Page 3 of No Greater Oblivion

We head upstairs and on the way, I lock gazes with Damiano. He smiles when he sees me and is about to excuse himself from the group he’s sitting with when I give a firm shake of the head. My friend pauses, the confusion clear as it flickers across his face. It isn’t until one of Li’s men gestures toward the hall he wants Rian and I to enter does Damiano understand. He shoots me a disapproving look and before I have time to react, someone grabs my elbow.

“She’s not going in there alone,” Rian says. The ice in his voice sends a shiver down my spine.

“Boss’s orders,” the man replies.

Rian is quick to reach for his gun, but I step between him and the guard, hoping to de-escalate the situation. Rian and Li are childhood best friends and the last thing I want is to trigger a fallout between them. Flattering as it is to have two men fighting over me, this isn’t the kind of dress that can survive a bloodstain, and I’ll be furious watching twenty-five thousand dollars end up in the trash. I’m wearing vintage Versace for Christ’s sake.

“Drop it, Ri. Please?”

A muscle in his jaw tightens. Having sensed the tension from across the mezzanine, Damiano comes up behind us and gently extracts the gun from Rian’s hand. He turns to the guard and puts on his best smile.

“Get my friend a drink, will you? We’ll wait out here.”

I take the out Damiano gives me and bolt down the hall, narrowly escaping Rian’s grasp.

At this point, I know The Empress like the back of my hand. For the last year, I’ve probably spent more time here than in my own home. My fingers graze the canvas wallpaper, the golden threads of its subtle geometric pattern shimmering in the ambient lighting. The click of my heels is absorbed by the red carpet rolled over dark hardwood floors. I can’t help but think of El Rey and the first time I wandered upstairs to the floors with the private rooms. All that beautiful velvet wallpaper and dimly lit sconces. Despite their similar aesthetics, El Rey felt as ancient as the countryside it resided in. The Empress is beacon of glamorous modernity in the world’s greatest city, adorned with the glamor of decades passed.

I make a turn and approach the double doors at the end of an isolated hall. I don’t bother knocking—there’s no point. When I step inside, the scent of cigar smoke and leather floats through the air. In The Empress’s private rooms, high-stakes gamblers roll the dice on more than just the money in their pockets. I’ve seen wealthy, powerful juggernauts lose the shirts off their backs. A Texas big-oil heir once lost the controlling shares in his great-grandfather’s company to a West Coast tech-millionaire. And last June, a Saudi Prince gambled away half his fortune and a beloved skyscraper to a German business tycoon.

Li Huang stands at the back of the room, lording over a table of five men holding cards close to their chests. Judging by the number of chips on the table, I’d assume there’s at least ten million dollars at stake, if not more. When he sees me he doesn’t address me, merely waits for me to approach him behind the table.

Once I’m close enough to touch, he places his hands on my shoulders and greets me with a kiss on both cheeks. I don’t miss the implication behind the gesture as he so rarely interacts with people physically, save his fiancé Mathieu, and such instances are infrequent. Touching me is a power play. How he exerts power over other people.

“Dahlia,” he says as he smiles down at me. “How good of you to come.”

“I couldn’t miss my first New Year’s at The Empress,” I reply. “Especially after you sent such a beautiful invitation.”

Invitation number four to be exact. Li labels his invitations numerically and purposefully skips over four and its multiples whenever possible because of Chinese superstition. When I received my invitation in the mail last week, the number on the top right hand corner stared back at me like a threat. A dark omen of what was to come.

“I have a gift for you.”

He places his hand on the small of my back and I follow him a few feet away to a bar cart. A silver cloche rests atop a porcelain plate and he removes it, revealing the champagne flute underneath. It’s filled with twelve grapes. Li lifts the glass by the stem and extends it to me.

“I’m told this is a tradition in your culture. Twelve grapes for the twelve strokes of midnight.”

I take the champagne flute from him graciously. “You’re very kind.”

“Is Rian with you?”

“He is. He was very upset he couldn’t come in.”

“I thought we could get to know each other better. In private.” His smile gleams with practiced civility. “Seeing as how you and Rian are so close.”

Li and I have never been close but the animosity simmering beneath the surface of our exchanged pleasantries is new. When I discovered what was really going on behind the scenes of his operation and how it could affect people I still care about, I made it my mission to bring him down. Getting close to Rian was merely a necessity at first and I hadn’t intended to develop feelings for him. Like most things in my life, nothing went as planned and when I found out Rian was at risk of being betrayed by his best friend, I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone.

Save Alejandro’s sorry ass and expose Li’s deceit to Rian. Though, I’m really starting to question this “master” plan of mine. It hasn’t exactly gone the way I wanted and my growing attachment to Rian is proof of that.

I meet Li’s gaze head on, dark eyes glistening in the golden light, and I smile. Beautiful, mindless, and decorative. Like most of the women in Li’s world.

“Does Rian talk about me often? I hope it’s only good things.”

“Not really. In fact,” His smile deepens. “As his best friend, I should probably tell you—he’s very fickle with women. You seem like a nice girl, I’d hate for you to get hurt. Rian has a bad habit of using and discarding.”

So this is why he pulled me aside. Li would never dare give such a thinly veiled threat in Rian’s presence. He wants me to know that his best friend’s protection is only temporary because as soon as Rian decides he’s done playing house with me, Li’s going to crush me like a grape under his thumb. Well I won’t give him the satisfaction of watching me squirm.

“How funny.”

He maintains the practiced expression on his face, brows slightly drawn, cheekbones elevated as he gives a tightened smile. “What’s funny?”