Angling to face me, he brings up a knee to rest on the cushioned seat, then drapes his arm along the spine of the couch.
“Happy New Year,” he says, his sarcasm half-hearted and weary.
“You’re a day late.”
Unfazed, he slides a thick envelope out from his waistband, then offers it to me. “Start it off with a happy thing, you’ll have a happy year.”
Something Nonna says.
The scoff that catches in my throat is bitter.
Still, he just holds out the textured black envelope.
The mantel clock ticks.
My stare is unwavering, same as his.
But Oliver’s approach is kinder than mine.
He gives the faintest, softest tut of his tongue, then brings the envelope back to himself.
His thumb slips into the gap before he tugs, peeling it open.
Face like stone, I watch as he removes the contents from the envelope—a brochure that carries a slightly perfumed fragrance I can smell from across the couch, and two thin strips of glossy paper.
Oliver lifts the brochure first. “I promised you that feline. Savannah, first generation.”
I eye the brochure. “Doesn’t look like a cat.”
There’s no point to my sass other than it being convenient, and that I hate him, and I want to claw his face off.
Oliver’s smile is curt. “I found a reputable breeder with a planned litter,” he tells me, and keeps his tone light. “The kittens will be ready in March. I thought we could sneak out of Bluestone to inspect them ourselves.”
He lifts the two thin strips of paper, and under the light, I see them for what they are.
Plane tickets.
“If we happened to take a whole weekend in Dubai, so be it,” he says.
For a beat, I just stare at him.
My expression is slack, blank, unreadable.
I know because he’s trying so hard to read me. That tight smile, his light tone, it’s a mask.
His gaze is calculating.
His eyes don’t seem to move, but his pupils are that of a hunter, and he might as well be scanning me over, trying to read everything on my mind.
Oliver is so dangerous that way.
To outsiders, he might be the friendly one of the Videralli, the Coven of Europe, of the Cravens.
Oliver can disarm with a smile, ease someone with his relaxed presence, gain trust too easily given.
Then stab a knife into every back turned to him.
If I was a guy, in business, in the aristos and elites, I wouldn’t trust him.
