Page 75 of A Vicious Love

My first thought was that I hated the dress.

My second was that I wanted to kill whoever sent it.

My third was that I couldn’t breathe properly.

Champagne silk.

Halter neckline.

Fitted close enough to make my hand flex at my side and my temper turn abruptly, violently silent. The fabric skimmed over her waist and hips, falling clean to the floor. Her shoulders were bare. Her hair was pinned up, exposing her neck.

Breathtakingly beautiful.

Her eyes were lowered politely while the older woman talked at her, but I knew she wasn’t listening fully. Sienna listened with her whole face when she cared. This was performance.

She had not seen me yet.

For one selfish second, I watched her without being watched back. Three years, I had told myself her voice annoyed me.

Now I stood in a room full of powerful men with business burning under my feet and realized I had not heard her laugh properly in weeks.

Because I had taught her to stop.

My phone buzzed.

I looked down.

Reeves.

One name confirmed. Family tie: Parkington board.

My gaze lifted slowly. Somewhere in this beautiful room, under lanterns and restoration speeches, sat a person who had helped choose the date my hotel burned.

The syndicate king in me woke again. Focused. Grateful for a target. Across the hall, Sienna finally looked up.

Her eyes found mine. The polite smile on her face disappeared. For one second, she looked at me with no performance at all. She gave me a small nod.

I stood there in my black tuxedo, war waiting in my phone, and watched the most beautiful girl in the room greet me like I was a dangerous stranger she had been trained not to upset.

Then she looked away.

And for the first time all day, I wanted to hurt someone for something I had done.

CHAPTER TEN

JAMISON

Ishould have been looking for the Parkington board member who helped burn my hotel. That was the reason I had dragged myself into a benefit full of polished parasites while my city smoldered under my feet. Reeves fed names into my phone all awaiting bullets.

Instead, I was staring at Sienna Bellemere’s throat.

Her dress tied behind her neck in two thin champagne straps, leaving her shoulders and her back mostly bare. Every time she laughed politely at something some old man said, her neck moved in a way that made my hand flex around a glass I no longer remembered picking up.

I hated the dress.

I wanted to tear it off with my teeth.

That was the first clear sign I had a fucking problem. The second was that I had been standing in the same place for almost three minutes watching her instead of working.