Hidden Devotion Read Free

identify her to other members.
    She waited for her brother to hang the coat on the stand in the corner before greeting him. “Harrison.”
    They pressed their cheeks together and Harrison squeezed her hands. Juliette tugged them from his grip then turned to face the other men who’d risen when she entered. Price Bennett she recognized vaguely—he was the CEO of a major security firm. Michael she knew—he was Harrison’s best friend and now husband.
    Price got a handshake, Michael a hug, but she didn’t let the greetings last too long. Juliette sat in the previously vacant chair. The men looked at each other before resuming their seats.
    That look—men acknowledging that they now had to deal with a petite blonde “girl” and they’d rather not—was one she’d seen a thousand times before. Icy calm coated her, and she swallowed the hot words she’d been practicing all morning. An angry rant was the last thing this situation needed—if she was going to do this, she had to take command. Starting now.
    “Juliette, thank you for coming back so quickly. I hope it didn’t cause too much trouble.” Harrison was smiling slightly, the sort of uncomfortable expression he’d always worn around her.
    She remembered when she was little wanting nothing more than to spend time with her handsome older brother, but their age difference was too large for them to have been companions. Later she’d realized that there had been tension in their parents’ trinity, a tension she hadn’t understood, but which Harrison had been all too aware of. Their disparate knowledge, along with the twenty-year age gap, meant they had never been close.
    “I wasn’t going to solve Eastern Europe’s human trafficking problem in the next four days.”
    “Is that what you were working on?” He smiled, like a parent encouraging a child to report on their day.
    “As if you didn’t know.”
    Harrison sat back, smile fading. Michael put a hand on his arm.
    Juliette placed her hands gently on the table, each movement slow and meticulous. “Tell me what you did, and what happens next.”
    Price seemed slightly taken aback, but then rubbed his lips, as if hiding a smile. She stared at him coolly, and Price dropped his hand. “I almost forgot you’re an Adams,” he said.
    There was a moment of silence, during which the tension ratcheted up, her brother and his councilors seeming to realize that she was not going to meekly follow their orders.
    Harrison cleared his throat then started talking. More had happened in the last month than she knew. Harrison’s failure to marry and his decision to be with Alexis no matter the cost was only part of the story, and Juliette was horrified to hear about the death threats he’d received. At the same time his councilors had been confronting him about his failure to marry and relationship with a non-Trinity Masters’ woman, he’d been receiving threats from an unknown enemy, who had first struck at more vulnerable members of the Trinity Masters. Though he had eventually married, his disregard for the rules meant he couldn’t keep his position. Juliette didn’t say it, but she found it romantic that Harrison had risked so much to be with the woman he loved. Losing his position as Grand Master was light punishment.
    When he was done, Juliette leaned back, sorting through her questions to find the most important one. “What does everyone know?”
    “About the threats? Only a handful of people are aware. About your brother stepping down?” Price was the one who responded. “Nothing.”
    “Usually when there’s a new Grand Master it means the old one has died, and there’s usually some sort of ceremony acknowledging the death.” At the first event after her father had died, Harrison had stood silent and unmoving before the membership, a lit black candle in one hand. He’d extinguished it before addressing the crowd. “It seems wrong to light a candle when you’re not dead.”
    “The Winter Gala is