Page 56 of Arrow

“Frank!” I shouted, banging on the window, but he didn’t turn to look at me.

The SUV started pulling away.

“Wait!” I screamed, my palm slapping against the tinted window as Frank’s figure grew smaller in the distance. “No! Please! Wait!” I gasped, shoving open the door and almost falling on my face as I ran back toward Frank.

He turned just as I wrapped my arms around him in a tight hug. He caught me, arms wrapping tight around my trembling frame as if trying to hold me together through sheer force. Frank was more of a father to me than Giovanni Virelli ever was.

“My father will kill you for not defending him.”

Frank stiffened for a millisecond, then hugged me back, a brief, rib-cracking squeeze that said all the things no Virelli ever dared.

“I’ve lived through worse men than your father, Principessa.”⁠* His hand hesitated at my neck, as if he wanted to tell me something vital and couldn’t. He kissed my hair, then pushed me off, not unkind, just breaking the moment before it could undo us both. “Go.”

“I don’t want to leave you.” Tears filled my eyes.

Arrow stepped out of the SUV, a thin line of confusion breaking his mask as he watched me clinging to Frank, as if this might be the last time. Because I knew it was.

Frank caught Arrow’s stare over my head and nodded, chin up, every inch the man who’d once told a bedtime story about wolves and lambs, then snapped a man’s neck before breakfast.

He pried me off with careful hands, wiping my cheeks with his thumb, the callus rasping against my cheekbone.

“You’re just like your mother,” he said. “Don’t let anyone make you forget that.”

“Promise you’ll be there if I call.” I tried to hold his gaze, make it a pact, but even I could see the impossibility of it.

“If you call, I’ll come,” Frank said, looking past me to Arrow, watching from the curb.

I wanted to memorize every edge of his face, the way his knuckles flexed when he fought the urge to protect me, the crooked set of his nose. I tried to burn the image into the softest part of my mind, safe from all the monsters.

Arrow waited, impassive, at the open car door. When I turned, his eyes moved between Frank and me, cataloging the devotion between us. I wondered what he saw—a threat, or just another ghost to cut out of me later.

“Let’s go, Harlowe,” he said.

His voice was smooth—the kind of quiet command he used when he expected to be obeyed without question.

I followed because I had no other choice.

Frank’s eyes burned into my back as Arrow ushered me into the car. I caught a final glimpse of him before the door shut with a final, punctuating thud.

Arrow tapped a slow rhythm on his thigh. I expected him to scold me for the delay, but he only watched, eyes half-lidded, waiting for me to buckle up. When I did, he signaled the driver with a silent bird-hand gesture, and we pulled onto the street. Frank stood on the sidewalk, watching us fade into the dark.

* Princess

15

FIFTEEN

HARLOWE

The ride was silent. City lights flickered past in a wet mosaic, the windows sealed tight against the world’s stink. Arrow sprawled comfortably across the leather, legs wide, head tilted—a wolf at rest.

What amazed me was the lack of gloating. If he saw tonight’s coup as a victory, he wasn’t celebrating it.

His hands rested loose at his knees, eyes fixed on the road ahead before I could so much as breathe out the word “fuck.”

I pressed myself against the door, rolling my shoulders to find the point where the cold would numb my shoulder blade. His attention lasered back to me, but he said nothing.

He didn’t have to.