Rooks and Romanticide by J.I. Radke Page B

the bankers’ block down by Alderstower, and masked thieves outside Leroy Square, and a scouting mission that required Levi spend some time in the East Streets — strictly Ruslaniv territory, and slummy territory at that. It was already familiar to Levi. Cleveland Street and Dalley’s Street and Old Yew Bailey Court where gamblers organized boxing matches and swordfights, Foxe’s and Fleet’s Inn, hotels and cafés and all other sorts of haunts the parties of nightlife loved. But still he was always on edge, waiting to be caught as this Other Levi, this spying spy — caught by those who knew him, or those who thought they knew him.
    Not long after that the Earl asked him to infiltrate a notorious Ruslaniv dance hall where opium and cocaine barons spoke of their sales and deals, and he was to report back to the Dietrich house with overheard plans so the Dietrich men could hijack the barons’ shipments and hold them over their heads.
    It wasn’t hard to roam the streets unchallenged by Lord Ruslaniv.
    His father was confident in Levi’s anonymity. He’d helped to fortify it, anyway, and after all that had happened over the years, he had stopped asking about anything. Now and then it was just a weary glance over breakfast or luncheon, when Levi was frequently hungover, or distracted, or sporting badges from a night of carousing—tousled hair, darkened eyes, yesterday’s clothes, bloodied knuckles, broken blood vessels.
    It was the same now, sneaking around for Earl Dietrich. The servants noticed Levi was gone, as did his father’s dutiful agents. They whispered and exchanged looks when he came trudging through the marble halls at daybreak, exhausted and accepting guilt for their simplest suspicions. They’d go whispering to his father by midday about his antics, but they were clueless of just what antics he was up to lately. They judged him as a rowdy and ruthless young man, taking advantage of his good looks and fat wallet with the rest of the gang he’d inherited from his older brother, the older brother who actually had taken advantage of his good looks and fat wallet.
    But that was the thing. Levi was not out gallivanting with the crew he’d inherited. And to avoid BLACK’s questions as to why he didn’t join them at all their favorite clubs and casinos, raising hell through New London as the Ruslanivs’ most elusive and ominous gang….
    That balancing act was the part that really grated on Levi’s nerves.
    â€œHow’s it going?” they’d ask carefully, with critical glances—Elliot, the Witch, William—when what they really meant was What the devil are you doing with the Earl that makes him get you more than we do now ?
    Their resentful glances made him giddy.
    Be honest with me.
    â€œListen,” Levi said, and he looked at Eliott because he knew Eliott would understand the urgency even if it went unexplained. “BLACK needs to lay low while I’m involved with the Earl. Let us become shadows in the night again, because we can’t afford to draw attention to ourselves with as much as he’s watching the streets.”
    He was twenty-four years old, the Honourable Lawrence Levi Ruslaniv, elusive heir of the Ruslaniv fortune and infamy, and until he’d been seven, his world had been one of governesses, the nursery, the high walls around the manor, the screams he sometimes heard outside those walls. Screams cursing his family, sometimes punctuated by gunshots.
    He’d learned about his family’s history and burdens for the first time when he was eight. He’d whispered to himself the reasons he couldn’t go outside the Ruslaniv walls like he whispered his prayers. Too dangerous, too dangerous, not safe for an heir.
    He’d pulled his first trigger when he was nine, entered into BLACK’s training when he was twelve, killed for the first time when he was fifteen.
    And now, almost ten