Page 74 of Dishonored

“I guess Canada is a bust for now.”

“Why are you—”

“Gonna call that a win,” Caesar added in a murmur.

Silver linings.

Even if his home was burning.

“Are you okay?”

No.

No, he wasn’t okay at all.

Far from it.

He just had to figure out what he was going to do about it.

TEN

“SMILE.”

Raffe’s order raked like hot coals over Aria’s nerve endings, but she did as he told her. He gave her a little nod from the driver’s seat as he navigated the car into a parking spot close to the front door of a restaurant she preferred.

At least, he had given her that today.

“Bene,” Raffe murmured in praise, his hand snaking across the middle of the vehicle to curve tightly around her thigh under Aria’s skirt. “It’s about time you stop pouting—you need to do this, and you know why.”

She hoped Raffe didn’t feel her shiver.

Or see the fire in her eyes.

It was getting harder to hide it.

“Better business, I know,” she said.

“Yes, and after those tricks I pulled on the Accardo family last week, we cannot afford for any of our clan to be fighting when we have to be focusing on the bigger picture. Even the women of our clan.”

“Have they called yet? The Accardos, I mean.”

Aria was out of the loop more often than not now that her husband was back in the picture. Raffe, like he always did, stepped in, took control, and managed every little detail down to the very last thing someone might think of. He didn’t care to fill Aria in on things he didn’t think were important for her to know.

Especially now that she wasn’t handling it all.

It irked her.

How could she plan when she didn’t know what she was fucking planning for? How could she work her angles when she didn’t know when the corners were coming? How could she keep her secrets from Raffe when—

Raffe arched a brow. “Not yet.”

Aria let out a tiny breath.

To her husband, it might have sounded like frustration. To her, it was an exhale of relief because yes, she was still one step ahead of Raffe.

At least, for now.

He still didn’t know the things she had done to get them where they currently were with the Accardos, and if she could help it, he would never know until it was too fucking late. She had been banking on the fact that Angelo Accardo wouldn’t want his own people to know his son had been messing with the enemy, too.