Page 58 of Dance of Deception

“I told you, sheforcedmy hand.”

He shakes his head. “You’re about to be the don of an empire, kid,” he grunts. “Not to sound like a heartless ass, but if youtrulydidn’t want anything to do with her, I’msure….” He shrugs. “Arrangementscould have been made resulting in hernothaving this leverage over you, whatever it is.”

He’s not wrong. And it’s not as though I haven’t thought about it several times since that night.

Lyra saw more than she should have. Whatshouldhave happened next was either scaring the shit out of her and makingdamn sure she never spoke about it, or elsetrulymaking sure she never spoke about it.

In anextremelypermanentway.

Obviously, I didn’t do that. And it’s not because I’ve got some sort of warm fuzzy heart beating inside my chest that “just couldn’t take” the thought of killing her.

An overabundance ofconsciencehas never been my issue.

Trying to find any semblance of it has usually been more the issue. Or trying to fake it for the sake of those around me.

But I digress. It's not that I didn’t kill Lyra because I couldn’t bring myself to.

It’s because I didn’twant to.

And therein lies the problem, and the confusing part in all of this.

Whydidn’tI want to? Making her disappear would have been the simplest, cleanest solution to my problem byfar. Her having seen inside the Court isn’t good, obviously, but it’s not like she saw the inner sanctum, or our faces. And we do, after all, proactively invite guests to dine, drink, and fuck during our very deliberately Roman-orgy-esque sessions.

But she went further than that.

She placed me as The Hound.

And it actually gets worse, and that’s the very reason I picked her for this charade.

She caught the attention of my darkness.

Irrevocably. Irrationally.

And now, may God have mercy on her soul. Because if she thinksI’mintense, she has no idea what’s in store for her with him.

11

LYRA

The Barone estateis even more ridiculous than I remember.

It was excessive enough when I first stepped into it at the audition. But now, with the entire house lit by chandeliers and filled with the buzz ofverypowerful people, it feels…otherworldly.

Like I’ve somehow stepped into a different reality.

Cosplaying someone else’s life.

The limo pulls up to the grand entrance across from Central Park. Even before the car fully stops, I can already see the other arrivals: men in custom tailored suits, women wrapped in designer gowns that probably cost more than a year's rent for me.

A flask clinks softly beside me.

I close my eyes for a second, inhaling. “Mom…”

“Relax,” Vera drawls, tucking the flask back into her clutch. “I’m not drunk.”

That’s…clearly false. But I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with my mother or her bullshit tonight. She’s only here at all because earlier, when Carmine called to tell me—not ask—about the limo, he also told me Vera would be coming, too.

Again,told, not asked.

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