Chapter 17 Ophelia
OPHELIA
Ethan spins me on the dance floor. His face is stone, and he’s barely said two words to me all night.
The gala is being held in the grand ballroom of The Sinistral.
I remember the first few years the Foxes held the event.
Back then, it had been small enough that they hosted at their home.
But the guest list has grown exponentially, and the Sinistral ballroom is bursting at the seams to hold everyone now.
We haven’t spoken again about my breaking off our engagement, and his parents haven’t said anything to me about it.
I know he told them, though. I heard the shouting coming from Mr. Fox’s study, and Ethan’s been cooler to me since.
Mira also. Mr. Fox had had some meeting in town, so I haven’t seen him yet. I’m in no rush to run into him either.
When I suggested I stay at a hotel, though, Ethan outright disagreed, and I told myself I’m choosing my battles. After tonight is over, I’ll head back to Boston. I’ll pack up the apartment and figure out my next steps then.
I look over Ethan’s shoulder, scanning the masked faces.
I used to love the masks. At first, when I wasn’t sure why it was a masked ball at Christmastime, Ethan had told me how his mother had fallen in love with Carnival, an annual Venetian tradition, although it didn’t take place at Christmas.
She’d attended some exclusive gala at a palace and wanted to bring that same sense of opulence and European intrigue to Sinistral.
Ethan squeezes my waist, tugs me closer a little more tightly than I expect.
I wince, meeting his eyes through the mask covering half his face.
“At least try to pretend you want to be here. Can you do that?”
“I don’t want to be here, Ethan. I told you—"
“Are you looking for him?”
“No. Why would I be?”
“Right. You just gave yourself away, you know.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask as he shifts his grip to my wrist, turns on his heel and leads us toward the bar.
He snorts and doesn’t loosen his hold on me.
“Didn’t even ask who I was referring to.
” His words have a violence all their own.
It’s a side of Ethan I don’t know, not really, although I’ve seen glimpses.
“A whiskey and a gin and tonic. Make the whiskey a double,” he tells the bartender once we reach the bar.
“I don’t think you need a double,” I tell him when he finally lets me go, and I rub my wrist.
“Really? You’re not the one who just told Sullivan Fox the engagement is off. So yeah, don’t mind if I have a fucking triple.”
I bite my tongue. I’m sure it was no easy task telling his father.
He attempts to put on a smile for someone walking past. He takes his drink but leaves mine on the bar. I reach for it, sip. Maybe I should have asked for a double too.
He shifts his gaze to me, lets it drop to the heavy ruby choker circling my neck.
“It’s an albatross,” he mutters. I’m not sure I heard him right, but he continues, gesturing to the choker. “The things we do for money and status. And for what?” He drinks down his whiskey. “I’m sure Mom wasn’t thrilled about lending it to you, considering.”
Honestly, it feels like it’s slicing into my neck and when I catch a glimpse of myself in one of the many mirrors mounted on the walls surrounding us, all I can think of is Bluebeard and the gift he made of the ruby choker to his young wife. What it foreshadowed.
Ethan watches me shudder. He shakes his head. “Don’t embarrass me tonight, Phee.”
“Embarrass you?”
“With him. I know you’re looking for him. I’m not stupid.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I mean it. I’m warning you—”
“You’re warning me?” I can imagine my eyebrows disappearing into my hairline.
“Just don’t.”
“Why would your parents invite Silas, anyway? It’s no secret how you feel about him.”
“He didn’t exactly give us a choice.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” he says, just as a couple and an older man approach us. I recognize the older man, Mr. Bennett, whom I like. He’s a business associate of the Foxes. The woman, too, looks familiar. I notice how Ethan straightens up and clears his throat as they join us.
“Here’s the couple of the moment,” Mr. Bennett says.
I force a smile. Had the Foxes leaked news of the announcement?
“Ethan. It’s been forever,” the woman says and leans in to hug him, pressing her breasts against his chest and kissing each of his cheeks.
“Anya,” he says, glancing at me. “I didn’t realize you’d be here.”
Anya. Now I place her. They were friends, more than that, actually. Their relationship goes as far back as high school. She was a senior when I was a sophomore. She’s also the woman I spied Ethan kissing at this same event years ago. I’d been seventeen, almost eighteen, and Ethan was nineteen.
It was one of the reasons I wondered why Mr. and Mrs. Fox kept pushing us together when he clearly had an interest in this woman. I remember it hadn’t bothered me as much as I thought it should, even then.
“I wouldn’t miss it. When Grandfather told us you’d be announcing your engagement tonight, I couldn’t stay away.”
My gaze snaps to Ethan, but he ignores it.
“Phee, you remember Anya?” he says instead, his hand at Anya’s lower back. We’d been introduced a few years ago.
Anya holds out her hand. It’s limp, and she barely clutches my fingers. “Nice to see you again, Anya.”
“Wonderful to see you, Phee,” she says, and I wonder at her use of the word wonderful. It’s hardly that. But I smile. “You’ve never met Alec, my brother, have you?”
“No. Nice to meet you,” I say, shaking hands.
“Now about this big announcement,” Mr. Bennett says to me. “Sly tells me you’ve been keeping it a secret for a while. Very naughty.”
“There’s not going to be—”
Ethan cuts me off. “Given all that’s happened with Phee’s father, you can understand we had little choice.”
“Of course. Sad affair all of that. But you’re not involved, and why shouldn’t you two be happy?”
“Mr. Bennett, how are you doing?” I ask, changing the subject.
“Doing all right, dear. Now, while my wife is busying herself catching up on gossip with your soon-to-be mother-in-law, may I have a dance? You don’t mind, Ethan, do you?”
“Of course not,” Ethan says, sounding relieved, if anything.
I’m grateful to be away from Ethan, honestly. I take Mr. Bennett’s arm as he leads me to the dance floor, and we make polite conversation as the orchestra plays a waltz.
“You’re light on your feet, Mr. Bennett.”
“It’s easy with a dance partner such as yourself, Phee.”
I try not to search the room for Silas. He won’t show up. Why would he?
Although he used to sneak into the parties.
Every single year I’ve attended, I’ve seen him behind an unassuming mask he can easily blend into the crowd with.
I think he used to do it just to show he could.
Every time I’d catch him, he’d give me a wink and vanish into the crowd.
I’d found it funny and never mentioned it to anyone, not even my father.
The last ball had taken place just before the charges were filed.
The Foxes stopped having the parties then, putting them on hold, Mira said.
At that party, though, Ethan had come home from college for the holiday.
I’d been in my last year of high school.
The Foxes had just assumed Ethan and I would attend as a couple.
Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Fox asked either of us.
Or at least, they didn’t ask me. Maybe they asked Ethan.
Things had been tense between Dad and Mr. Fox by then and I wonder how much he knew about what would happen just weeks after the event.
Mr. Bennett is speaking, but I’m only half listening, nodding now and again. I’m lost in my thoughts when his step falters and he turns. Someone is tapping on his shoulder.
“May I cut in?”
My heart drops to my belly. I look up at the man who stands a head taller than Mr. Bennett, dressed in a tuxedo that barely contains him—that, no matter how elegant, can’t hide the man beneath. The inelegance of him. The raw brutality of him.
Silas Cruz.
The man I’ve been searching for since walking in here.
The villain I want to hate but am drawn to like a moth to the flame.
I get the feeling he’s been watching me long before this moment and waiting for his opportunity.
“I knew it was a matter of time,” Mr. Bennett says, winking at Silas.
He doesn’t even get a hint of a smile back.
Silas’s turquoise eyes are locked on mine.
He barely registers Mr. Bennett at all, and I get the feeling it’s not even conscious.
A moment later, I am handed from one man to the other, pressed against Silas’s hard chest, his hand a brand on the bare skin of my back, the other warm and calloused swallowing mine.
My fingers graze his bicep, solid beneath his jacket as I raise my hand to rest it on his shoulder.
There is a charge between us, something electric.
Something wrong and right at once. I want to be held by this man.
I want his arms around me. And being in those arms now, I am struggling with the duality of my own emotions.
What I want and what I should want are two very different things.
“Isn’t that the girl Ethan was making out with a few years back?” he asks, not bothering with any sort of greeting. I guess we’re past polite conversation, if we ever had it at all. “Looks to me like they’ve graduated to fucking,” he says rudely, making me bristle.
I raise my eyebrows, but I don’t think he can see them under my mask.
“And you can see that in the minutes you’ve been here?” I ask. He always comes battle ready, and can I blame him? I glance toward Ethan and Anya and in a way, I hope Silas is right.
“Doesn’t take a genius. I mean, look at them.”
“If you’re trying to hurt me, it won’t work. I don’t care—”
“And that right there, sweetheart, is the problem. You don’t care.”
“You didn’t let me finish. I don’t care what you think.”