Page 157 of Fractured Allegiance
When I reach Silas, I don’t offer him a glass.
I meet his gaze.
Hold it.
Then place a glass on the ledge beside him.
“Wrong crowd,” I murmur under my breath.
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t blink.
Just mutters, “Wrong throne.”
And then I’m moving again, walking back to Drazen with the tray empty and my skin still humming like it’s trying to crawl off my bones.
He smirks when I sit again. But he doesn’t say anything.
Because he knows what I am when I’m quiet.
Dangerous.
He shifts, whispers something in Russian to the man at his right, and lifts a cigar to his mouth like he's bored now. Like the performance is over.
His men are laughing again. I catch something about a shipment rerouted through the docks, someone trying to undercut the pipeline. I pretend to listen. I nod when I’m supposed to.
Then he dismisses me with a tap on the hip.
“Go fix your lipstick.”
A few of them chuckle.
He’s letting me leave.
No. He’s daring me to.
I push out of his lap, walk toward the far end of the lounge where a hallway snakes around to the powder rooms. The light changes here, losing luster to the shadows. Plush carpet deadens my steps. The walls hum with muffled sound from the floor below: bass, a woman’s laugh, the click of heels on marble.
I don’t make it to the mirror.
Because he’s already there.
Silas.
Standing in the corridor just around the corner, out of sight from the table.
Watching me like he never stopped.
I halt.
Not because I’m startled.
Because my body forgets, for half a second, what moving forward feels like when he’s this close.
I breathe in, breath catching involuntarily, just enough to feel the scrape of reality settle back into place.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I say. “Drazen will notice.”
His eyes stay locked on mine. “Neither should you,” he counters gruffly.
