14. Fourteen #3
Drifting through the boudoir like a memory, pulling open drawers, I glided my hands through a closet of dresses I’d never wear again.
I stopped at the crystal perfume bottles and scattered them in the sink, a shimmer of violet and glass, because I hated the way they smelled of my mother.
I left the debris for Frank, or the maids, or for the next girl to claim as her cell.
Arrow’s men were already torching cigarettes on the front portico, not bothering to hide the fact that the war was over and they’d won.
I didn’t think to pack the Cartier collar until my hand fell on it, forgotten on the velvet of my vanity, silver and black as the future. I hesitated, then threw it into my bag while the rest of my belongings were packed into duffel bags and taken downstairs.
Descending the staircase, suitcase in hand, I saw that Arrow hadn’t moved. He was posted at the base, both hands clasped lightly in front as if he hadn’t just threatened my father’s life for touching me. His shirt was untucked now, a wildness cracking through the armor.
My father, grotesquely still in his blood, glared from the foyer’s edge as Arrow met me at the bottom step and offered his arm.
I ignored the gesture, clutching my suitcase so tight the handle imprinted itself on my palm.
Arrow grinned. “We’ll work on your manners,” he murmured, more fondly than his hands suggested.
They bracketed my waist gently, then firmly steered me out the front door.
Frank, never far behind, carried my other duffels.
In the darkness beyond, the steady thrum of black SUV engines hummed a hymn to the inevitability of this future. Arrow didn’t look back, not once, and I understood then that he never would. Forward was the only direction for men like him.
He wedged me into the back seat, sliding in beside me, then rotated to face Frank.
“Your loyalty is expensive,” Arrow said coolly.
Frank set the duffel down, wiped his hands on his slacks, and looked from me to Arrow and back. “Promise me, you’ll treat her better than her blood did,” he said.
It wasn’t a question, but a death pact.
Arrow didn’t blink. “She is mine. I will do whatever I want with her, including keeping her alive.”
If there was mercy there, I couldn’t taste it. Frank nodded—a slow, reluctant exhale of faith, as if he’d just handed off a living weapon to a mad scientist and prayed the city would survive the results.
“Don’t kill her,” he said quietly, then shut the door.
“Frank!” I shouted, banging on the window, but he didn’t turn to look at me.
The SUV started pulling away.
“Wait!” I screamed, my palm slapping against the tinted window as Frank’s figure grew smaller in the distance. “No! Please! Wait!” I gasped, shoving open the door and almost falling on my face as I ran back toward Frank.
He turned just as I wrapped my arms around him in a tight hug. He caught me, arms wrapping tight around my trembling frame as if trying to hold me together through sheer force. Frank was more of a father to me than Giovanni Virelli ever was.
“My father will kill you for not defending him.”
Frank stiffened for a millisecond, then hugged me back, a brief, rib-cracking squeeze that said all the things no Virelli ever dared.
“I’ve lived through worse men than your father, Principessa.”* His hand hesitated at my neck, as if he wanted to tell me something vital and couldn’t. He kissed my hair, then pushed me off, not unkind, just breaking the moment before it could undo us both. “Go.”
“I don’t want to leave you.” Tears filled my eyes.
Arrow stepped out of the SUV, a thin line of confusion breaking his mask as he watched me clinging to Frank, as if this might be the last time. Because I knew it was.
Frank caught Arrow’s stare over my head and nodded, chin up, every inch the man who’d once told a bedtime story about wolves and lambs, then snapped a man’s neck before breakfast.
He pried me off with careful hands, wiping my cheeks with his thumb, the callus rasping against my cheekbone.
“You’re just like your mother,” he said. “Don’t let anyone make you forget that.”
“Promise you’ll be there if I call.” I tried to hold his gaze, make it a pact, but even I could see the impossibility of it.
“If you call, I’ll come,” Frank said, looking past me to Arrow, watching from the curb.
I wanted to memorize every edge of his face, the way his knuckles flexed when he fought the urge to protect me, the crooked set of his nose. I tried to burn the image into the softest part of my mind, safe from all the monsters.
Arrow waited, impassive, at the open car door. When I turned, his eyes moved between Frank and me, cataloging the devotion between us. I wondered what he saw—a threat, or just another ghost to cut out of me later.
“Let’s go, Harlowe,” he said.
His voice was smooth—the kind of quiet command he used when he expected to be obeyed without question.
I followed because I had no other choice.
Frank’s eyes burned into my back as Arrow ushered me into the car. I caught a final glimpse of him before the door shut with a final, punctuating thud.
Arrow tapped a slow rhythm on his thigh.
I expected him to scold me for the delay, but he only watched, eyes half-lidded, waiting for me to buckle up.
When I did, he signaled the driver with a silent bird-hand gesture, and we pulled onto the street.
Frank stood on the sidewalk, watching us fade into the dark.
* Princess