Free hellcat 05 - come hell or high water by Sharon Hannaford Page B

Princeps.”  She added a time frame to her promise at the last second, in case he had other ideas of keeping her here on a permanent basis.  A wry smile lifted one side of his mouth as he acknowledged her limitation.
    “Fair enough,” he agreed. “Can we do this inside, though?  I would prefer to keep this from everyone else for the meanwhile.”
    “Your private lounge?” she asked.  In the new rebuild of the mansion, Julius had a suite of rooms, a decadent upgrade from his previous bedroom with en suite.  His new suite included a sumptuous living area and a kitchenette for Gabi’s use.  It was also soundproofed with a specialized padding from his inventor friend Savannah.  The soundproofing was so advanced that not even Vampire hearing could penetrate it. 
    “May I?” he asked, before swooping her up into his arms and gently lowering them both to the ground.  It was a vastly different experience to the last time he’d done that.  And the end result was Julius still conscious and no mansion in fiery ruins around them.  A marked improvement.
     
    A fire danced in the marble hearth, not the smoky, wooden kind, but the cleaner, gas-fuelled kind.  It wasn’t really cold enough for one, but it added a warmth and comfort to the room, something Gabi felt she needed as she prepared to hear what Julius had been hiding from her.  He pressed a large wine glass into her hand, half filled with a rich, ruby red merlot. She unconsciously drew the plummy aroma deep into her lungs. 
    Julius took a seat in the suede sofa next to hers.  He wasn’t facing her but the flames of the fire as his eyes went distant, and the solid mental wall between them began to disintegrate. 
    “A few weeks after we left the Princep Court, I got word from Xavier,” he began. 
    Gabi remembered the dark-haired human very well.  He was fiercely loyal to Julius and determined to stay at the Court to gather intel for Julius rather than accept the comfortable life here at the Estate that Julius had offered him.  Gabi sipped her wine as she waited for Julius to go on, hoping the alcohol would calm her roiling stomach.
    “One of Santiago’s Clan found a hair in his apartments.  Shortly after the time he met the true death,” he said, the words falling slowly from his mouth as if it was difficult forming them. 
    Gabi froze with a mouthful of wine, suddenly unable to swallow it.  Santiago had been a Princep.  She’d met him when she and Julius had been called in front of the Princeps to explain why a Master Vampire had knowingly been harbouring a Dhampir, and to account for the ‘murder’ of Julius’s brother, Dantè, after the Dark Magus Mariska had outed them, hoping to exact revenge for Dantè’s death.  At a formal dance Gabi had discovered Santiago’s sick, dark perversion: his love of young girls, and that he’d been allowed to Turn some as young as eight or nine years old.  She’d known, the instant she recognised him for what he was, that she would find a way to kill him.  And it hadn’t taken long to discover that she wasn’t alone in her revulsion.  She wouldn’t have been able to achieve her objective without some help in several crucial areas.  She’d included a handful of people in her dangerous scheme, including a few members of Court staff, but she’d been very careful to keep everything from Julius.  She’d been determined to ensure that he could not be held personally accountable if she was caught or killed in the attempt to end the Princep’s existence. 
    Miraculously they’d pulled it off and had even managed to leave Court before being questioned.  Her team had thought of everything, including cleaning up and destroying evidence.  She trusted them to be thorough, for the sake of the young girls he’d been abusing if not for her.  Gabi knew it was widely surmised that she’d been the one to kill him, but she’d been confident that there would be no way to physically tie her, or the small