Page 100 of Their Arrangement
Then he blinked.
His face closed.
And the man who’d just called me good girl vanished behind polished stone and steel.
Selene smiled.
Not at him.
At everyone else.
Like she already knew she’d won.
“I was in the neighborhood,” she said, her voice velvet and viper. “Thought I’d say hello.”
No one stopped her. Not even Barron.
He just watched.
Like a man looking at the edge of a cliff he once jumped off, knowing exactly how the fall would feel—but still aching to taste the air again.
She didn’t stay long.
Ten minutes, maybe less.
And when she left?
She kissed Loyal’s cheek. Winked at Royal. Said nothing to Wolfe.
And she passed Barron like he was nothing.
But after she was gone…
He didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.
Just turned.
Stepped back into his office.
And gripped the edge of his desk so hard his knuckles went white.
I watched from across the floor.
Unseen.
And it gutted me.
Because the most dangerous thing about Barron Lawlor?
Wasn’t his silence.
It was how much he still felt—even when he was trying not to.
I didn’t notice the envelope right away.
Not until I returned to my desk, still rattled from the echoof Barron’s silence. The office air felt thinner, colder—like it remembered Selene’s scent more than mine.
