Page 14 of Take My Throne

“What were you thinking, Ivy?” he asks, as we walk up the stairs. “You made me look stupid out there.”

“I wasn’t thinking at all,” I told him. “I hoped you were distracted with Milly.”

“That was business,” says Lucas, confirming what I’d suspected. “Milly can be a useful source of information if you know how to read between the lines. Anyway, this isn’t about me. It’s about you. You need to learn how to behave as a married woman. Don’t make me talk to your father about teaching you appropriate behaviour.”

“That sounds uncannily like a threat.” I narrow my eyes.

“Just a promise, Ivy. It’s just a promise.”

The guards outside my father’s private room step aside to let us in. My father is out on the balcony watching the action on the dance floor, so the room is practically empty other than a few guards.

Lucas immediately goes to the bar and orders a whiskey. He downs it in one gulp and grabs a bottle of beer before coming back to me.

“Where’s mine?” I don’t really care that he didn’t get me a drink. I could get my own, but if Lucas is going to make a big deal about my behaviour, I am going to point out every little thing he is doing wrong too. I can be petty if I wanted.

“We’re at a ball, Ivy,” Lucas says. “Standing around with a bottle in your hand doesn’t exactly fit with the sophisticated image you’re supposed to project.”

“Is that so?”

I stomp over to the bar and help myself to one of the bottles laid out.

“Put that back, Ivy.”

I scowl as my father comes back in from the balcony.

“It’s a party, Dad,” I say. “I’m allowed to drink if I want. And I am eighteen, remember?”

“How could I forget?” My father smiles but his eyes are stone cold. “Still, you’ll need a cool head and a steady hand for what I want you to do.”

“Oh really? What’s that?”

“Come with me.”

Lucas slumps on a couch as I follow my father out to the balcony. My cheeks redden as I realise there is a good chance he’d seen me dancing with the boys-–and kissing Declan.

“Look down there, Ivy. Tell me what you see.” He gestures expansively across the dance floor.

“People having fun?”

“That’s the surface view. Look closer.”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “People talking. People dancing.”

“I see opportunity,” my father says. “I see networks. I see the chance to take things a step further without anyone even knowing what’s about to hit them.”

He nods to one of his guards who steps forward and hands him a gun. My father opens up the barrel to check it is loaded. Satisfied, he snaps it shut with a flick of the wrist and offers it to me, handle first.

“Take it,” he says.

I frown and shake my head.

“It wasn’t a suggestion,” my father states, offering the gun to me.

Reluctantly, I take it.

My father stands behind me and grabs my shoulders. He turns me to face the crowd. Leaning forward, he speaks directly into my ear. “Can you see the man standing by the bar with brown hair going grey at the temples?”

I look in the direction of the bar and spot Claude Dauphin, Declan’s father. I nod.

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