Page 43 of Bad Blood

Stepping back onto the elevator, all traces of regret fade away as it ascends one final floor. As the doors part, I button my suit jacket and take a step into my onyx lair—five thousand square feet of banished sunlight and weighted tension—only to come face to face with a set of wringing hands and a pinched face.

I can feel my eyebrows arching. My housekeeper isn’t easily rattled. It’s one of the reasons I keep her around. Not only is she efficient, but she also knows how to keep her mouth shut.

“Svetlana.”

“Sir, yourguest…”

For some reason, I bristle at her tone. “She has a name.”

She flinches, but I offer no apology or explanation. I don’t need my housekeeper and my betrothed to be best friends, but I’d prefer to keep the bloodshed to a minimum.

“Of course,” she says, dialing back the attitude. “Miss Santiago refuses to eat. Francois has prepared her three meals, and she… Well, sir, she vehemently rejected them.”

“Howvehemently?”

“She threw them across the room, sir,” she answers, indignation flaring in her eyes.

Not a crisis in my opinion, but Svetlana takes offense to waste. And justifiably so. She’s a Russian mail order bride, left behind by Legado’s previous owner as if she were a broken slot machine. Svetlana has known hunger few will ever suffer.

To refuse food is to sin.

“Has my package been delivered?”

She nods, motioning behind her where a long, rectangular box rests on a black lacquer and glass coffee table.

RJ may not agree with my tactics, but he has one hell of a follow through.

“Key,” I say, extending my palm. Svetlana digs a small keyring out of her apron and places it in my hand without question.

“Spasibo,” I thank her in Russian while crossing the foyer into the main living room. A dark laugh rumbles in my chest as I tuck the box under my arm, spinning the keyring around my index finger as I head toward the spiral staircase that sits in the dead center of the room.

Two floors, two hallways, and one quick detour later, I unlock the door and let myself into the room where I find Thalia sitting on the floor with her back against the opposite wall, hugging her knees to her chest.

She drops her legs as soon as she sees me.

“Feliz noche de bodas,muñeca.”

She scowls, but the dark circles under her eyes betray her. “You’re in a good mood. Did you kick a few puppies on your way up here?”

“I’ll chalk the rudeness up to pre-wedding jitters.” Stepping further into the room, I clench my teeth as the heel of my shoe sinks into something soft and sticky. Glancing down, I exhale in annoyance. “Crème Brûlée is a French classic, not a congealed weapon.”

“I believe the word you’re looking for isconcealed,” she grits out.

“Not when it’s defiling my shoe.”

That brief spark of fire flickers and dies when she sees the box I’m carrying. “I don’t want anything from you.”

She turns her head away sharply, her long, dark hair tangling around her shoulders. Her body language is hellfire and brimstone, but her profile is a raw canvas of water-colored worry. The corners of her mouth curve down, making her seem less like the tool of the devil as much as his pawn.

ThisThalia is the one I heard on Bardi’s voicemail.

ThisThalia is fragile—a broken doll hidden beneath a layer of thinning steel.

ThisThalia ignites that foreign warmth in my chest again. The one I don’t understand and don’t care to dissect.

ThisThalia strikes a chord deep within a shadowy corner of my mind. One with a solitary hanging light.

Get a grip, Santi. This is what she wants. One chink is all she needs…