Page 151 of Vicious Kingdom

I shot him a look, but I was grateful for the change of subject. “I thought you said that was cheap melodrama.”

He shrugged, spreading his hands wide. “Sometimes you need cheap melodrama. Nobody remembers the subtle stuff. You want a book to break people? You have to make them feel something ugly.”

“Is that your professional opinion?” I asked, hiding a smile behind the rim of the mug.

“It’s my personal opinion,” he said. “And I’m never wrong.”

He reached for the laptop, then paused, fingertips hovering an inch above the lid. “You sure you want me to read it?”

I wasn’t. But I nodded anyway.

“Go ahead,” I said, and realized I was holding my breath.

He opened it, the screen painting both our faces blue-white. His eyes flickered over the title page, and he let out another whistle.

“You actually gave it a title,” he said, like he was surprised.

I snorted. “Working title. Don’t get used to it.”

He scanned the first page, mouth moving silently with the words. For a second I watched him, counting the subtle tics—the way his eyes narrowed on a turn of phrase, the tiny furrowbetween his brows when something didn’t scan for him. I could map out the story’s strengths and flaws just by watching his face, like reading a seismograph during an earthquake.

He made it two paragraphs in before he glanced up at me again.

“Do you want notes?” he asked.

“Not yet,” I said. “I want you to finish the chapter first.”

He nodded, then lost himself in the screen. I sipped my green latte, hands shaking so hard I nearly dropped the mug. I pressed the ceramic to my lips to hide the tremor, counting down the seconds until he reached the part that mattered—the part where I’d finally put something true on the page, not just for my readers or my unfulfilled childhood, but for Leo.

The kitchen clock made its way around to the quarter hour. My stomach knotted tighter with every tick. Sunlight inched its way across the table, igniting the gold flecks in Leo’s eyes.

He didn’t look up when he finished the chapter. He just stared at the screen, chewing the inside of his cheek.

“Anna,” he said, and my name sounded like a blessing and a curse all at once.

“Yeah?”

“It’s good,” he said, voice hushed. “It’s really, really good.”

A flush rose up my throat. “You’re just saying that because you want me to cook dinner tonight.”

He gave me a look, part exasperated, part fond. “I’m serious. I’ve read the earlier drafts of this, and I thought you’d never nail the landing. But you did.”

I squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back, harder than necessary but just the way I liked it. The moment hung between us, charged and fragile, as if the whole city were waiting to see what we’d do next.

Outside, the sky slipped toward dusk, the glass windows turning every high-rise into a mirror. In here, it was just thetwo of us, and the words I’d finally managed to wrestle into existence.

For the first time in weeks, I felt like I might actually be okay.

But then Leo’s eyes darted to the entryway, and his whole body went taut, every muscle locked as if expecting an ambush.

I turned in my seat, expecting nothing but shadows.

But a sharp crack preceded the front door banging open. He was through the door before the echo of the latch had faded, moving with the bull-rush of someone who’d hadn’t spent the last decades growing fat in an office chair.

Uncle Jon.

He looked older than he had at the funeral. Maybe it was the sleepless pallor, or the way his cheeks hung hollow against the angry set of his jaw. But the hands—the hands were the same: broad, veined, and so sure that even the trembling gun never wavered.