Page 96 of A Vicious Love

The men around the table were syndicate operators from South Harlan, Reed, and the industrial river routes. Their jackets cost too much for the rooms they usually worked in. Their watches looked legitimate, but their money did not.

We had finished discussing Harrington retaliation twenty minutes ago.

A transfer house had been emptied. Two accounts had been frozen. A river route changed hands before midnight. One man had discovered loyalty became unexpectedly important when his offshore holdings vanished from every screen he owned.

Business was handled. I should have left.

Instead, I ordered another drink.

Then another.

Because leaving meant going back to a penthouse where the silence had started sounding too much like Sienna Bellemere no longer talking to me.

I didn’t give a fuck about that.

Obviously.

One of the men beside me laughed and turned his phone toward the table.

“Look at this.”

I ignored him.

He had been showing photos for the last ten minutes. Women from clubs. Who had willingly posted half their bodies to Veil and men who treated the images like public inventory.

Normal club conversation.

Predictable, and boring.

A man across the booth leaned closer to the screen. “That’s the D’Angelos girl?”

“No. Better.”

Another laugh.

The phone moved around the table.

I picked up my whiskey and drank. The burn barely registered anymore. My tolerance had become inconvenient.

“Crow,” someone said. “You seen this?”

“No.”

“Your loss.”

I exhaled smoke and looked toward the dance floor instead.

Below us, lights cut through the crowd in slow red flashes.

The phone reached the man nearest me.

“Fuck.” He whistled.

Something in his tone caught my attention. A little too interested. He turned the screen toward another man.

“Bellemere.”

My glass stopped halfway to my mouth. I looked at the screen.