TO LATE TO BEG, SISTER

CHAPTER 4: THE MISSING PATENT DOCUMENTS

Six knives came at him at once, and to Julian they arrived slowly.

He stepped to the right, caught the first wrist, and twisted until it snapped; his elbow found the man's jaw on the way down. A leg sweep dropped the second. An open-palm strike to the third man's chest landed on a nerve point, and the thug folded to his knees, sucking air that wouldn't come.

Ten seconds, maybe fewer. All six of Garrick's men were on the floor, groaning.

Garrick had dragged himself upright on his good arm. His face had gone the color of wet ash.

"What kind of devil are you?" he stammered. "My men are East End killers. They don't go down like this."

Julian stopped in front of him. His eyes were flat, administrative, worse than anger.

"Go home and ask your boss one question," he said quietly. "Does he still remember a rainy night a year ago at the London Docks? Does he remember the man who held the keys to his entire portfolio, and made him kneel in the rain to beg for them?"

Garrick's mouth worked without sound. His boss had told that story once, drunk, voice lowered: a shadow who ran the East End from nowhere, whose name no one dared say. This pale young man in a soaked suit knew the details of that night.

"We're going," Garrick managed at last, in a voice an octave too high. "We're going!"

His men forgot their bruises and carried each other out into the rain.

When the door had been shut and bolted, Julian sat down on the nearest chair and pressed two fingers to his temple. When he took them away, there was red on them, faint, from his nostril. He wiped it on the inside of his cuff, where nobody would look. Then George was there, clutching his bruised chest.

"Julian… are you alright, son?"

"I'm fine, Grandpa." The fight had spent what little strength he had, and the pain behind his eyes was back, sharp as needles. He kept his face level anyway.

Aira took his arm before he could refuse. The usual scolding was gone from her voice. "You're white as a sheet. Sit. Now. Don't you dare play the tough guy on me."

"I only need a moment's rest, Aira."

"Then rest. Quietly."

She handed him the towel and did not ask who had taught him to fight like that. She had been about to. The question died when she remembered the sound the first man's wrist made. Men who moved like that were the men her grandmother locked the doors against. She looked at Julian's pale face and decided, fiercely, that he was the exception. She would have to decide it again many times, and it would never get easier.

Across the city, in her private study at the Vance estate, Victoria slammed both palms on the mahogany desk hard enough to rattle the windows.

"The energy patent files are gone. Those patents are worth a million pounds, and without the physical files and the encryption keys we lose the entire project." Her voice was low and dangerous. "Who has touched my desk?"

On the corner of the desk, beside the empty patent folder, her father's old fountain pen stood in a glass, the nib worn to his hand. She had not moved it in ten years. She touched it once, now, before she turned on Siska.

Siska had come in at the sound. She didn't hesitate.

"The patents? Then it's Julian. Who else?"

Victoria looked up. "Julian?"

"I saw him in the East End an hour ago," Siska said. "My instincts have never been wrong, Victoria—not once in two hundred cases. He must have taken the files before he left the house, to sell to a competitor. A gutter rat does anything for money." She folded her arms. "Send me after him. I will have a confession from him by morning. Nobody lies to me twice."

"The nerve," Victoria said, and the vein at her temple stood out.

A soft knock, and Tristan appeared at the door, all innocent concern. "Big sisters? Why is the house so tense? Is something wrong?"

Their faces softened at once.

"Tristan, you're awake," Victoria said. "Forgive us. It's only that ungrateful adopted boy again."

Tristan lowered his eyes, grieving on cue. "You mean… Brother Julian? Did my coming home make him jealous enough to steal from the company?"

"Don't you dare blame yourself," Siska said, going over to rub his shoulder. "You are our legitimate brother. Not like that orphanage trash."

"I still feel guilty." Tristan dabbed at the corner of his eye. "Let me go to him, sisters. I'll talk him into returning the documents peacefully."

Victoria looked at him with open pride. "You are too kind, Tristan. This family takes care of its own—and you are its own. Kindness is wasted on Julian."

"Even so," Tristan said, with a small forced bravery. "Give me a few guards, for safety. I'm sure he's a good person who simply lost his way."

Siska snorted. "Take the six best guards in the house. And if he refuses to hand them over, let the guards teach him a lesson."

Victoria rose and looked at Tristan, and her voice went cold as a contract.

"Find that boy. Bring back the patents." A pause. "And if you have to, break his hands, as a lesson for touching what belongs to the Vance family." Her thumb stroked the pen's cap as she said it, gently, the way her father had signed the letters that ruined people.

From the doorway, a small voice, barely held steady: "Sisters… please. Not his hands. Julian has never stolen a thing in his life."

It was Maya. She had not spoken all evening; the order had been too cruel to stay silent.

"Shut your mouth, Maya," Siska snapped, without turning around. "You're a romance writer with a soft head. You sympathize with everyone and think with no one."

Maya's lips trembled. She lowered her head and said nothing more. In her coat pocket her fingers found the small notebook she carried everywhere, and she wrote very small, where no one could see: Julian didn't do it. Then she underlined it once.

Tristan bowed politely. His face stayed humble all the way down. It was only in the dark of the stairwell, where no one could see, that the smile finally arrived.