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Suddenly, I am ripped backwards. Someone drags me, kicking and thrashing, into the pitch-black ballroom, dragged by the waist and my hair. I am slung onto the floor.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” James snarls. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing? You’re no fucking use to me dead! You’re going to ruin everything! That stupid stunt you just pulled, most people would get shot for something like that! Are you trying to set our inheritance on fire—”
I kick out from under him and try to run, but he grabs me again. His hand snaps across my face, sending me staggering.
“You better hope your father sells you off to me, because if he doesn’t, the only use he’s going to have for you is in a fucking grave. Do you hear me? You traitorous little bitch—”
Another gunshot. A different part of the building this time. I crane my head, looking out into the dark, desperate to see what’s happening. Panicked voices rise. People are spilling back into the ballroom—herded like sheep.
James hastily pulls me up, dragging me dazed but resisting toward the staircase that we entered from.
The lights blast back on, searing, blinding me with the sudden intensity of them. We freeze in place. Disjointed music skips along the track as the classical recording starts back up, filling the air over the sounds of shouting and confused cries.
Suddenly, I see what everyone is circling, explaining the hushed and terrified silence of the crowd—Marcel has appeared in the middle of the family, holding a pistol to Donny Lovera’s skull.
Salvatore’s men filter into the room, each of them with their own hostage. Some have been plucked from the crowd, but Dario is there too, in Leo’s clutches. The prisoners look a little better than they did when I last saw them—were it not for the cold steel kissing their temples.
Donny’s wife sprawls at his feet, begging and screaming for Marcel not to kill him.
Marcel veers around until his eyes finally land on me. He glances up, over my shoulder.
Footsteps on the stairs make me turn.
Salvatore descends the steps. The family sweeps back like a wave, until only James and I are standing at the bottom of the steps. There must be a dozen armed men in the room, but Salvatore’s eyes are only on me. My body lurches almost against my own willpower, jerking toward him as if drawn by some unseen force—magnetism, or the pull of the tides. A natural, instinctual gravity trying to bring me to him again. James tries to pull me back, the grip of his hand leaving white imprints on my skin, but I still rip free from him.
“Tessa!” James snarls, making a lunge for me. He misses.
I rush to Salvatore. I’m desperate to be between him and every person in this room who wants to kill him. Before I can get my arms around him, he sweeps me into a slow, close waltz, drawing me across the ballroom. We drift together to the music, a moving target, my body pressed to his as he spins me through the numb, frozen crowd.
“I told you,” Sal says against my ear, his voice ragged. “I told you that you’d never get away from me. That I would run you down to the ends of the earth.”
It feels so right to be back in his arms, and yet so, so wrong for him to be here. “Sal, don’t hurt them,” I say immediately. “Please don’t hurt them—I could be so close to fixing all of this. Please, just trust me—”
“Trust you?” he cuts across.
Only this close can I see the terrible darkness in Sal’s look, his face hollowed. I don’t know why. I thought he would be happy to see me, but he only looks murderous. He leans nearer, my stomach clenching tight.
Our foreheads touch, bringing us together, as though we are the only two in the room. “I don’t repeat mistakes,” he whispers against my lips. “Did you tell them how you begged me to fuck you? Did you tell them how easily you spread your legs for me?”
“What are you talking about—”
“It’s too late to play innocent now, Contessa. Not with me, and not with them.”
“No, that’s not—I’m not playing at anything.”
My words falter. Is this somehow part of his plan? Am I supposed to play along? I can’t read him, and I can’t break away from him. I’m terrified that if I step too far, someone will feel brave or panicked enough to try and shoot him. Right now, we are a clumsy target, no clean shot.
“Sure you are. Just like you played me, just long enough until I dropped my guard with you,” he says, the words like venom in his mouth. Like I’ve poisoned him. “I should have known better.”
The words throw me out of the tempo, my feet stumbling over themselves. I’m indignant as he goes on about how I’ve betrayed him.
“You’re the one who left! I got pulled out of that house in the middle of the night,” I say, now meeting him step for step, word for word. “I didn’t play you, Noctus played us. And he sold me right back here, right back into this mess—”
Salvatore’s dismisses me, looking over my shoulder at our mortified onlookers.
“Noctus was with us.”
“All night? You had eyes on him every hour?”
