Marcello stormed out first, not bothering to look back. Rocco pushed away from the table, and the others followed. I waited for them to go, intending to be the last one through the door.
My brother fell into step with me, tension rippling off him in waves. “You’re being set up,” he warned in a low voice. “Volkov has gotten rich off us; there is no way he’d cut off his main source of income by partnering up withI Ceneratori.”
“Stay away from me, Gabriel. This is my mess to clean up.”
“Not if you drag us all down with you.” He shook his head. “You could have fucking warned me what you were planning the other night, Dante. You’re a real asshole, do you know that?”
“Yeah.” I dragged my hand through my hair as Rocco turned, wheels turning inside his lizard brain when he saw us together. “I know I am. Stay out of this.” The second Rocco disappeared into the crowd, I grabbed his arm. “Imean it, Gabriel. Stay away from me. Keeping your distance is safer until this is over.”
“After the shit you’ve pulled, I won’t have any problem staying away,brother.” He shoved me back a step, then vanished behind Rocco, the crowd craning their necks to get a better look.
Good.Gossip would spread that Gabriel and I were on the outs. A servant holding a tray passed by, and I was reaching for a glass when a familiar voice slithered in from behind me, horror trickling down my spine.
“Well, well, look who crawled out of the gutter and put on a tie.”
I took a bracing sip of the shit wine, smoothed over my expression, and turned to face the impending disaster that was Valeria Demente.
She leaned against the stone archway like she owned this castle, which, being Rocco’s daughter… she did. Unlike her stocky, brutish father, she took after her mother. Tall and willowy with skin like warm honey, her pale gold hair spilled over her shoulders, her gown painted onto her generous curves like molten metal.
Like her father, she was corrupt to the core, a complete stranger to the truth, and possibly the most dangerous female I’d ever known, except for my wife.
“You look simply delicious in that suit, Dante.” She pushed off the wall and crossed the space between us with no hesitation, no shame when she pressed her tits against my chest, no respect for the fact that I wasfucking married.
Or that her father was throwing this nightmarish fiasco to celebrate that marriage.
Her hand slid around my arm, fingers hooking into the crook of my elbow. Right where my wife’s arm had been, lessthan an hour ago, and I stopped myself from gagging. Or pushing her away.
Causing a scene right now wouldn’t get us any closer to our goal.
That’s what I told myself, nose flaring as the scent of her arousal hit me full in the face, revolting me on a visceral level.
“I heard the black sheep finally returned home,” she purred. “I had to see if the rumors were true.”
“Disappointed I survived?” I asked, trying to extricate myself, but she was like glue, body fused to mine like a burr I couldn’t scrape off.
Her greedy gaze flicked over my face, my shoulders, my chest. “Not yet. Let’s see how damaged you are. Or if you can still fuck like the beast I remember.”
In a rare moment of shell-shocked silence, that last part rang loudly, and the hum of conversation around us died off before picking up again, the gossip mongers going into overtime.
Fuck my life.
Valeria was everything I despised about vampires. Everything I hated about immortality.
Careless, cruel, and petty. Looking at her now… I could not believe I’d ever seen her as anything other than a noxious threat. But the old me had been too trusting, and I hadn’t met Emberline.
Now everything was different.
“Don’t you have someone else to annoy?” I snarled, stopping her fingers from walking up my chest. “Other lives to ruin? Countries to topple?”
“I’m good at multitasking.” She smiled sweetly, her free hand toying with my waistband. “Relax, Dante, I’m simply providing Rocco with his entertainment for the evening.Don’t disappoint him, not when we’re going to be such good friends again.”
“We were never friends, Valeria.” I finally trapped her wrist and yanked her roaming hand away from my body before she shoved it down my pants. “We were hate-fucking and barely speaking; that was it.”
“Well,”—she batted her overly mascaraed eyelashes at me—“I don’t know what happened to your voice, but I like it. That rasp gives me the chills and gets me wet at the same time.”
“Someone called the Overseer tried to cut my head off, my vocal cords grew back—eventually—but not the right way,” I told her matter-of-factly, disgust running through my veins like poison. “Which only meant he tried harder to kill me the next time.”
“That’s hot, actually,” she crooned, eyes glowing with interest. “What else did they do to you?”
