The ceiling lamp is filtered through the naked glass of a Murano chandelier. It throws tiny glass daggers of light across the ornate walls. The house is old-money. Or a good enough imitation of it for Aria’s new tastes. The bed’s not the house—whatever this place is, wherever she’s brought me, it’s not a rental. There’sdust in the corners, the faint smell of lemon oil, and burned-out rage.
She’s talking on the phone somewhere off to my right, pacing so the heels hit the hardwood hard enough to echo. I recognize her walk. I always have.
She’s in a silk kimono, one of those expensive ones that women in movies wear when they get out of a pool. Hair up, face painted, legs bare. She’s barefoot now, but I know she’ll slide the shoes back on when she wants to remind me she used to be in control. She puts the phone away and sits in the shadowed corner of the room, perched on a low velvet chair like some depressed fucking owl.
I don’t speak. That’s her job.
She lets the silence draw out. Slips one slim ankle over the other and tugs the robe closed so I can pretend I’m not seeing the flash of thigh she’s offering. It’s a bluff. Like she thinks I’ll forget the four years of nights that meant less than a handshake.
“I thought you’d be harder to sedate,” she says.
I rasp, “You always make it too easy.”
She laughs, and I can hear the tremor in it. Thin, like the first hairline fracture in a pane of bulletproof glass.
“You’re lucky the med team didn’t lose the leg. Your femoral was half-shredded.” She swirls a glass of whiskey, which she must have started while I was unconscious. “Two minutes slower and I’d be a widow times two.”
That last word is a test. I leave it unchallenged, which pisses her off. I can see the twitch at her jaw.
“That was a good stunt, the jamming,” she finally says, “The counter-measure on the sniper was predictable, but still. I half-expected Charles would just bomb the place and start over in the ashes.”
“He considered it,” I say. I mean it.
She closes her eyes, savoring the burn of the drink. “You want to know what’s happening right now? All your little warriors are holed up in a safe house, trying to figure out what to do. If they’re smart, they’ll just let you go. Let us be happy.”
“So your idea of a happy ending is pulling a cheap bait-and-switch just to trap a man who already chose someone else and very clearly doesn’t want you?”
“You want me.”
“I want to drink a whiskey while I put a bullet in your head if that’s what you mean.”
“You don’t mean that.” She actually looks hurt.
In all the years she showed up at the guesthouse Jace, Cal, and I shared—ready to spread or swallow—I still can’t figure out when she convinced herself I felt anything for her beyond a half-hard distraction. I never sold her a lie. I never hinted at more. If she mistook access for affection, that was her own damn fantasy.
She was convenient. Wet. Warm. Needy. That was the extent of it. It was sex—and most of the time, it wasn’t even her I was fucking. Not in my head. Parker was gone, and the three of us weren’t about to risk her safety by drawing attention. Three of Dominic Carter’s top generals circling his daughter would’ve raised questions he was smart enough to ask. Dominic was a monster, but he wasn’t stupid.
So when he found out that, during one of his benders, he’d dumped his drunk young wife on me to deal with—and she’d gone down on me in the alley before I fucked her against a dumpster—he didn’t rage. He didn’t care. She was a trophy, not a necessity. An attention whore he’d already gotten bored of. Whoever she spread for or swallowed didn’t matter, as long as she stayed quiet and out of his way.
No wonder she can’t stand Parker. Dominic let her go instead of molding her into a role she didn’t want. My woman has always been no match for any man willing to cut her into who they wanted her to be.
She sets her glass on the sill. “You’re thinking about her.”
I don’t answer. She turns, crossing her arms. Waiting for me to rise to the bait, to say I miss Parker or that I wish it were anyone else in this room. Like I haven’t already carved the truth onto the walls of my fucking skull.
“I did this all for you, Silas.”
“You did this for yourself,” I say, voice raw.
If she could, she’d slap me. But she’s learning.
She presses both palms to the window and stares out into the dark. “She doesn’t understand what it costs. To be us. To be the tool your family needs, the one who does the things no one else will. She gets to have the boys, the white picket fence version of this fucked-up empire, while you…you rot for her.”
“You’re monologuing again.” I want her to shut up. If only so I don’t have to picture Parker’s face at the moment Jace and Cal put her in the car, her mouth open in a silent scream that still echoes here, even through the concrete and lemon oil.
“Why can’t you see it?” Her voice is sharp. “She’s weak. She left you. She ran to California the second things got hard. I never left.”
“You never mattered enough to impact me if you did leave.” I’m not sure if the insult lands. It’s hard to tell when someone’s too high on insanity to wince.
