Page 165 of Vow to Claim You

Aric

Iarrive at Asgard, and when I enter the meeting room, everyone is already seated. Nikos at the head, Hyun-seok to his right, Alexei with those winter eyes that have watched me differently ever since a warehouse on the docks. Camila in dark red across Bobby Thorne, a drink already in his hand. Hariri. The others.

The talk stops when I enter, and the gazes follow me until I sit across Nikos.

“Aric.” He looks at me down the length of the table, and the room goes quiet for him. “I’m sorry. For your wife, and for—” His gaze flicks between mine. “The whole of this table grieves with you.”

I merely nod because I don’t trust myself to speak without cracking, and I won’t crack at this table.

“Then let’s not waste his time,” Nikos says, folding his hands. “This isn’t just Aric’s problem. Men walked into the Vold estate during a gathering attended by half the families at this table and put a bullet in a God’s wife.” His gaze sweeps across the room. “That wasn’t an attack on the Volds. It was an attack on every one of us.” A beat passes. “Whoever ordered it didn’t just declare war on Aric. They declared war on the table.” He looks at me. “So. What do we know?”

I tell them everything I’ve managed to establish so far. The money, laundered through three shells before it reached the shooters. The bought man on my own detail—already inside before the first shot was ever contracted, which means this was planned for longer than a single night. The chain of cut-outs, each one dead-ending in the next, all of it designed by someone who’s done this many times and intends never to be found.

“Careful work,” Hyun-seok states.

“Very.” I nod. “There’s just one detail I haven’t been able to attach to anything. A woman, supposedly someone’s mistress. Luca told his mother that if anything happened to him, she should remember the name.” I lean forward, linking my fingers. “Vivienne Laurent.”

I study every face as I say it, the way I was trained to. And most of it is nothing. Blank looks. Nikos’s slight frown. Camila turning the name over with her mouth. Alexei, unreadable as ever.

But then there’s Bobby Thorne, who sits up a fraction. “Vivienne Laurent?”

Every head turns.

“You know the name?” Nikos asks.

“I know a Vivienne Laurent,” Bobby says as though pleased to matter for once. “Whether she’s your Vivienne, who knows.”

Every nerve ending in me goes very still and very cold, my eyes locked on Thorne. “You know her.”

“Knew her.” He shrugs, swirling his drink. “Vivienne. She was one of my father’s women. Toward the end.” Another careless shrug, like he’s reaching back into a box of things he never cared about. “Real elegant, older, kept to herself. He loved her past all sense, and my father wasn’t the type.” He takes a sip of his whiskey. “Then he died, and she was just… gone. Never saw her again. Wasn’t looking, honestly.”

I keep my face straight, but a hundred different scenarios run through my mind.

Because Bobby’s father, Barry Thorne, was the man who proposed the alliance. I saw a report from the Gods’ meeting my father attended instead of me. We needed the route, and Thorne made the case. Barry Thorne put Ayanna in my house. And now Barry Thorne’s mysterious woman, the one his own son says he loved past all sense, is a name that Luca told his mother to remember should anything happen to him.

That is not a coincidence I know how to make peace with, and it opens a door I don’t like the shape of. The Thornes. Bobby, who put his hand on my wife’s arm at Chiara’s initiation and had to be reminded, with my fist, that she isn’t his to touch. The Thornes, who suggested the marriage.

But the pieces fit too easily, and things that fit too easily are usually built to.

Because would Bobby Thorne—if the Thornes are neck-deep in this—be stupid enough to admit he personally knows the one name tying it all together? He’s a fool, but even fools know when to lie. Naming her could be the play. Get ahead of it. Look cooperative. Point every eye in the room exactly where he wants it looking. Confess the small thing loudly enough that no one goes digging for the large one.

Or he’s precisely the vain idiot he appears to be, and he genuinely doesn’t understand what he’s just admitted.

I don’t know which it is yet. That’s the problem with Bobby. He’s stupid enough to be innocent and stupid enough to be guilty, and the two look identical from across the table.

“Where is she now?” Nikos asks.

“No idea.” Bobby shakes his head. “Told you. She vanished when the old man died. Wasn’t my problem.”

“You never asked?” Camila shoots Bobby a spiteful glance. “A woman your father loved ‘past all sense,’ who disappeared the moment he was in the ground, and you never once wondered where she went?”

“I had an inheritance to enjoy, Camila. I didn’t have time to chase down Dad’s leftovers.” He grins at her, and she only stares back.

“You had a Council seat to grow into,” Alexei growls, and Bobby’s smile thins.

“A photograph, then.” Camila leans forward. “Anything. A woman like that leaves a trace somewhere, even a careful one. There’ll be an image, in your father’s things if nowhere else.”

Bobby lifts his glass in a lazy half toast. “I’ll dig around. See what’s in the old files. If there’s a picture of Vivienne Laurent anywhere, I’ll get it to you.” He looks in my direction, neck craning, and this goddamn grin he’s wearing on his face broadens. “Anything for the grieving.”