Page 8 of Arrow

He lingered long enough to make me sweat, straightened, and went to his seat. His posture was so rigid that it dared anyone to question who owned what. The table stumbled back into conversation. No one looked at me. No one looked at Arrow, either, except Frank. He flashed me a look—half pride, half warning—and sipped his gin. I knew what it meant.

“That’s the last time you’ll outmaneuver him in the open. Next time, he’ll drag you into the dark and deal with you there.”

The rest of the evening pirouetted around us, the table pivoting any time we moved or glanced up, as if we were gravitational—their next war, merger, or contract growing like a tumor behind our smiles. He didn’t touch me again, but he didn’t need to; everyone already saw whose name was written on my neck.

Faces came and went, toasting our “happiness” with dead-eyed cheer. Every time I finished a drink, another appeared at my elbow. I wondered if Arrow was keeping track, measuring my limits the way hunters watched deer stagger and graze before the cull.

I knew he was watching, and I made a show of drinking past my capacity, daring him to see how far I’d go before I ruined everything.

Afterwards, Frank saw me to the car. I expected Arrow to claim me and haul me away as his prize, but he didn’t. Instead, he lingered inside, hands tucked in his suit pockets, mouth twisted in a polite smile while he spoke in undertones to my father. I couldn’t parse the words, but I recognized the cold efficiency of a man arranging a business deal. The laughter punctuated the conversation, which was mean and edged—a joke where the punchline was always blood.

Frank loaded me into the back seat and slammed the door with a little more force than necessary. The car smelled like new leather and cigarettes. He got behind the wheel, checked the mirrors, and checked them again. I slouched into the upholstery and watched raindrops chase each other across the tinted glass, little wars and peace treaties in microcosm.

We didn’t speak. Not until he pulled into the driveway. Then he looked back at me, eyes shadowed and careful.

“You want to run?” he asked in a voice I almost didn’t recognize.

I let the silence balloon before puncturing it. “What would you do if I said yes?”

He rolled a fat thumb against the steering wheel. “Wouldn’t do you any good, Principessa.⁠* They’d catch you in a day.”

“Would you tell him where I went?”

I didn’t mean my father.

Frank considered for a long time, and in that time, I saw the man who let my brother sneak out at night, who delivered coded warnings in the form of children’s stories.

“I would,” he said. “And then I’d follow and make sure he didn’t kill you.”

I laughed, but it came out raw. “What makes you so sure he wouldn’t?”

“Not everyone is your father.”

Maybe I believed him. Maybe I didn’t. Either way, I brushed my hair out of my face and shouldered open my door.

I didn’t sleep that night. I ran a hot bath, watched my skin turn pink, and reviewed every brush of Arrow’s jaw and syllable he’d spoken—how he’d made a dog collar sound like a wedding ring. I imagined him in my room, how he would look uncaged, with his suit peeled off and his true self revealed, not that it mattered. I already knew the shape of people like Arrow. At the edges, there was always violence, and underneath, only emptiness.

Taking the Cartier collar off, I spun it between my hands.

Obsidian reflected nothing. Not fire, not skin, not the tremors in my pulse. I tried smashing it against the marble, but it was built for forever, or at least long enough to choke someone properly. I thought about swallowing it whole.

Maybe then, the thing that owned me would kill me from the inside. More likely, it would sit there undigested, as a silent reminder.

The wedding was set for the end of October. The invitations were black and silver, embossed with a glittering Romanov crest.

I pretended not to notice the snickering, the glances over champagne at every social event in Manhattan. “Virelli’s daughter’s getting put to stud like a prize filly,” someone said at a party, and I only smiled, licked salt off the rim of a Gold Rush, and watched the girl who’d said it shoot me an anxious glance before disappearing into the powder room.

They were scared of me, but even more scared of Arrow.

The world had learned to be scared of men long before it bothered to be scared of monsters.

Meanwhile, Arrow kept his distance, which made it worse.

I craved the confrontation. I needed to sharpen myself against him.

He never called, though. Never texted. Didn’t even stalk my socials, which I monitored obsessively under burner profiles, scrolling for traces of him and finding none. A part of me respected the absence. Another part wanted to hunt him down and shove the Cartier collar to his mouth until he choked.

My father hired a wedding planner to “minimize drama.” She was an artfully Botoxed wasp whom nothing could ruffle, not even the ongoing process of designing my wedding dress out of vengeance and Italian duchess satin. Her name was Mrs. Montalto, and each time I rebelled, she produced a new threat.