Page 55

Lyssa

I jerk awake, the thin hotel sheets twisted around my legs in a mockery of sensual disarray. The last of the daylight filters through the thin curtains on the windows, and I blink away the vestiges of sleep, my body still carrying the phantom traces of Scarlett’s intoxicating touch.

Slick skin, swollen lips…the hunger in those forest-pool eyes as she rolled on top of me…

My breath catches at the vivid recollection, a simmering ache low in my belly. I stretch lazily, calling out, “Scar?”

She’s not here.

It’s a little disturbing to me that she was able to slip out of here without me hearing her. Normally I’m a light sleeper...

Something about her really knocks me out. Literally.

I reach for my phone and as soon as I glimpse the screen, I sit up in bed. Silenced notifications have been flooding the screen while I’ve been asleep—missed calls, urgent messages. I scroll through the barrage of alerts from the crew. Words like “emergency” and “Mrs. Graves” and “gone” jump out at me, a cold knot forming in my gut.

And once again, I call out, “Scar?” I get out of bed, checking for her phone. She’s definitely gone—like I should be. Mrs. Graves is in trouble, and I’ve been fucking napping.

At the back of my mind, a suspicion builds. The water she gave me…

But Scarlett has no interest in Mrs. Graves, surely. Her only target so far—Grandmother’s target—has been me.

Still, where the hell is Mrs. G?

I pull on my clothes in a frenzy and race back to the Empire Grand, and head straight for Hadria’s suite. The guards at her door just wave me in, and that’s not a good sign. All eyes turn to me as I burst into the suite—Marco, Ricky, Aurora, a few other Syndicate seniors. And Johnny the Gentleman.

Johnny de Luca, Juno Bianchi’s consigliere and sometime-Chicago resident, is also present. That…can’t be good.

“Thank you for finding time in your schedule for us,” Hadria says coldly to me.

That really can’t be good.

“I—”

She holds up a hand. “We don’t have time.” She gives Johnny a nod, and says, in that deceptively mild tone that I know means trouble, “Show them.”

He casts video from a tablet to the TV mounted above the fireplace. Grainy security footage plays, and for a second I really think I’m going to be sick all over the luxe carpet of the Bianchi Family’s Empire Grand hotel.

Because there she is—Scarlett, that waterfall of dark chestnut hair unmistakable, even in the lower-quality video. And I know the woman with her as well as I know my own reflection.

It’s Mrs. Graves.

Scarlett is pulling her along, making her drop all her bags, pulling her hard along an alley until…

Until they go out of view.

Hadria rewinds to the one moment where Scarlett looks behind her, looks at the camera, and I feel like she’s looking straight at me.

That scheming little viper...

All the vulnerability she’s shown me, the glimpses of a shattered heart that made me ache to soothe her demons—it was all a ploy?

“But Lyssa…isn’t that your girlfriend Ruby?” Aurora’s soft, bewildered voice shatters the shocked silence.

I flinch like she’s slapped me, and I can’t look at Hadria, even though she’s staring at me. Scarlett got closer to me than anyone in decades, so close I dropped my guard like a naive recruit.

But for what? To steal away the person I consider a mother? It makes no sense…

All at once, the room erupts in a maelstrom of shouts and frantic accusations as the others process the footage. Marco and Ricky talk over each other, demanding answers I don’t have.