Still nothing from Angel. Not a twitch of his lips. Not a flick of his eyelashes. The stranger who had appeared at Grafton Manor like a puff of dark smoke, all intangible and foreboding, was either very, very good, or he wasn’t who Grafton thought he was.
Sonya would be shocked if it was the latter. Grafton didn’t make mistakes. At least he didn’t make them often.
He hired me, didn’t he? she thought, determined to make that the biggest mistake of his life.
When Grafton laid the tablet atop the desk, she glanced at the picture on the screen and nearly swallowed her tongue. She must have betrayed herself with a noise because Grafton glanced at her, brow furrowed.
“What?” He saw the direction of her stare and turned back to the photograph. “Haven’t you seen a photo of the Prince of Shadows before? Surely you came across one during your previous career.”
“No.” She shook her head. “As the nickname suggests, his identity was always cloaked in darkness.”
“Ah. Well, then, I’m fortunate to have this one, aren’t I? Perhaps I should give Benton that raise he’s been on about for the last few months.” Grafton smiled when he referred to the young computer hacker he kept in his employ.
Sonya barely heard him. She was too engrossed in studying the picture on the tablet.
Grafton looked from her to the tablet and back again. “Still, you do seem to recognize him.”
“No.” She shook her head.
The subtle quirk of Grafton’s right eyebrow said he wasn’t satisfied with her monosyllabic answer.
Taking a deep breath, she tried not to choke on the smell of his woodsy cologne, which lingered in every room in the manor including her own. Gag. “But the man in the photo does look like someone I knew a long time ago,” she admitted.
“Really?” Grafton was intrigued, and that would never do. What he already knew about her was too much for her liking.
“Someone who died,” she clarified, hoping he’d consider the case closed. Someone with the same slashing eyebrows and serious brow, she continued silently. Someone I loved.
Although the man pictured had a smaller nose and a more prominent jawline, hell-black eyes instead of warm chocolate ones, there were enough similarities to have her mind swirling with a hundred beautiful memories. Her heart aching with a loss that even after ten years remained razor-sharp.
“Ah, Sonya…” Grafton’s smile turned faintly sardonic. “You are unlucky in love, are you not? First a dead man and now an international criminal?”
She blinked, realizing some of what she felt was written across her face. Carefully schooling her features, she shrugged a shoulder and resisted the urge to punch Grafton straight in his smug, aristocratic nose.
He chuckled, knowing how much she disliked him and taking great delight in the power he had over her. If she squeezed her hands any tighter behind her back, her nails would break the skin.
After holding her gaze for a few seconds—both daring her to speak and simultaneously impressing upon her which of them was in charge—he turned back to Angel.
She breathed a sigh of relief.
Before being pressed into Grafton’s service, she had known he was a bad man. But now? Well, now she knew he wasn’t just a bad man; he was the worst of men.
She wondered if the devil himself had gotten tired of competing with Grafton in hell and had decided to dump him on earth. Which was to say that to be the object of Grafton’s intense stare was to look upon the face of true evil. It always left her feeling a little corrupted. As if some of his depravity had wiggled in through her eye sockets and laid poisonous eggs inside her brain.
Grafton tapped the photo, glancing at Angel. As Sonya had hoped, he’d dropped the subject of her ill-fated love life and circled back around to his previous train of thought. “Compliments to your plastic surgeon. Not that you weren’t an attractive man to begin with, but…” He let the sentence dangle, waiting for Angel to say something. Anything.
The only thing Angel allowed was the lifting of one dark eyebrow.
Sonya took the opportunity to study his face. Grafton was right. If, indeed, Angel was the man in the picture, then his plastic surgeon had been having an extremely good day when he or she carved Angel’s new mug.
High cheekbones, broad forehead, solid slab of a jaw. His perfect profile begged to be minted on coins.
In fact, Angel was so gorgeous that Sonya’s ovaries rejoiced. But when he turned his unblinking stare on her for the briefest of seconds, it threatened to shrink her uterus and throw her into early menopause.
Again, she was struck by the undeniable certainty that the man sitting across from Grafton was not someone to screw around with. Even though Grafton’s home library was immense, filled with two-story bookshelves packed with first editions that delighted her and Sotheby’s quality antique furniture that cost more than three years’ wages, Angel’s presence seemed to dwarf the space.
Could he be the Prince of Shadows? The man revered by Western intelligence agencies for single-handedly keeping the Iranians from becoming an atomic power? Not to mention, likely saving the world from nuclear war?
Grafton sighed, an indication he’d grown frustrated with Angel’s reticence. As he swiped through the documents on his tablet again, Sonya knew he was poised to let loose with his coup de grâce. Hadn’t it happened the same way with her when he’d summoned her to a meeting six months ago?
