Darius waited until she was out of earshot before breaking the silence, his smile too sharp for the warmth it pretended to hold. “Beautiful, isn’t she?”
I didn’t answer.
Complimenting another man’s daughter in his presence always felt like touching a trap and there was no reason to state the obvious.
“She’ll make an excellent wife,” he continued. “Polished. Mannered. Knows her place.”
“Does she?”
He chuckled, low and ugly. “Oh, she’ll remember it soon enough.”
He was so goddamn pathetic. That was the problem with men like Darzi—they mistook fear for loyalty, submission forvirtue. I’d dealt with his kind my entire life. Men who wrapped brutality in civility and called it tradition. The Dominion was full of them. He was just its most obscene mirror.
With our meal wrapped up, he stood and insisted we continue our conversation somewhere more comfortable.
I followed, taking in the home’s exterior.
The man liked to surround himself with symbols of power and portraits of dead men who’d been exactly like him. Pretty damn tacky, if you asked me.
He poured himself another drink once we were inside his office, offered me one, and smiled when I declined. “You’re a disciplined man, Kostas. That’s good. We need that sort of spine in the Dominion these days.”
“You mean obedience—again.”
His eyes narrowed a fraction. “Call it what you will. The world runs smoother when people know their place.”
I met his stare, unflinching. There was no subtle meaning about who he was referring to. “You’re referring to your daughter now?”
"A woman who understands her boundaries lives longer than one who fights them."
To some extent I agreed with that, but for different reasons that what he had in his head.
“Then I take it you understand that those boundaries you’ve placed around her no longer apply the second she becomes my fiancé?”
His smile froze, then thinned to nothing. The air between us charged with something dangerous. Good. Let him feel it—this wasn't his negotiation to dictate, and I needed him to understand that clearly.
His gaze dropped first, though his smile pretended victory. "You and I will get along just fine," he said.
We wouldn’t, so I let silence answer him.
"Well," he said after a moment, easing back in his chair, "my daughter is your choice."
The forced casualness in his voice betrayed him. I recognized that particular strain as what men sounded like when they're trying not to beg.
"Yes," I answered simply.
His eyebrow lifted. "Without consideration?"
This man was brilliant in some areas, and a fucking fool in most. Of course, I’d thought about it. What did he think I’d been doing since he put the proposal forward? I gave him a little more rope for his eventual noose.
"What's there to consider? We both understand the arrangement and you’ll agree to it no matter what."
The words hit their mark. A muscle in his jaw jumped, the involuntary flinch of a man confronting his own irrelevance. The Darzi name needed Kostas to survive. Mine would thrive without him before we wiped him out entirely. He could very well be thinking the same thing.
I’d love to see him try.
Still, he tried to feign ease. “It would appear so,” he said, swirling the amber in his glass. “An arrangement that benefits us both.”
“Let’s not pretend things are equal between us,” I replied, tone even.
