Chapter 1 - The Italian Silk and Cold Concrete
The dawn broke over Lake Michigan like a bruised knuckle, grey, purplish, and bitter cold. I didn't sleep after the sound of his tires grinding into the courtyard gravel; I just watched the ice bloom across the lower corner of my bedroom window. Four years away had softened my tolerance for Chicago winters, but it hadn't done a single damn thing to dull the instinct running beneath my ribs. When you grow up in this house, you don't wake up to an alarm; you wake up to the rhythm of doors locking and the distinct, muted murmur of bodyguards changing shifts in the ground-floor corridors.
I opened the antique mahogany wardrobe Brin had helped me stock before she left around two in the morning. Hanging in the center, nestled between sensible woolen slacks and muted turtlenecks, was a floor-length slip dress of emerald silk. It had a high slit climbing up the left thigh, completely sleeveless, cut on the bias so that it clung to every contour of my hips like a liquid shadow. It wasn't breakfast attire. It was a weapon meant for midnight galas in Lisbon, where men bowed their heads over your knuckle and asked polite questions about contemporary sculpture. Wearing it down to an eight o’clock family breakfast was an act of deliberate, theatrical warfare.
""If you're going to face your executioner,"" I whispered to the tall vanity mirror, smoothing the fabric down my waist, ""don't let him think you came to beg.""
My bare feet made no sound against the Persian runners lining the corridor. The mansion was waking up. Downstairs, the heavy scent of espresso and fried rosemary potatoes cut through the chill. As I stepped onto the upper landing, the murmur of deep, baritone voices rose from the breakfast dining room—not the formal banquet hall, but the private conservatory where my father took his meetings when business was too dirty for open sunshine.
My father was at the head of the dark walnut table, reading a ledger with his reading glasses perched low on his nose. Beside him, standing near the floor-to-ceiling glass that looked out onto the frozen garden, stood Ciro Veil.
He hadn't slept either. His tie was loosened by half an inch, the crisp collar of his black shirt slightly open, showing the sharp line of his collarbone. In the morning light, the faint silver threads woven through the dark hair at his temples looked like polished steel. He had a porcelain espresso cup cradled in one massive, scarred hand. Four years had only sharpened the angles of his cheekbones; he looked like a statue carved out of granite by a sculptor who despised mercy.
I took the final stair, my heels clicking sharply against the cold marble tiles.
The silence that followed was instant, absolute, and violent.
Two armed sentries standing near the arched entry stiffened immediately, their gazes dropping to the floor out of sheer survival instinct. My father slowly lowered his ledger, his eyebrows pinching together in a mixture of bewilderment and paternal irritation.
""Leora?"" my father muttered, adjusting his glasses. ""What on earth are you wearing? It is seven degrees outside.""
I ignored him, keeping my eyes fixed entirely on Ciro.
Ciro didn't speak. He slowly set the tiny porcelain cup onto the saucer with a click so sharp it sounded like a bone snapping. His dark, fathomless eyes dropped from my eyes, lingered on the bare swell of my throat, tracked down the green silk clinging to my ribs, dropped down to the slit where my bare leg showed with every step, and returned to my mouth. A slow, dark heat flickered deep inside his pupils, so fierce and dangerous that the breath snagged behind my teeth.
""You're home,"" Ciro said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that vibrated straight through the floorboards.
""I am,"" I said, lifting my chin, refusing to shiver despite the icy breeze coming off the French doors. ""Good morning, Ciro.""
He stepped away from the window, moving with that lethal, predatory grace that made men three times his size clear out of doorways. He walked directly toward me until the heat of his body seemed to radiate against my bare arms. He stopped less than six inches away. He smelled like tobacco, expensive cedar, and cold winter air.
He leaned down just enough so only I could hear the rumble in his chest. ""You are nineteen no longer, little girl. But if you walk past me in that dress again, thinking you can play with fires you don't know how to put out, you won't like the way I teach you manners.""
The challenge was in the air, electric and venomous. I felt the pulse pounding in my throat, hot and wild. I didn't back down. I didn't drop my eyes.
""Watch me,"" I whispered.
I lifted my chin, turned my shoulder, and took two deliberate steps right past him toward the sideboard.
I half-expected a shout, or perhaps a hand gripping my wrist to throw me out of the room for insolence. Instead, before I could reach the silver coffee urn, the air behind me shifted. Heavy, warm fabric dropped over my exposed shoulders. The weight of his bespoke Italian cashmere coat hit my collarbones, smelling utterly of him, trapping my body heat in an instant fortress of black wool.
May you like
Before I could turn around to protest, his large, warm hand clamped around the side of my hip, spinning me around until my spine hit the edge of the heavy mahogany sideboard. He leaned over me, trapping me between his arms, his face so close his warm breath brushed my eyelashes.
""You're not in Lisbon anymore, Leora,"" he murmured, his thumb pressing possessively against the silk over my hip bone. ""And out here, everyone obeys the house rules. Especially you.""
