Page 10 of Made for Vengeance (Dark Dynasties #3)

GRACE

T he words on my laptop screen blurred together, legal precedents and constitutional amendments swimming before my eyes like alphabet soup. I blinked hard, forcing myself to focus.

“Cooper v. Aaron reaffirmed the Supreme Court’s role as the final arbiter of constitutional interpretation, emphasizing that its decisions are binding on...”

Binding on what? I'd read the same sentence four times and still couldn't remember how it ended.

I sighed, pushing away from my desk and rubbing my eyes.

The law library was quiet except for the occasional rustle of pages and soft tapping of keyboards.

Everyone around me was deep in concentration, highlighting texts and typing notes with the focused intensity of people whose futures depended on memorizing the minutiae of two-hundred-year-old court cases.

Which mine did too. Or it should have.

Instead, my mind kept drifting to dark eyes and a voice like aged whiskey. To the way he'd said my name— Grace —like he'd been tasting it on his tongue. To the electric awareness that had hummed beneath my skin when he looked at me.

Someone who sees you.

Three days had passed since the night at Tenebris, and I still couldn't shake him from my thoughts.

It was ridiculous. Pathetic, even. He was just a man—probably some rich playboy who got off on intimidating women in clubs.

The fact that he knew my name meant nothing.

The O'Sullivan family was well-known in Boston; it wouldn't take much digging to identify me.

I should have been concerned. Should have told my father or brothers that a stranger had approached me, known my name. Should have at least mentioned it to Connor.

But I hadn't. I'd kept the encounter to myself, replaying it in my mind like a favorite scene from a movie, analyzing every word, every look, every sensation.

"Earth to Grace. Come in, Grace."

I startled, looking up to find Lila standing over me, an amused expression on her face.

"Sorry," I said, straightening in my chair. "Just lost in thought."

"Must be some thoughts." She dropped into the chair across from me, earning a glare from a nearby student. "You've been staring at the same page for ten minutes. I've been watching you."

I closed my laptop, knowing I wasn't going to get any more work done. "Just tired. I didn't sleep well last night."

That, at least, was true. I'd lain awake until 3 AM, staring at my ceiling, my mind racing with thoughts of a man whose name I didn't even know.

"Hmm." Lila studied me, her head tilted. "This wouldn't have anything to do with the mysterious stranger you were talking to at Tenebris, would it?"

Heat crept up my neck. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Please. I may have been drunk, but I wasn't blind. Tall, dark, and dangerous-looking? Standing way too close to you in the courtyard?" She leaned forward, lowering her voice. "Spill."

"There's nothing to spill. He was just some guy getting some air, same as me."

"Some guy who made you blush like a Victorian maiden." Lila's grin was knowing. "Did you at least get his number?"

"No," I admitted, feeling oddly disappointed by the fact. "We barely spoke."

"But you wanted to."

I didn't answer, which was answer enough.

Lila's expression softened. "Look, I'm all for a good mystery man fantasy, but just... be careful, okay? That club attracts a certain type."

"What type is that?"

"People who like power. People who like control." She shrugged, suddenly serious. "Not always the healthiest combination."

Coming from Lila, who'd dated her share of questionable men, the warning carried weight. But instead of making me more cautious, it only intensified my fascination. Power and control were currencies I understood all too well, growing up in the O'Sullivan household.

"I'm not planning to see him again," I said, the lie tasting bitter on my tongue. "It was just a weird moment in a weird night."

Lila didn't look convinced, but she let it drop. "Well, if you change your mind about seeing him, Tenebris is open again next full moon. Just saying."

She left soon after, off to a study group I suspected was more social than academic. I tried to return to my work, opening my laptop and staring at my half-written notes, but it was useless. My mind refused to focus on anything but him.

I packed up my things and headed out, the crisp October air a welcome relief after the stuffy library.

Campus was alive with activity—students hurrying to classes, lounging on the quad, living their normal, uncomplicated lives.

I envied them their simplicity, their freedom from the weight of family legacies and mysterious strangers who knew their names.

My apartment was quiet when I returned, the late afternoon sun casting long shadows across the hardwood floors. I dropped my bag by the door and went straight to the piano, not bothering to turn on the lights.

I played without thinking. Satie’s Gnossienne No. 1, soft and strange, echoing the kind of unrest that didn’t need words.

As I played, I let my mind wander back to Tenebris, to the moment I'd first felt his eyes on me. The strange, electric awareness that had prickled along my skin. The certainty that, in a room full of people, he was watching only me.

It should have frightened me. Should have sent me running in the opposite direction.

Instead, it had awakened something in me—a hunger, a curiosity, a reckless desire to lean into the danger rather than away from it.

What was wrong with me?

I'd spent my entire life carefully constructing boundaries between myself and my family's world. Creating distance from the violence, the power plays, the moral compromises. Building a life based on law and order, on rules and reason.

And yet here I was, obsessing over a man who radiated danger, who had appeared from the shadows like something out of a gothic novel, who had known my name without being told.

The music shifted beneath my fingers, growing more intense, more urgent. My thoughts raced alongside it, analyzing, questioning, circling back to the same unanswerable questions.

Who was he? How did he know me? What did he want?

And most troubling of all: why couldn't I stop thinking about him?

I played until my fingers ached and the room grew dark around me, until the music had drained some of the restless energy from my body. Then I closed the piano lid and sat in the silence, listening to the faint sounds of the city outside my window.

My phone buzzed on the coffee table—a text from Connor.

Dad asking if you're coming to the Giordano dinner Thursday. What should I tell him?

I stared at the message, reality intruding on my thoughts like a bucket of cold water. The Giordano dinner. My father's attempt to forge an alliance through me. The real world with its real dangers and real consequences.

Tell him I'll be there, I typed, then deleted it.

Tell him I have class, I tried instead, then deleted that too.

Finally, I settled on: I'll call him myself.

Connor's response was immediate: Good luck with that.

I set the phone down without replying. I would deal with my father tomorrow. Tonight, I needed to get my head straight, to shake off this strange obsession and focus on what mattered—my studies, my future, my carefully constructed independence.

I made myself dinner—pasta with jarred sauce, the height of my culinary skills—and forced myself to eat it at the table instead of standing over the sink like I usually did when alone. I opened a textbook while I ate, determined to be productive, to be normal.

But the words swam before my eyes, meaningless symbols on a page. All I could see was his face in the moonlight, all I could hear was his voice saying my name.

Someone who sees you.

What did that even mean? Everyone saw me. I wasn't invisible. But the way he'd said it—like he was seeing past the surface, past the carefully constructed facade I presented to the world, straight through to something I kept hidden even from myself.

It was unsettling. Invasive.

Thrilling.

I closed the textbook with a snap and carried my half-eaten dinner to the sink. This was ridiculous. I was obsessing over a few cryptic words from a stranger in a club. A stranger who, for all I knew, could be dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with dark eyes and knowing smiles.

I needed to get a grip. To remember who I was and what I wanted.

I was Grace O'Sullivan. I was going to be a lawyer. I was going to build a life separate from my family's legacy. I was going to be normal, respectable, safe.

I wasn't going to throw all that away because of some ridiculous attraction to a man I'd met once and would probably never see again.

With renewed determination, I washed my dishes, cleaned the kitchen, and set up my study materials on the dining table. I would focus. I would be productive. I would stop thinking about him.

Three hours later, I gave up.

I'd read the same paragraph twelve times. I'd written exactly two sentences of my paper. I'd checked my phone more times than I could count, though I wasn't sure what I was expecting to see.

It was nearly midnight, and I was wide awake, my mind racing, my body humming with a restless energy I couldn't dispel.

With a sigh of defeat, I changed into my pajamas—an oversized Harvard t-shirt and cotton shorts—and climbed into bed. I turned off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness, and stared at the ceiling.

The city lights filtered through my curtains, casting patterns of light and shadow across the walls. From somewhere in the distance came the wail of a siren, the sound rising and falling like a cry in the night.

I closed my eyes, willing sleep to come, but all I could see was his face. All I could hear was his voice. All I could feel was the weight of his gaze on my skin, heavy and hot like a physical touch.

Someone who sees you.

What would it be like to be truly seen by someone like him? To be known, not as an O'Sullivan, not as a law student, not as any of the labels I wore like armor, but as myself—with all my contradictions, my desires, my secrets?

The thought sent a shiver through me that had nothing to do with the cool night air.

I rolled onto my side, punching my pillow into a more comfortable shape. This was insanity. I was lying awake at midnight, fantasizing about a man whose name I didn't even know, whose intentions were unclear at best and threatening at worst.

A man who had known my name without being told.

That fact kept circling back, a red flag I couldn't ignore no matter how much I tried to rationalize it away. He had known who I was. Had sought me out specifically.

Why?

The possibilities were troubling. He could be connected to my father's enemies. Could be using me to get to the O'Sullivan family. Could be planning God knows what.

Or he could just be a man who had seen me and wanted to know me. A man who had looked at me and seen something worth pursuing.

The rational part of my brain knew which scenario was more likely. The part of me that had been raised in a family where paranoia was a survival skill, where trust was a luxury we couldn't afford.

But another part of me—a part I rarely acknowledged, rarely allowed to surface—wanted to believe in the second possibility. Wanted to believe that his interest was personal, not political. That the connection I'd felt wasn't one-sided or imagined.

I turned again, restless and frustrated with my own circular thoughts. This was getting me nowhere. He was just a man. Just a moment. Just a strange encounter that would fade from memory with time.

Except it wasn't fading. If anything, the memory was growing stronger, more vivid, more insistent with each passing day.

I wanted to see him again.

The admission, even to myself, felt like surrender. Like stepping off a cliff without knowing what waited below.

I wanted to see him again. Wanted to hear him say my name in that voice that seemed to touch places inside me no one had ever reached. Wanted to feel that electric awareness, that sense of being truly seen.

It was reckless. Potentially dangerous. Definitely stupid.

And yet, as I finally drifted toward sleep, my last conscious thought was a question that had no rational answer:

If I went back to Tenebris, would he be there waiting for me?

And more troubling still: Would I want him to be?

The answer, whispered in the darkness of my own mind as sleep claimed me, was a simple, damning yes .