Click.
Click.
My pulse jolts at the familiar sound.
Then the alluring scent of vetiver, smoke, and mint.
Then chocolate. Rich, creamy chocolate I know is from Geraldine’s.
I feel his heat first, then hear him setting something in front of me.
I open my eyes, finding a cup of piping hot chocolate, because that was also part of the dream I’d told him. A magical indoor garden and a cup of hot chocolate.
He remembered every single detail.
His breath ghosts my neck, close enough to touch, and yet, he doesn’t.
“You know everything now. The worst of me,” he murmurs. “Meet me in the foyer tonight for the Berisha dinner if you want to stay.”
His heat presses closer—almost a brand.
“Or run while you still can. I won’t stop you.”
Cold crashes into me when he withdraws. Two paths. One choice.
Fear wins.
I spin around and dash out of the room.
Chapter 45: KNIFE’S EDGE
Tristan Clarke slides intothe seat across from me at Arcana & Bloom. His gaze pinballs around the place as Scarlett sets a cup of tea in front of him.
He frowns. “I didn’t order anything.”
“It’s on the house.”
She eyes the fed in his black suit and tie and mouths,Do you want me to stay?
I shake my head, and she nods and walks away.
He takes a sip, his brow cocked high. “What’s this?”
“It’s magic.”
Tristan huffs an amused breath. “You know, for a moment there I thought you’d ghosted me.”
He motions to the hydrangeas cascading from the ceiling. “This is the world you belong in. Flowers. Beauty. Safe, cozy cafés. A life with Elias Kent will never end well. Men like him don’t get happy endings.”
A thousand pinpricks hit my chest. Visions of him lying in a pool of his own blood at the hands of his enemies curdle my veins. I grip the cup in front of me, trying not to let my nerves show.
After seeing Elias’s secret room and realizing his scrupulous plotting, panic seized me.
What kind of mind scripts a stabbing, executes it without a flicker of guilt, and turns my entire life into a puppet show with him pulling every string? “Dark” doesn’t begin to cover it. This is deranged.
A smart person would run. A sane one wouldn’t crave this kind of attention.
But as I sit here in front of the FBI agent—the person on the right side of the law—I can’t help feeling how wrong this is.
