She couldn’t have asked for a better setup.
Instead, she felt hollow.
The car pulled up to Raziel’s manor, and she stepped out, nodding absently to the driver. As she walked toward the entrance, her thoughts continued to tumble over one another.
Could she do it? Could she kill Raziel now, after everything?
He murdered your family, she reminded herself harshly.He laughed as your mother died.
But the Raziel who had held her last night, who had surrendered control to her, who had looked at her with something so close to vulnerability…he seemed like a different man entirely from the monster of her memories.
Shaking her head, she pushed through the door, determined to find some quiet corner where she could sort through her thoughts.
Instead, she found Raziel waiting for her in the foyer, his expression unreadable. He took her to his office, shutting the door behind them so that they could speak in private.
“Where have you been?” he asked, voice deceptively casual.
“Lana invited me over,” she replied, seeing no reason to lie about that much. Even if Lana had warned her otherwise, Raziel’s driver would already have told him where she had been. “Wedding preparations.” She knew she had to give him more than that. “Supposedly.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “And was it?”
“No.” She sighed, suddenly exhausted by all the deception. “But I didn’t learn anything useful, if that’s what you’re asking.”
He studied her for a long moment, as if trying to decide whether to believe her. Then, apparently satisfied, he nodded once.
“I have news,” he said, changing the subject. “We’ve confirmed Braen’s location for the next three days. He’ll be staying at his house on the west end of the metropolis since we…disrupted his apartments above The Poisoned Serpent.”
“The perfect opportunity for our assassination,” she observed. She tried to recall what she knew about Braen’s home. “It’s a pretty big property, if I remember correctly.”
Raziel nodded grimly. “Trafficking fae is banned by all vampiric councils. The ledger you stole from him is proof positive of his activities. I would have hadmoreproof, but when I had one of my men go into the basement to take a few of his captives as insurance, he found they were already missing.” He shot her a cold look. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
The woman from the Wild Nadi had seen running through the chaos. So, she had been successful. Or at least, up and to a point. That was, if Braen’s men hadn’t been under orders todispose of evidenceif there was an issue. Therefore, her answer wasn’t a lie. She had no conclusive knowledge. “I don’t.”
He let out a hum. It seemed he believed her, at least well enough. “I will send a letter to Braen informing him that I have evidence of his lucrativeside-hobbyand threaten to expose himto the council of all the vampire elders if he does not meet with me. It would destroy the Rosovs if news came out. He will come.”
“That, and your previous history together, and I think you’re right.” Nadi left the door open for him to explain more of his complex past with Braen.
It seemed he was uninterested in taking the bait. He took his hair out of the tie at the back of his neck, running his fingers through the gleaming black strands. “I’ve been working with Ivan to finalize our approach. With any luck, we’ll have him isolated. It’s on his turf, which I don’t like. But the odds we get him off his family grounds without guards are much lower. I would rather have him unguarded.”
She couldn’t help but be distracted by the confident set of his shoulders, the fluid grace of his movements. He was beautiful, in the way that predators often were. Deadly and magnetic all at once.
This is a man who killed your family, she reminded herself again.
But he was also a man who had suffered. Who had been shaped by cruelty into a weapon. A man who, despite everything, had shown her glimpses of something almost like tenderness.
“What’s troubling you?” Raziel asked suddenly, turning to face her. “You’re unusually quiet.”
“Just thinking about what’s ahead.” It wasn’t a lie.
He moved closer, studying her face with an intensity that made her want to look away. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
It wasn’t a question. She forced herself to meet his gaze steadily.
“We both still have our secrets, Raziel.”
Something flashed in his eyes. Anger? Hurt? It was gone before she could identify it.
“True enough.” He took a step back. “But secrets between allies can be dangerous.”
