Page 90 of Silk and Sirens

“Stay away from my daughter,” Tristan snarled when he caught up with me down the corridor, his voice nothing but a whisper in the busy restaurant.

I stilled, keeping my tone calm as I turned to face him. “You seriously want to play the protective father?”

“Stay the fuck away from her,” he repeated, voice shaking with fury. “She’s been through enough. She doesn’t need another monster in her life.”

“Too late for that.” I leaned in, letting him feel every ounce of threat in my words. “She’s already mine. And unlike you, I don’t abandon things that belong to me.”

Tristan’s eyes bulged, but he didn’t stop me as I returned to the main restaurant.

I knew I’d been a while, but it wasn’t like Vivienne was going to leave.

Crossing the room slowly, deliberately, I used the low hum of conversations and the soft clutter of cutlery to calm the pulse still thundering against the side of my throat.

Vivienne watched me cross the room, her gaze sharp.

I fucking hated her.

“You took your time,” she said, placing her phone face down on the table. “Who was that?”

I dropped back into my seat, jaw still tight. “I ran into a friend.” Reaching for my glass, I drank half just to try and wash the taste of Aeris from my mouth. The wine tasted bitter in comparison. Cheap. Wrong.

“It didn’t look like a friend,” she said, voice deceptively light as her eyes darted over my shoulder for the briefest second before returning to mine.

It was a crack in her composure before she gave me that polished, too-wide smile.

“Everything okay?” she asked, head tilted with concern. “I thought you’d run away.”

I took another sip, trying to steady myself.

“Of course not. Like I said, I ran into a friend.”

It took every ounce of control I possessed not to scan the restaurant for that flash of red hair. To say fuck it, put a bullet in Vivienne’s skull right here, and drag Aeris somewhere private so I could punish her properly for making me this obsessed.

She tested every limit I had with those sharp little smirks, the way she fought me even with a knife at her throat … and then melted so beautifully when I fucked her anyway.

But this wasn’t just about me, or her. It was about Sebastian, Langdon, and the empire we’d clawed out of nothing with our bare, bloody hands.

Aeris had become a dangerous distraction.

Fuck. Maybe that was the point, and I was stupid enough to fall into her trap.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Vivienne reached across the table and gently rested her hand over mine, her touch unnaturally hot against my skin. “You look flushed. Here, have some water.”

I frowned at her hand, my whole body reacting like it was one giant nerve ending.

What the fuck?

Her nails stroked over my knuckles before she poured me a fresh glass with graceful, practised movements.

My limbs felt lighter than they should have, a strange warmth spreading through my veins that had nothing to do with the wine.

“Thank you,” I said, the liquid cool against my increasingly heavy tongue.

“Did you want to go? We could always reschedule?”

Lights danced behind her, distracting as I blinked slowly.

“Caden, do you want to leave?”