Page 143 of Dance of Defiance

I jolt, shaken by the sheer violence and fury humming off his body as he whirls on me. His teeth are bared and his eyesblackas they stab into me.

“You,” he seethes.

I frown. “Excuse me?”

“Mother. Fucker,” he snarls.

I stare at him. “Um, I just did you a huge fucking favor. You didn’t want to marry her, she didn’t want to marry you. I got that fucking ball rolling. I settled it!”

“Ifucking settled it!” he seethes. “And you didn’t get a goddamn ball rolling! You threw a fucking hand grenade into my entirelife!!”

My brow furrows. “Okay, chill?—”

“Are you fucking serious?!”

“Roman,relax. This is a fucking win,” I snap. “Yes, she wantedway morethan I thought. That’s on me. I’ll talk to my brother?—”

“I don’t give a fuck about the money!” he roars, jamming a finger into my chest. “You think I give a fuck about eight fucking mil?”

“I think most people would give ahugefuck about eight?—!”

“THIS IS MYLIFE, MOTHERFUCKER!!” he screams in my face, sending a cold ripple down my spine.

“EXACTLY!” I roar back. “That's what I’ve been trying to get through your thick head! It’s your life! Don’t marry girls you don’t want to! Stop pretending you’re something that we both fucking know you’re not!Life is too short for that!”

He shoves me away, his eyes bleeding black smoke, his face livid.

“This is done.”

It feels like glass cutting into my chest.

“Roman—”

“We’re fuckingdone, motherfucker,” he growls, yanking the door open behind him. “This bullshit is over.”

The door slams shut behind him, leaving me with a gaping void in my chest and a ringing in my ears that won’t go away.

25

ROMAN

Soft,choked moans fill the subterranean cathedral space. Torches and candles send flickers cavorting across the walls, and a sense of dark, violent excitement hangs in the air, like a drop of blood in the ocean calling the sharks.

The twin scents of cigarette smoke and alcohol tease the air. Naked or nearly-naked bodies writhe and dance together in the shadow of a looming dais, their faces masked.

Welcome to the Black Court.

It started at Knightsblood, the ultra-exclusive private college tucked into the wooded, rocky shores of southern Connecticut, just outside NYC. WASPy, old-money families send their kids to Harvard or Yale. Connected, new-money families sendtheirkids to Northwestern and Stanford.

…Mafia families send their heirs to Knightsblood, where those sons and daughters ofpakhans, dons andoyabunslearn to become kings and queens of the criminal underworld.

Bane, Laz, and I already knew each other. But it was there that we met Carmine and Nico Barone, and Nero De Luca.

And it was there that five of us started all this one cold, dark night, on a cliff high above the crashing waves of the Atlantic.

We decided to call it the Black Court.

There are few “rules” in the criminal underworld. We exist in a tangle of broken laws. But one thing that everyone holds sacred is a blood marker—a contract signed inliteralblood between two parties, which cannot, under any circumstances, be broken. They’re sacred oaths, and without them, it would all devolve into anarchy and chaos.