Victor’s POV
The house was quiet when I got home from Helen's. I poured myself a glass of whiskey and stood at the window, watching the lights of the city stretch out below me. The dinner had been a performance, the kind I had perfected over decades, the kind where I played the role of father, brother, uncle, the man everyone expected me to be. I had played it well. I always played it well.
But underneath the performance, there was only her.
She had worn a navy dress that covered everything and revealed nothing, and I had wanted to tear it off her with my teeth. She had sat across from me with her hands folded and her eyes down and her thighs pressed together under the table, and I had felt the heat of her like a fire I could not put out. I had let my foot find her ankle, had let it tr
