Then I read the name at the top, the person who hires in that department.
“Fuck.”
I call Vittoria.
“Get your ass in my office now,” I tell her.
She, of course, takes her sweet time, and when she opens my door, she looks perfect as usual. A femme fatale with redhair that cascades over one shoulder and a dress in black that’s cut in a deep V at her chest. The cold hunter in her eyes, the vicious turn to her mouth, the fact she’s a predator and a walking weapon and perhaps cares only for me and a few others.
I lean back in my desk chair.
“Sit, Vittoria.”
She doesn’t.
I don’t move. “I said sit.”
With a slight, fleeting frown she finally does. “Is this about your rumble with Santiago at the engagement party? Or maybe your tumble with Ms. Montague after? I’ll take the details of the former rather than the latter.”
“No,” I say, aware she’s trying to deflect what I want to talk to her about. “This isn’t about last night.”
“Then what is it, Lucian?” She studies her pointed red-painted nails. “I’m busy.”
I look at her closely. “I want to know why Adriadne is on the list of interviewing and hiring some employees. It isn’t her job.”
She pauses briefly, so briefly that another person may have missed it. But to me, it speaks volumes.
“Maybe I promoted her,” she says.
Adriadne is the only human Vittoria ever changed, and she has been working as her personal assistant ever since, meant to do the mundane things like water the plants when needed or alphabetize paperwork.
“What, Lucian?”
The shortness of her tone tells me everything I want to know.
“Why did she at first reject and then finally approve an internship for Kayla Evans? And why is that the end of her paper trail?”
She stares at me, this time with a serving of loathing.
“I’ll call Adriadne up here and ask her myself?—”
“Dead,” Vittoria snaps, crossing her arms. “That’s because Kayla is dead.”
I close my eyes for a moment. “Fuck, Vittoria. Are you sure?”
“Of course I am sure. She’s dead.”
“How?” I clench my jaw.
She just smiles. “Because I ate her.”
Chapter
Nine
Elliot
I’m furious.
