peeking through the faded gold paint. I trail my gaze south, over the glossy black door and the shiny brass knob—move to the right, where potted plants sit in window boxes. Despite the fact that it’s March, the flowers are in full bloom, the poppies bright pink and yellow—a direct contrast to the dour-looking bloke gazing out the window.
No finely tailored suits like I saw regularly at the network.
No fancy smart watches encircling thick wrists.
No red poppies pinned to their lapels, in silent support of the royal family.
It’s for that reason specifically that I’ve come to apply for a position. Five years ago, before the Westminster Riots, I hadn’t heard of The Bell & Hand, not even in passing amongst friends. But now . . . well, now it seems like the perfect place to be, given our shared beliefs on the Crown.
The black door swings open and a dark-haired man steps out, a newspaper clasped to his chest as he draws a hat atop his head.
“Sorry,” he mutters, when he finds me loitering on the pub’s front stoop.
We sashay right, then left, and with an upturn of his lips, he finally steps around me. I keep the door open with the toe of my shoe.
I swallow past the lump in my throat. Straighten my shoulders with single-minded purpose. Duck inside, and then draw in a sharp breath at the scent of coffee and pub food and anti-loyalist blood. It’s a heady concoction, made only that much sweeter when I catch sight of croissants being delivered to a table.
Delicious.
I’ve always been a sucker for a good pastry.
With my folder tucked under my arm, I edge farther inside.
Online, I read that the Priest brothers own The Bell & Hand. Like the pub itself, the Priest surname wouldn’t have registered five years ago—but nowadays, it feels like I know everything that’s ever been reported on them . . . Not that there’s much.
Unfortunately.
I do know this: The brothers are notorious among anti-loyalist circles. Spoken of with complete reverence and only ever mentioned in passing, it’s like everyone is aware of their existence though no one dares dive any deeper. I didn’t stumble across any pictures of them online. No firsthand interviews, either.
Because people are terrified of the repercussions if caught dishing out that information?
It’s not the first time the unnerving thought has snuck up on me, and I quickly stamp down a spark of worry.
I’m in need of a job, and if I have the opportunity to take one that won’t shove “God Save the Queen” propaganda down my throat, then there’s simply no better fit.
“Looking for somethin’?” asks one of the servers in a thick, Cockney accent when he spots me hovering by the bar. His graying hair is thin at the crown and seems to have migrated to his bushy beard. “The boss ain’t in.”
From all accounts, all three Priest brothers manage The Bell & Hand. “I want to apply for a position.”
His shrewd, brown eyes drift down my body, taking leisurely time to stop at my breasts and hips before he sucks his teeth behind his bottom lip. “Sorry, no openings.”
Before the riot, before my chance for freedom was ripped away by circumstances out of my control, I worked as a celebrity publicist. I can read a schemer when I see one, and this man? He schemes with the best of them. I bet he wouldn’t know honesty if it crawled out of that unruly beard of his and waved ’ello.
Reaching for the closest chair, I drag it out, purposely allowing its spindle-wooden legs to scrape against the floor, then sit down without an invitation. I tip my face up, all the better to meet the bloke’s stare head-on. “I have time to wait.”
I don’t, actually, not with Josie and Peter in and out of school, but that’s not this man’s business. All he needs to know is that I won’t be moving until I speak to one of the Priest brothers. Lucky for him, I’m not picky. Any of them will do—I’m certainly not about to start playing favorites.
The server grumbles under his breath, but anything he might have said next is forgotten the moment a dark-haired woman comes flying out from the hallway beside the bar. She hustles between the tables, moving slow enough to not crash into anyone but fast enough that I notice the harried way she peers back over her shoulder, once, twice, before darting out the front door and disappearing out onto Fournier Street.
Curiosity seeps into my veins when I hear a rumbling voice bark, “Jack!”
The Cockney server whips around, torso twisting sharply. His back snaps straight, and mine does, too, at the sight of the man entering the pub.
Savage.
My nails scrape the table as the thought flares to life. He’s big, large in a way that most men can’t even compare. But it isn’t his intimidating frame that kicks my pulse into overdrive.
It’s his face.
I stare openly, unable to wrench my gaze away from the harsh line of his crooked nose or the angry, ragged scar that gravely distorts his upper lip. My knees squeeze together under the table, feet involuntarily pulling inward as though prepared to send me running. The response is completely instinctual. Fight or flight. He’s not a man to anger, that I already know. His cheekbones are high, and his lack of beard surprises me.
Doesn’t he want to cover that scar? Maybe he likes it, the way it stops people dead in their tracks and makes them nervously avert their eyes. Maybe he even finds a certain thrill in their fear. It seems impossible that he might be a man who cowers with insecurities himself—
Not when he storms over to Jack, the server, arrogance lining every stride.
Not when they jump into conversation about an order that was late on delivery, and I sit in my chair, wondering if I’m about to make a massive mistake.
Not when Jack says something under his breath, waving an arm in my direction, and I learn firsthand how the scarred man feels about a stranger seeing him for the very first time.
The palest green eyes I’ve ever encountered fixate on me. Fixate, and don’t waver, as though that one glance has gifted him the opportunity to bare my soul and steal every last one of my secrets. Including those I plan to keep buried. A harsh breath billows over my lips as I struggle to hold my ground.
At my old job, I came across men like him frequently. Not savage men, not men with faces that could terrify small children and send full grown adults scrambling. But men who felt the need to assert their dominance, no matter the battlefield. Even Stephen, for all his public support of women, never missed the chance to remind me that he’d chosen me and not the other way around.
The only thing I miss about my ex is his eight-inch cock and even that’s forgettable. A big knob means nothing if its owner is pure shite in the bedroom.
With smooth, controlled movements, I set the folder down on the table. Then lift my chin, boldly meeting those pale eyes once more. In the center, near his pupils, the green becomes a tawny yellow, a color so unique that I feel uneasy just being under their unrelenting stare.
Devil eyes. Soulless eyes.
“Are you Mr. Priest?” I ask, sweeping my attention up to his dark hair. Despite scouring The Bell & Hand’s website for information about its owners, the About Us section was dreadfully dull beyond the basics. Dates of upcoming events. An award won here and there. A mission statement that preached the belief in an establishment that welcomes all patrons, so long as their favorite whisky is Scottish and not Irish. A joke, I suppose, but not one that does much in the way of giving up this man’s secrets.
And nothing to help differentiate the three brothers from each other aside from their names.
Guy. Saxon. Damien.
I study the man before me, refusing to quiver under his hard stare, despite the nervous fluttering in my belly, and take a wild guess that he’s the middle brother.
Saxon the Savage—it has an appropriate ring to it.
The man’s scarred lip curls. “Who’s asking?” he bites out, dismissing Jack as he faces me fully. Lord, he seems even bigger now that he’s within touching distance. He’s dressed casually in dark-washed jeans and a ribbed, black jumper that matches the hue of his hair and does little to conceal the wide breadth of his shoulders.
Jack clears his throat. “She’s wanting a job. I told her that we aren’t hirin’.” He swivels his head to scowl at me. “Which we ain’t. Hirin’, that is.”
The man steps forward and, helpful as always, I hook my foot around the leg of a nearby chair and shove it back. “Feel free to take a seat,” I say, going for humor-laden friendliness. All the better to butter him up. I need this job—no other will do.
Desperation at its finest.
Green eyes narrow imperceptibly in my direction. “I own every chair in this pub, including yours.” It’s said without inflection, and he gives me no time to think of a comeback before he grabs the chair by its back and drags it so close to mine that the wood grazes my knees. The feet clatter loudly against the floor when he roughly sets it down, and then he’s sitting—collapsing, really—and holding my ground becomes that much harder.
Savage no longer cuts it.
He is . . . he is terrifying.
My fingers curl helplessly around the edge of my folder. Don’t let him see how unnerved you are! Maybe if he weren’t only centimeters away, with his muscular thighs straddling mine, I would feel ten times more confident about putting him in his place. As it is, it takes every ounce of fortitude to lamely quip, “So you are one of the Priest brothers?” I should have looked harder for pictures of them online, done more research, but other than those few mentions in the articles I found, the Priest men might as well be ghosts. They exist nowhere and everywhere, all at once. “Saxon?” I test, hoping I’m right.
He leans forward, his inner thighs scraping my bare leg, where my skirt has ridden up to just north of my knees, and then swipes the folder from under my hand. “We’re all out of openings,” he murmurs instead of answering my question. His black hair creeps over his forehead as he skims my CV. “Although I’ll be disappointed to pass over such . . . outstanding references.”
The patronizing note in his voice sets my teeth on edge. “I’m more than capable of serving food, Mr. Priest.” I feel my nostrils flare as I stare him down. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to get a plate from Point A to Point B.”
He keeps his focus locked on the sheet of paper when he drawls, “No, Miss”—his finger traces my name—“Quinn, you’re right. It doesn’t.”
“Then I ought to be a shoo-in. I’ve worked in some form of customer service for my entire life.”
“If that’s the case,” he says, once more fixing that unholy stare on my face, “then hearing the word No shouldn’t be out of the norm.”
My entire body stiffens. “On the contrary. When someone like me does their job to perfection, all I hear is Yes and Let’s have more of that, please.”
The words fly from my mouth before I can regulate them—or even consider how they might be interpreted—sexual, aggressively forward—and my cheeks instantly heat like I’ve baked under the sun for hours, naked. This is a nightmare, an absolute, bloody nightmare.
“That isn’t—that’s not at all what I—”
Saxon Priest is clearly no gentleman. Instead of allowing me to wallow in my own embarrassment, in solitude, mind you, he ends my stammering with a raised brow. “The Bell & Hand isn’t that kind of establishment, Miss Quinn.”
He hasn’t just—
He didn’t just imply that I’m a . . . that I’m a—
“For that sort of work, I suggest King’s Cross instead.”
My eyes go wide.
What. A. Wanker.
Not that it matters, but I haven’t shagged anyone since Stephen. The prized land between the valleys is experiencing a years’ long drought, if you will. And even if that weren’t the case, I would never consider sleeping with a man for money.
Although money is exactly what I need right now, and it’s the only reason I’m still sitting here and not introducing him to my swinging fist.
Gritting my teeth, so hard that I swear I can hear my molars grinding to dust, I purse my lips into a tight smile. “A miscommunication. I’m here to apply for a front-of-the-house position. I can clean tables, refill drinks, that sort of thing.”
Shifting his weight back, he reclines like an animal, predatory down to its marrow but content to watch its prey feel the anxiety of the hunt. One muscular forearm rests on the table; one long leg stretches out past mine. Having effectively blocked me in, his mouth—scarred and all—curves upward. It’s wicked and uneven and lacks all signs of warmth.
A foreboding shiver streaks down my spine, even as I bite back my pride and allow myself to beg. For the sake of my siblings. For the sake of my long-term goals. For the sake of survival.
“Hire me,” I whisper. “Please.”
“Apologies, Miss Quinn, but the answer’s still no.”
Tossing my CV on the table, he makes a move to stand. And this time it’s despair that kicks my arse into gear. I jerk out my right leg, cutting off his upward momentum by kicking him in the soft flesh of the back of his closest knee.
“Fuck—”
His weight destabilizes, big hands clutching and releasing the air as he fights for purchase. I sweep his chair forward, hooking my toes around the wooden leg, then plant my hand against his stone-hard thigh—and push.
With his balance already unstable, he topples backward, once more collapsing in the seat.
Raw, undiluted fury flares in his expression. In a voice pitched so low that I can barely hear it over the other customers in the pub, he growls, “Get. Out.”
Stand your ground.
You need this.
He called you a prostitute!
Swallowing a healthy dose of unease, I shake my head. “I cannot.”
Those pale eyes of his empty of any and all patience—not that he had much to begin with. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t toss you out on your ass.”
It’s now or never.
This moment is five years in the making. Five years of putting myself directly in the fire and stoking the flames. Five years of planning and doing everything in my power to prove that my parents didn’t die in vain.
That my siblings will live in an England—in a world—where a king or a queen can’t cause chaos with a flippant flick of the wrist.
The man seated across from me may look savage but looks can deceive. Souls . . . souls can’t, and mine was lost to a riot that tore my family to shreds. I can only hope that somewhere, deep inside, his humanity outguns his frigid personality.
There’s one item missing from my CV.
One achievement that can never be listed.
I’m Isla Quinn, and I killed the king.
For my siblings.
For my country.
And for vengeance.
“Time’s running out, Miss Quinn.”
Leaning forward, I smile at the scarred man seated opposite me. I need him, and though he doesn’t realize it yet, he needs me too. “I have a proposition for you, Mr. Priest, and I think it’d be in your best interest to hear me out.”