21. Twenty-One #3
Bastard. The word formed in my head, but my body wasn’t listening. His touch burned a line down my back, and I hated myself for the way my breathing shifted, shallow and deliberate.
This is what he does. This is a trap. He made possession feel like a choice. Made me complicit in my own collaring by making it feel less like restraint and more like certainty.
My skin responded before my brain could mount a defense, nerves lighting up at the weight of his hand.
I wanted to step away. Wanted to throw the glass in his face.
Instead, I stood there while he touched me like he already owned the air I was breathing, and the worst part—the part that kept me awake at night—was that some treacherous part of me wanted him to be right.
“Arrow!” a deep voice behind me boomed.
I turned to see two men approaching us, their faces beaming with big grins. Both had dark hair like Arrow, one with moss-green eyes, and the other with eyes the color of emeralds. Both were tall, muscular, and covered in tattoos that peeked up from their collars and from the hems of their cuffs.
The emerald-eyed one clapped Arrow across the shoulders with a violence that made several drinks nearby shudder in their glasses. “You finally domesticate her or just tie her to the bedpost?”
Arrow smiled. “Harlowe, this is Atlas King—one of my best friends, an associate, and a pain in my ass.”
Atlas gave me a once-over, eyebrows raised in open approval.
“Stunning. Like something you’d pull from the wreckage of a train, then mount to the wall.”
He squeezed my hand, the bones of my knuckles grating together, and for a second, I thought he meant to break them. He let go and winked, as if we both enjoyed the same private joke about suffering.
“Where’s Luna?”
“At home with her feet up,” he replied. “She said there’s no way in hell she was going to be able to fit her swollen feet into any respectable heels.”
“Atlas’s fiancée, Luna, is eight months pregnant,” Arrow clarified to me.
“Can’t say I blame her.” I smiled.
“Orion Drayke,” Arrow said, motioning to the other man.
He matched Atlas and Arrow in height. Every inch of him was braced, attentive, and coiled tight as a spring. He nodded at me, eyes bright with calculation, and I saw a sliver of sympathy there. I’d seen that look before, in the mirror. The look of someone counting down to their own reckoning.
“Nice to meet you, Harlowe. Of all the girls clinging to Arrow’s arm, none have been as pretty as you, and a Virelli at that,” he teased.
“Arrow seems to have a kink for the impossible,” I countered.
My voice came out reedy, but the effect landed solid. Both men barked out a laugh. Arrow grabbed a canapé from a passing server and devoured it in three bites, as if it personally offended him, which only made Atlas and Orion laugh louder.
Orion, more composed, offered me a flute of champagne. “You holding up?”
It was strange—the first note of genuine concern I’d heard all night.
“People keep asking me that,” I replied. “You send a girl through the wringer, and suddenly she’s everyone’s favorite conversation piece.”
Atlas set down his glass, appraising me again—taking in the bruises and the necklace. His expression turned speculative, amused. “I’ll give you even odds on Arrow surviving the honeymoon.”
Orion answered, his smile flickering out before it ever fully began. “I’d take that bet. But you might have to throw in a little hazard bonus.”
“Don’t worry,” Arrow murmured, drawing me closer. “If she kills me, you fuckers will be the first to know.”
Orion nodded and clinked his glass to mine. “To accidents that everyone saw coming.”
“And to the ones nobody survives,” Atlas added, raising his glass. “Which category does Arrow fall into, Harlowe?”
“Still deciding,” I said. “Ask me after the wedding.
Arrow’s grip on my waist tightened fractionally. “She’s optimistic. I like that about her.”
“You like that she hasn’t stabbed you yet,” Orion corrected, his eyes flicking between us.
“The night’s still young,” I said.
Atlas laughed. “I’m starting to understand why he picked you. Most girls would be crying by now. You’re just cataloging exits.”
“I learned from the best,” I replied, tilting my head toward my father across the room. “Never stay at a party where you’re the only hostage.”
Arrow leaned in. “You’re not a hostage.”
“Semantics,” I said, but I didn’t pull away.
Atlas exchanged a look with Orion—the kind that suggested they’d seen this exact dance a hundred times.
Orion lifted his glass again. “To semantics, then. And to whatever the hell this is.”
Watching them drink, I understood the architecture of power.
They buried their dead on Monday and hosted galas on Friday.
Resilience wasn’t about survival, it was about never, ever stopping.
Kill the body, sure. But their appetite?
That was immortal. Nobody in this city had figured out how to destroy that.
When Arrow laughed at something Orion said, I couldn’t help but stare. It was a real laugh—unguarded, head tilted back, the kind that eased the careful architecture of his face. For a second, the violence fell away. The weight. The constant calculation. He looked almost human. Almost safe.
It shocked me how beautiful he was like this, stripped down to something raw and uncontrolled. He was just a boy at the world’s weirdest arranged engagement, and I felt something shift in my chest that I immediately wanted to bury.
Then he glanced back at me.
Our eyes locked over the noise of the party, and the air between us went electric. The smile didn’t fade, but something changed in his expression—a predator recognizing its reflection.
Under the warmth, I felt the pulse of menace. A reminder that vulnerability in men like Arrow was just another tactic. Another way to disarm you before the knife went in.
I should have looked away, broken the moment, but I didn’t.
He held my gaze while the room continued around us. Conversations threading over laughter, glasses clinking, the orchestra swelling into a melody that sounded like a funeral march. The intensity of it made my skin prickled. My pulse stuttered.
When he winked and turned his attention to a judge who’d braved the lions’ den for a free meal, it felt like being released from a vise. Arrow’s hand moved from my waist as he engaged the man, leaving me suddenly cold despite the heat of the crowded room.
I stood there, my dress clinging to my skin, and felt the weight of at least a dozen eyes that had caught the exchange. The way Atlas now watched me with a new calculation. The way Orion’s jaw had tightened. The way my father, across the room, had gone very still.
Arrow had just shown them something. And worse, he’d shown me. That whatever was happening between us wasn't just strategy anymore.
It was hunger. His, and God help me, mine too.
At the edge of the group, I watched Arrow launch into some parable about ancient duels: “Whoever loses the right hand keeps the girl, but has to learn how to jerk off lefty for the rest of his life.”
The cold fusion of power arced between every man and woman in the room—Arrow talking about wild animals and bluffs, but the real machinery was on display in tailcoats and vintage Cartier, in perfume so thick it wrapped around each face until you couldn’t distinguish flesh from mask.
Invisible. That’s what I’d been at these events with my father, especially when Luca was alive. But tonight, every set of eyes tracked my movement. I let the weight settle into my shoulders until it became a new normal, a new gravity.
Girls, who’d once called me friend, slid past with hunger naked on their faces. Even my father’s associates had recalibrated. I was no longer arm candy, but a Trojan horse, rolling toward their gates in fuck-me heels and Romanov Red.
Arrow’s hand at my waist was the only anchor I had left.
Across the ballroom, a trio of old men held court under a stained-glass dome. Virelli—the parasite-cousins with a taste for small girls and larger enemy lists.
One craned his neck, spotted me, and murmured something to the second, who didn’t bother hiding his up-and-down slice of my silhouette. The second I saw them, I saw the world they belonged to, a world where I’d be a second wife by thirty-five, and dead by fifty.
“Where is the old bastard, Antoli, tonight?” Atlas asked, bringing my attention back to the conversation.
Arrow’s father.
I scanned the crowd and realized I hadn’t seen that psycho fucker anywhere. That prickled my nerves more than I cared to admit.
Arrow sipped his drink, unbothered. “Antoli picks his moments. He’ll come when there’s a reason.”
“So he’s coming,” I said quietly, for Arrow’s ear only.
“Eventually.” His eyes tracked the room with predatory patience. “He wouldn’t dare miss the show.”
* My beautiful viper
* Little viper
* Beautiful
* Ci ho preso gusto da te, padre (Italian)
* Little girl
* Beautiful