TO LATE TO BEG, SISTER

CHAPTER 5: A PROMISE IN THE RAIN

The Mayfair night air did nothing to cool the smile under Tristan's collar. Inside his jacket, his fingers kept touching the patent files, a million pounds' worth of paper resting against his ribs like a warm coal.

Julian, he thought. Ten years you stood where I should have stood. Ate at the table that should have been mine. Tonight you'll rot in a prison cell for the theft, and I'll watch.

He gestured to the six bodyguards by the SUVs. "You six. East End, now. Find the orphan. If he won't hand over the documents, tear that place down to the bricks."

"As you command, Young Master Tristan."

The engines roared into the dark.

In the orphanage living room, the air smelled of medicated oil and rain on the tin roof. George, pale, one hand on his bruised chest, pointed at the door.

"Julian, my boy, you have to go. Now. Run."

Julian turned from the window, gentle. "Grandpa, I only just got back. Why are you sending me away?"

"You don't know who Garrick works for," Margaret said, wringing her hands. "His master is Arthur Pendleton. The East End calls him Boss A, and he has no heart in his chest."

"What has he done?" Julian asked.

George's voice dropped to a whisper, the way people speak of the dead. "A businessman refused to hand his daughter over to him, and went to the police. The next day, the man's whole family was found dead. All of them. Nobody in the East End stands in that man's way, Julian. Nobody."

In the corner, the younger children had begun to cry softly. Margaret went to them, herding the little ones upstairs. George followed, one hand on the wall.

Aira stayed. She stood with her arms crossed, frowning hard, worrying leaking out of her eyes anyway.

"They're right," she said. "Run, Julian. Don't try to be a hero."

He crossed the room and patted the top of her head.

She went red in the ears. A second later she brushed his hand away—gently, which ruined the effect. "Hey. I'm not a little kid. Stop patting me like one."

And Julian laughed. It surprised him as much as her: a real, unguarded laugh, the first in ten years of Mayfair.

Aira stared at him. The sound was warm enough to take the chill off the room. "Why are you laughing, idiot," she muttered, and her own mouth betrayed her into a small smile.

"Thank you, Aira," he said, when the laugh had passed. "But I won't run."

Her face went serious again. "Garrick won't stop. They'll keep coming until this building is rubble. Boss Arthur wants this land."

"Why does a criminal want an orphanage's land?"

Aira went to the window. Rain ran down the glass over the old East End rooftops.

"Because Vance Global is redeveloping the whole district," she said. "Saint Jude's sits in the middle of their commercial zone. Grandpa and Grandma bought this land legally, decades ago, and Grandpa won't sell it. So Boss Arthur's gang comes to force it out of him for nothing. The £100,000 debt is a lie they invented so they can smash our property every week and call it collection."

Her fists closed at her sides.

"My parents died when I was little. Caught in the crossfire of a gang war. Men are just like these." Her voice rasped. "I hate them, Julian. I hate what they do to people who can't fight back."

Julian watched her shoulders shake. Eleven weeks, he thought. The specialist's arithmetic had become a habit now, a small cold abacus in his chest. Eleven weeks to keep this place standing. The tumor's ache went quiet for a moment, replaced by something colder and steadier.

He came to stand beside her at the window, looking down at the orphanage gate taking the rain.

"Aira," he said, low, each word set down like stone. "I promise you. I will protect this orphanage. Not just from Garrick. If Boss Arthur himself comes, or the whole board of Vance Global behind him, they will not touch one inch of this land."

Aira looked up at him. Then, quieter: "And you? When all this is over. What do you want for yourself?"

He hadn't been asked that in ten years. He thought about it honestly, and the answer came up small and plain.

"The sea," he said. "I've never seen it. Ten years in Mayfair, and the farthest I ever went was the hospital."

She laughed, because it sounded like a joke. He smiled and let it be one.

She looked at his hands, the hands that had broken Garrick's wrist an hour earlier, and told herself he was nothing like the men who had killed her parents. She almost believed it.