43

43

VIVIENNE

The house felt a bit strange this morning. Every step down the staircase thudded like guilt in my chest.

I hadn’t slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Davide tearing the bill in half—blank inside, nothing but worthless paper—and Lucian’s face lit by fire, smiling like a man who’d been mocked by the gods themselves.

Now, the scent of breakfast drifted up: butter, eggs, seared meat. It was yoo normal for the night we’d just crawled out of.

Lucian was already at the table, when I walked down

That in itself wasn’t unusual—he often rose before dawn, planning, moving men like pieces on a board. But it was the way he sat there that made my chest tighten.

His dark eyes flicked up when I entered, caught mine for a moment—then dropped back to his plate. Not a word.

Weird. Too weird.

Lucian never missed the chance to anger me. He lived for it, feeding on my temper like it was wine. For him to stay quiet… it was wrong.

Maria stood at his side, she was commanding the space with the authority of someone who had outlasted wars, murders, and a dozen masters who thought themselves immortal.

Gray hair pinned in a bun, sleeves rolled, she set dishes down with the help of Michael, the servant boy who could barely lift the silver tray.

When her eyes found me, her face softened into a smile “Good morning, madam.” She motioned toward a chair. “Sit. You look ready to faint, and not from hunger alone.”

I sank into the chair opposite Lucian. He didn’t look up.

Maria clicked her tongue, she was already spooning eggs onto my plate. “You’ve gone white as a sheet. Nerves make the blood thin. Eat. Keep yourself strong.”

Michael poured juice with trembling hands, spilling a trickle across the cloth. Maria steadied him with a firm grip on the glass. “Careful, boy. A steady hand carries weight better than a shaky one. Remember that.”

Her eyes flicked to me, her point aimed just as sharply at my chest.

I forced a small smile. “You never waste a lesson, do you?”

“Not when the world wastes lives so easily,” Maria said, placing the fork into my hand as though I were her own blood.

She leaned closer, lowering her voice. “That banquet the other night—it turned into a success, strange as it was.”

The word success twisted something in me.

Maria saw the change in my face and lifted her hand quickly. “No, no, I don’t mean the poison. God forgive whoever tried such wickedness. But the way you carried yourself.

Madam,it was no accident of fortune, madam. You managed to show them something. Your presence, your words, your ability to hold the room—that is what they will never forget"

Her words were meant as comfort, but all I heard was warning. Survival bought with poison and counterfeit. A board full of traps, and I had walked us into one.

I muttered, “Some success.”

Maria’s hand brushed mine“Madam, you lived. Sometimes that is the sharpest victory there is"

For a moment, the tension in my chest loosened. Maria had that effect,it was a kind of armor forged not in violence but in persistence. She’d raised generations of Demarcos, and I couldn’t shake the sense she was trying to raise me too.

She smoothed her apron. “I’ll fetch more bread.” With a nudge to Michael, she left us

Only the scrape of Lucian’s knife against plate. Bite, chew, sip of coffee. Nothing else.

I lasted three minutes before the pressure cracked me. My cutlery fell against my plate.Lucian’s eyes flicked up at the sound,he finally looked at me.

“Okay,” I snapped. “What’s up? You haven’t said a word to me since last night.”

His gaze didn’t waver. He simply watched me, chewing slowly, like my anger was a play he’d already seen before. And then—without so much as a shrug—he lowered his eyes again and kept eating.

I shoved back my chair and stood. “Is this about the intel I brought in? You think I don’t know what went wrong? That convoy was a setup. We all bled for nothing. But don’t you dare pretend this is on me.”

I stepped closer, leaning over the table, daring him to look at me. “Say it, Lucian. Say what you’re thinking instead of sitting there like a corpse at breakfast.”

Finally, he set down his knife. Slowly. Wiping his mouth with the corner of his napkin, he turned his head toward me.

And smiled.

Not his usual wolfish grin. No. This was something stranger—an almost gentle smile of the lips that didn’t reach his eyes. It froze my breath in my throat.

“You think I’m sulking?” he said quietly. His voice was calm, almost amused, but the anger simmered underneath. “You think this silence is me blaming you?”

He stood suddenly, his chair scraping across the floor
“Don’t flatter yourself, tigress. I’m not wasting time brooding over paper money.” He leaned close as he passed me,l “If the Riveras thought that trick would break us, they’ve forgotten who we are.”

“Lucian, listen to me. I don’t think it was the Riveras.”

His head tilted, only slightly, but enough to make me feel the chill of his attention.

“The counterfeit, the wrong intel—it was too clean,” I pressed. “Too perfectly placed. The Riveras are loud, arrogant. This… this was something else. The same hand that tried to poison me at the banquet—don’t you see it? Someone is feeding us traps, one after another.”

Lucian gave a low,He kept walking, forcing me to turn in my chair to follow him with my eyes.

“You give our enemies too much credit, Vivienne. Poison at a banquet, false leads on shipments—it doesn’t matter who lit the match. What matters is that they thought they could touch us and walk away laughing.”

He gripped the back of his chair, shoved it aside, and now his eyes blazed at me, it was alive with that dangerous fire I knew too well.

“We don’t stop. We don’t sulk. We strike again before their laughter echoes. Today.”

“Today?” My voice was shocked“Lucian, wait. Think for once! If it isn’t the Riveras—if this is someone else—then we’re playing blind on a board we don’t even see. That’s not striking back, that’s handing them our throat.”

His jaw tightened. “No. That’s reminding every vulture at these docks that Demarco blood doesn’t hesitate. The Riveras have a warehouse on the docks. Smuggled pharmaceuticals. It’s their spine. Break it, and they bleed out money and power both. We hit it before nightfall.”

My heart hammered. His words were iron, but my thoughts spun like a storm. “Lucian, what if that’s what they want? Whoever set this up—whoever poisoned me—they want us running headlong, wasting strength. They’re watching us, pushing us to bleed ourselves dry.”

He stopped in the doorway, his hand pressed flat against the frame. He didn’t turn, didn’t soften.

“You wanted war, Tigress,” he said softly. “Don’t look so shocked when I give it to you.”

And then he was gone, the heavy doors slamming shut behind him. We