His illustration is all cool tones. Silvers and blues and whites, the kind of palette that reads as expensive and untouchable. He's beautiful in the way a glacier is beautiful. You don't want to get too close.
Skye Wyndham. Mafia King of the West. The Berkshires and Western Massachusetts fall under his reign. Dark hair, silver eyes, mysterious and quiet. The one no one sees coming until it's too late.
This one is all shadows. Deep purples and blacks, with points of light that catch like stars in a night sky. His expression is unreadable. His eyes seem to follow me as I look at the page.
That's...unsettling.
Wolfe Sideris. Mafia King of the East. Boston and the Massachusetts coast bow to him. Broad and rough-edged, with a scar through one eyebrow. The most dangerous of the four—and the most fiercely protective.
Warm colors here. Golds and oranges and deep reds, like embers in a dying fire. He looks like he could break someone with his bare hands. He also looks like he'd pull a stranger out of a burning building and never mention it again.
And then...
Devyn Chaleur. Mafia King of the South. Connecticut and Rhode Island answer to him alone. Dark-haired, golden-eyed, legendarily impatient. His anger runs cold, not hot—and that makes him more dangerous than all the others combined.
I don't look at his illustration.
I don't know why. Something about the description makes my stomach clench.His anger runs cold, not hot.That's...that's the opposite of what I grew up with. My father's anger was hot. Explosive. Loud enough to rattle the windows and send my mother retreating into silence.
Cold anger sounds worse.
Cold anger sounds like the kind you can't see coming.
So I skip Devyn's route.
I play through Quinn's instead, and "play" is the right word, because the book works exactly like a choose-your-own-adventure. Decisions branch into new paths. Pages tell me where to turn next. The story unfolds differently depending on what I choose.
I finish Quinn's route. Then Skye's. Then Wolfe's.
I don't touch Devyn's.
The shop has grown darker around me. The rain still drums against the windows, but softer now, like it's tired. The fire has burned down to glowing embers. My teacup is empty, though I don't remember finishing it.
I should go. I should have gone hours ago. Heart is going to kill me. I was only supposed to be on my lunch break, and by now it must be...
I check my phone.
Dead. Completely dead, even though it was at sixty percent when I walked in here.
That's...fine. That's probably fine. Phones die sometimes. It doesn't mean anything.
I set the book down on the table beside my empty cup. Lean my head back against the velvet armchair. The cushions seem to mold around me, impossibly soft.
I'll just close my eyes for a second.
Just until I can gather the energy to face whatever disaster is waiting for me at the studio.
Just until...
I WAKE UP TO THE SOUNDof running.
Not running.Fleeing.Frantic footsteps on marble, the rustle of fabric, ragged breathing that sounds like barely-contained sobs.
I jerk upright and the world is wrong.
No velvet armchair. No amber lanterns. No bookshelves arranged by color like a designer's fever dream.
Instead: marble floors, so polished I can see the ghost of my own reflection. Stained glass windows that fragment the light into shattered rainbows. Pews draped in black silk, and roseseverywhere, massive arrangements of them, the kind that cost more per stem than I make in an hour. They're beautiful. They're also scentless, which means they're the really expensive kind, bred for appearance over everything else.
