He gasped and clutched a hand to his chest. “Will wonders never cease.”
I scrunched my face up into what I hoped was a smile.
“. . . find the last agreement to be far more lenient with the rubes than I would ever be,” Victor Draconi’s deep, rumbling voice caught my attention.
I leaned to the side so I could have a better view.
He frowned at everyone around him. “It’s disgraceful, really, the way they market the town as some sort of fairy-tale tourist trap. And then the shop and restaurant owners have the gall to demand that they keep more and more of the money they earn, lowering what they give to the Families. We’re the ones with the magic. We’re the ones with the power. Without us, they would quickly find out exactly how monstrous certain sections of this town really are. It’s shameful, how they take us and our protection for granted.”
His stance wasn’t an uncommon one. Lots of magicks thought that they were better than the mortals. Hence the term rube. Truth be told, so did I. Oh, I didn’t think that I was more special or important than mortals, per se, just that I knew the dangers of what they were promoting a lot better than they did.
Several of the other Family leaders nodded in agreement. Then again, most of them would have sided with him no matter what. Victor turned his golden gaze to Claudia, who had remained quiet through what had seemed to be a long-winded rant on his part.
“Have you given any more thought to my proposal to impose a new tax on the rubes for profiting from our protection efforts?” he asked.
Claudia dabbed at her lips with her napkin, her fingers curling tightly into the cloth before she set it aside. “My answer is the same as it’s always been. No. The mortals are doing their best to drum up business and attract more tourists, something that we all profit from. I say we let them do their jobs, and we do ours.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Victor said, his voice dropping to a lower, more sinister tone. “Someone should remind the rubes what their place is. In fact, I say that it should have been done a long time ago.”
Claudia grabbed a biscotti out of a basket on the table. “And I say that the mortals are already paying quite enough in protection money. If we ask them to pay more . . .”
She snapped the biscotti in half. “They are liable to quit paying altogether. And none of us want that.”
This time, everyone at the table nodded in agreement with her—except for Victor.
Claudia knew she’d won this round, and she gave Victor a smile that was about as sweet and pointed as a dagger to the throat. I liked her more in that moment than I ever had before.
Victor’s eyes narrowed, but he tipped his head and returned her smile with one of his own. Claudia started murmuring to Hiroshi Ito, while Victor took another bite of his strawberry ice cream. Even though the two of them were pointedly ignoring each other, you could almost see the tension between them hanging over the table like a storm cloud.
Everyone knew that the Sinclairs were second only to the Draconis in power. Once again, I couldn’t help wondering if Victor was behind the attempts to kidnap Devon. Because if her son was taken, Claudia would do anything to get him back—anything.
Victor must have sensed me watching him because he glanced in my direction. Our eyes locked for just a moment, but that was long enough for my soulsight to kick in. His expression was calm, but his heart was cold.
So completely, utterly, chillingly cold.
Most anger and rage felt hot, like fiery knives stabbing into my heart or water boiling in the pit of my stomach. But not Victor Draconi’s. Instead, his was pure ice—hard, cold, utterly unbreakable, and completely unrelenting.
In that moment, I realized that he hated the rest of the Families, especially Claudia and the Sinclairs, and that he would do whatever it took to eliminate them all—down to the smallest pixie. Blake had said his father was planning something, and I knew that it would have deadly consequences for everyone in this room, maybe even everyone in Cloudburst Falls.
Victor looked away, breaking my connection to him, and I slumped over the table, shivering.
“Lila?” Devon asked, leaning forward in his seat on the other side of Felix. “Are you okay?”
I let out a breath, certain that it would frost in the air, given the cold rage still racing through my body, but nothing happened. I forced myself to straighten back up, and I dropped my hands together and hid them under the napkin in my lap, so that no one would see how badly my fingers were trembling.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to make my voice sound normal. “I’m fine. I probably just ate too much.”
Felix snorted. “You think?”
I forced myself to smile at him. Felix turned to Devon, and the two of them started talking again. The cold rage slowly faded from my body, but it was quickly replaced by a stomach-churning combination of worry, dread, and fear about what Victor, Blake, and the rest of the Draconis were up to.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The dinner wrapped up soon after that.
Devon went back over to Claudia, standing by her side in silent support, as she shook hands a final time with the heads of the other Families, including Victor.
I positioned myself off to the side of the crowd, away from everyone else, just trying to get through the rest of the night.
The Draconis left the restaurant first. Victor didn’t even glance at me as he swept outside. Of course he wouldn’t. I wasn’t a senior member of one of the Families, so I wasn’t important. A nobody, just like my mom had been to him.
However, Blake stopped long enough to sneer at me, a clear promise on his face that our little feud wasn’t over. I gave him the same sort of cold smile that Claudia had Victor.