Chapter 10 Marcus
MARCUS
My father built The Velvet Trap as a bar with cheap drinks, cold hands, and local blood.
Then came the upgrades. Curated menus, unlisted poker nights, secret doors, and concealed passages.
No sign on the gate. People came because someone vouched for them.
Because someone trusted them not to ruin what was happening behind the wood and stone.
The Hudson Valley doesn’t usually welcome places like this, but it took a man of Theo Lockwood’s caliber to make it last. The mansion sits tucked behind a forested bend off a private drive, guarded by trees older than the town itself.
Outside, it keeps the old shingle style, with broad gables, weathered cedar, sweeping porches, and clustered windows.
Inside, it has evolved into something else.
At twenty-one, The Trap became mine. Quietly. Privately. And I grew it.
The ownership’s always been intentionally murky. Theo had a gift for vanishing on paper, and I’ve kept the legacy intact. There are no public records that the press can trace. The only thing anyone has ever dug up is a deed from the 1920s.
The Mariposa auction has come and gone, and the house now runs in its usual late-night mode.
Mirrors in moderation, with just enough surface for people to admire themselves, catch sight of an old lover, or decide they want a new one.
A few hours have passed since the doors opened, and the party is in full swing by the time I walk in.
I head straight to The Gallows and find Liam and Max already there.
Max starts ranting that I only appear once the heavy lifting is over, but our radios beep before he can finish.
It’s security.
Intruder alert. East cellar window.
I step away from the table, and Liam follows. He already knows my tells.
“Show me,” I command.
The CCTV rewinds.
A woman saunters into frame dressed in black lace, her sleek, long hair fanning across her face. The camera angle catches her in profile before she lowers herself to the cellar window.
Her movements are calm and calculated, hardly showing that she’s trespassing.
The timestamp shows 00:01:03.
One minute after midnight.
My irritation spikes. We have had intruders before, people spinning weak stories at the gate or testing the service door like amateurs, hoping to get lucky. But not this. Not a breach through a hidden cellar window.
Who trained her to move like that?
Who told her where the window was?
And why the hell does she look so calm in a room she had no right to enter?
Liam and Max flank me as the footage loops again.
My fingers flex. “The window’s already open.”
“Rewind more,” Max tells Liam.
The feed jumps back fifteen minutes before the woman arrived.
A shape in black moves along the perimeter. It’s too steady for a drunk and too deliberate for someone lost. Hard to identify.
We track the replay.
“Son of a bitch,” Max mutters. “He—or she—opened that window.”
“That prick knew exactly where it was,” Liam says. “Didn’t even check the frame. It’s a guy. I’m calling it.”
He’s right. The figure is roughly my height, with similar proportions. Definitely male.
“And he left it open for her,” I say. “So where did he go?”
Liam scrubs through the cellar camera, but the figure dissolves into the shadows and never comes back into view.
“He’s still down there?” Liam asks.
“Maybe.”
“What do you want to do?” Liam asks. It isn’t fear, just procedure. We don’t panic in my house.
“Nothing,” I say. “Not yet.”
Their eyes flick back to the monitor as the feed switches to live.
“She’s inside,” Max says. “That’s—”
“—why we watch,” I finish and watch her exchange something that resembles banter with Butterfly, our Glasskeeper tonight.
I add, “No alarms. Avoid cross-traffic. No one reacts to her presence. Tell all teams to hold position and observe. If she’s connected to the first figure we saw, she’ll lead us somewhere useful.”
“And if she isn’t?” Liam asks.
“Then she will be useful.”
I don’t believe in coincidences, and strangers don’t stroll into The Trap with perfect timing. Is she behind the primate tibia that landed on my desk?
One name surfaces. Revenge would fit, though she shouldn’t know about my childhood deformity.
I study the woman’s movements.
No.
I shake my head discreetly.
She isn’t my ex-partner in the Game, the one who mistook proximity inside it for permission she never had, but that doesn’t clear her. She still doesn’t know who Wolf is, but she knows where he is. And that’s all it would take.
Like the plant she’s named for, Belladonna is toxic. She has more spite than sense. People like that outsource revenge when their pride gets bruised, and I’ve seen what bitterness turns a person into. My biological mother taught me that early.
I built the Velvet Game using controlled illusions and contained fantasies to bypass real-world rejection. But Belladonna pushed past the boundaries and forced my hand. That kind of exit doesn’t sit well with unstable people.
If this is her attempt to get even, she miscalculated. Because I have countermeasures stacked higher than her imagination. Her mask won’t hold for long. If I know her, if she’s part of anyone’s vendetta, she’ll be in the interrogation room before the hour ends.
And if she isn’t?
She’ll end up there anyway.
The camera angle catches the alteration of her posture. Her hips tip as she settles an elbow on the counter, her spine lengthening, and she crosses one leg over the other with a fluidity that suggests she’s comfortable being watched.
Her dress only amplifies the issue. Black lace, fitted to her body, and strategic in ways that make my jaw tighten further. She says something to Butterfly. Her voice must be low, because he has to lean in to catch it.
Butterfly smiles.
Of course he does.
He always smiles at beautiful troublemakers.
She taps a fingernail against the stem of her glass, and her knee lifts a fraction higher as she recrosses her legs. The lace along the hem of her dress also lifts, revealing more of her thigh.
Rage detonates, clean, loud, and clear in my chest.
Not because she’s sexy as fuck.
But because she’s sexy here, inside my walls, after breaching through a window she shouldn’t have known about.
Powerful women have undone me before.
And this, whatever this twinge is, is already a liability if I let it breathe.
I smother it on instinct.
Then I zoom in.
She’s laughing at something Butterfly says, and her hand gestures in a small arc. Her body language is a paradox, relaxed yet calculating. She’s working the room without appearing to, which means she knows exactly what she’s doing.
And she has no idea I’m already watching every move.
“Doc,” Max says, “you’re staring.”
I ignore him and switch to another camera angle. The woman accepts another of Butterfly’s flawless cocktails. A Clover Club, if I am not mistaken. And she is delighted. Her confidence lifts, whether from the alcohol or from the belief that her plan is working. Whatever the reason, it’s an insult.
I turn away from the screen before my irritation turns destructive.
“Mask?” Liam asks.
I don’t answer. The decision’s already been made.
I open the wardrobe in the security alcove and grab the bone-colored wool gaberdine pants and the white cotton shirt with the collar that moves with me.
I dress by memory, each step familiar enough to feel like a muscle returning after atrophy.
The top buttons stay open. Marcus Lockwood wears a tie. Wolf never did.
Then comes the mask.
It’s a mother-of-pearl composite with a silvered sheen.
There are sculpted angles along the brow and cheekbones, and the mouth part is unobstructed.
I pause with it resting against my palm.
It has been months since I wore it for its intended purpose.
The Game gave the mask meaning and brought it to life.
Tonight, I’m pulling it out for something else entirely.
Liam whistles. “Going full Wolf tonight?”
Max gives me a grin that he thinks is subtle. “Planning to sleep with the enemy, Doc?”
“Shut the fuck up!” I fasten the mask, feeling the weight settle across my face.
Max lifts his hands. “Right, right. Purely a security measure. Definitely not because she’s—”
“This,” I cut in, stopping him, “is about The Trap. And about neither of you wanting your reputations tied to a breach that happened on your watch.”
That gets through to both of them.
I check the screen one more time.
The woman is still at the bar, slowly scanning the room as though she’s cataloguing the architecture, the exits, and the guests. And maybe, just maybe, the secrets.
“All right, Midnight,” I murmur. “Let’s see what you’re up to.”
I take the back route to the main hall, avoiding the central staircase. The back route has better sightlines and fewer people. The music thins as I approach the bar, replaced by the low pulse of conversation and the measured clink of glasses.
Midnight leans in to speak to Butterfly, one hand resting on the counter, one leg crossing over the other in a way that makes my breath hitch before I can correct it. The lace along her hemline fails to hold, revealing more of her thigh, and something unpleasant and electric spikes under my ribs.
She shouldn’t look familiar.
She shouldn’t feel familiar.
But some buried instinct refuses to stand down.
I step forward—
And freeze.
From the mirrored wall behind the bar, a figure materializes, myself reflected in the glass: white shirt, open collar, the silver wolf mask standing stark against the room’s darker tones. Midnight sees me.
Her attention slams into mine across the room with such force that it almost knocks me back a step.
No one else reacts. Not Butterfly. Not the guests.
Only her.