The line should sound playful. It almost does. But there’s an edge under it sharp enough to catch.
Kadin clears his throat, dropping a hand onto my thigh with an ease that feels suddenly much more possessive than affectionate. His fingers squeeze lightly. For one suspended second I stop thinking about the text because every nerve in meis too busy registering what that touch looks like from where Silas is standing.
The smirk disappears from Silas’s face.
It doesn’t happen dramatically. It just vanishes, leaving something harder in its place.
“Not in the slightest,” Kadin says, smiling back at him.
I don’t know whether he’s trying to stake a claim or simply refusing to look intimidated. Maybe he doesn’t even know himself. Maybe this is nothing more than testosterone and bad instincts colliding in a small room. But the moment stretches wrong enough that I can feel the tension settle over my skin like heat.
Silas’s gaze lingers on Kadin’s hand before lifting again.
“You heard the boy,” he says, putting just enough weight onboyto make the word sting. “I’m always in favor of a little fear.”
Crossing into my room, he drops into my rocking chair like he’s always belonged there. The motion should look lazy. Instead it looks controlled in that infuriating way only he can manage, all sharpened edges wrapped in ease. He leans back, spreading out without asking permission, the posture unsettling me in ways it wouldn’t have before. I know what his body looks like under his clothes. I know what it feels like when he stops pretending not to want. That knowledge turns the sight of him simply sitting there into something intimate enough to make my face warm.
The message on my phone flashes through my mind again.
Debt.
Men.
My mother.
Silas.
Kadin’s hand still on my thigh.
The room suddenly feels much too bright for all of this.
“Can we turn the lights off?” I ask.
The request comes out softer than I intend, almost frayed at the edges. “Please.”
Maria, thankfully, doesn’t ask questions. She hops up and goes to the switch while Cheyenne keeps arguing about movies, seemingly oblivious to the current running under the room.
The overhead light clicks off.
For one final second before the television glow takes over, my eyes find Silas’s across the dark.
He is the last thing I see clearly.
Watching the screen flicker to life, it throws pale light over all of us as the room rearranges itself into shadows.
CHAPTER 21
Octavia
The movie hums along in the dark, all low music and sudden bursts of gore, the kind of horror film that mistakes shock for depth but still manages to keep everyone staring at the screen. Every few minutes the room flashes red or white with some new slaughter, shadows jumping across the walls and over the faces around me. Cheyenne and Maria are tangled together on the floor, half sprawled against one another, reacting to almost nothing. A throat gets slit across the screen as Cheyenne reaches for more popcorn. Someone gets dragged across tile leaving a streak of blood behind them. Maria barely blinks.
I’m not watching the movie.
Not really.
Every time I try, my attention slides sideways and lands on Silas instead.
He’s still in the rocking chair, one leg stretched out, one bent, his body arranged in that loose way that I know now is never actually loose. The television light cuts across his face in flashes, sharpening the line of his jaw, then softening it, then throwing his eyes into darkness again. He looks like he’s paying attention to the movie. I know better. There’s something too still abouthim, too measured. The kind of stillness that means he’s aware of every person in the room and hates at least one of them.
