Married to My Father's Killer

Chapter 4

"My fiancée," Adrian said.

The word dropped into the room like a stone into still water.

The woman's smile didn't move, but something behind it cracked. Her eyes flicked back to me — to the cheap coat, the borrowed shoes, the ring that should have been impossible on a hand like mine — and the warmth drained out of her face entirely.

"Your fiancée," she repeated, soft as silk. "How wonderful. I didn't realize you were seeing anyone, Adrian. The whole city didn't realize."

"You're not the whole city, Selena."

The name landed and stuck. Selena. I filed it away the way I filed everything now — quietly, carefully, for later.

She laughed, light and brittle, and circled toward me. "And where did you find her? She's"—a pause, a slow once-over—"refreshing. Not your usual type at all. No pedigree, no name worth mentioning." Her smile sharpened. "What is your name, sweetheart?"

"Lucia," I said. "Lucia Hart."

"Hart." She tasted it and found it wanting. "I don't know any Harts."

"You wouldn't," I said. "We don't move in circles that collect people like trophies."

A beat of pure silence.

Then Adrian made a low sound that might have been amusement, and Selena's composure slipped for half a second before she clawed it back.

What happened next, I didn't expect.

Adrian crossed to me, slid a hand around my waist, and drew me against his side — firm, deliberate, like I was something he had every right to touch. The heat of him went straight through my coat. I had to fight not to stiffen, not to give Selena the satisfaction.

"Lucia and I are private people," he said. "You'll forgive us for not announcing it to you first."

"Of course." Selena's voice could have frozen the harbor. "I'm just family, after all."

"You're my father's goddaughter," Adrian corrected, mild and merciless. "There's a difference."

I felt her gaze move between us, hunting for the seam, the lie. I made myself lean into him instead of away, let my hand rest flat on his chest where his heart beat steady and unbothered. Up close, his jaw was tight. He was selling this as hard as I was.

For one suspended moment we were two strangers pressed together, playing a love neither of us felt, and I hated that some traitorous part of me noticed how solid he was, how the cold scent of him filled my head.

Selena saw it. Whatever she saw, she didn't like it.

"Well." She stepped back, smoothing her dress, gathering the shreds of her pride. "I'll let you two enjoy your little arrangement." Her eyes locked on mine, and the sweetness curdled into something genuinely vicious. "But a word of advice, Lucia Hart. The women who marry into this family always have a past. And I have nothing but time to find out yours."

The threat slid under my skin and stayed there.

She turned on her heel and was gone, the door clicking shut behind her like the c**k of a gun.

The second she left, Adrian released me and stepped away, and the warmth went with him so suddenly it left me cold.

"She'll dig," he said, straightening his cuff like nothing had happened. "Selena always digs. If there's anything in your past you'd rather stayed buried, Miss Hart, I suggest you bury it deeper."

My mouth went dry.

If only he knew.

"There's nothing to find," I lied.

He studied me for a moment too long, and I had the awful feeling he didn't believe me — that he was simply choosing, for now, not to care.

"The car's downstairs," he said. "Dinner at the estate is at eight. Don't be late. My family forgives many things. Lateness isn't one of them."

I gathered my coat and walked out before my legs could betray how badly they wanted to run.

The elevator was mirrored on every side, so there was nowhere to look but at myself — small, pale, drowning in a ring worth more than my mother's life. I pressed my eyes shut and breathed.

Two years. Get inside. Find the proof. Walk away.

I could do this. I had to.

The elevator chimed, and a man stepped in just before the doors closed.

He was younger than Adrian, lighter somehow — an easy, golden kind of handsome, with a smile that arrived before you'd earned it. He leaned against the rail and looked at me with open, unhurried interest, and something about the look made my skin crawl in a way I couldn't explain.

"You must be her," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"The fiancée. Word travels fast in this building." He held out a hand. "Damon Sinclair. Adrian's cousin. The fun one, if you ask anyone but Adrian."

I shook it because there was nothing else to do. His grip lingered a half-second too long.

"Lucia," I said.

"Oh, I know." His smile widened, and the warmth in it didn't reach his eyes at all. "I make it my business to know everything that comes into this family. Especially the things that arrive out of nowhere, with no past and a very large ring."

The floor numbers ticked down. Forty. Thirty-nine. Thirty-eight.

"Here's a free piece of advice, cousin," Damon said, leaning in close as the doors slid open on the lobby. "In this family, everyone is hiding something. The only question that matters—"

He paused, and the smile turned to ice.

"—is which one of us finds out yours first."