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1
ZOE
TWO YEARS EARLIER
Iexited the limo, squared my shoulders.
Bold. Take charge.
The moon was a hazy crescent in the indigo sky. Montreal’s downtown was alive with humans enjoying the summer night. They carved a cautious path around me like minnows avoiding a shark.
The Tremblay Ice Princess was recognized everywhere.
I entered the chic little hotel, my bodyguard at my heels. The lobby was all wood and steel, the walls charcoal gray. My strappy red high heels tapped an excited, this-is-really-happening rhythm on the polished maple floor.
“Mademoiselle Zoe.” The night manager’s eyes widened. He hurried around the desk. “I’m afraid there’s been a mistake. We don’t have a record of your reservation. But don’t worry, we have a lovely suite—”
“I’m here to see a guest.” My tone said that was all the information he’d get from me.
“Very good.” He jerked his chin at his assistant, who hurried to call an elevator.
“Wait here,” I told the bodyguard.
Jean-Michel had been with my mother Victorine from the beginning, one of the vampires who’d come with her from France to found the Tremblay Syndicate. The wily old Frenchman was now a top soldier, slim, elegant and lethal as the silver stiletto strapped to my thigh.
He moved closer. “You’re sure about this?” he asked in an undertone.
I stifled a sigh.
Jean-Michel didnotagree with this midnight visit to Rafe Kral’s penthouse. Not that I’d told him why I was there, but you can’t hide much from a man who’s guarded you since you were in diapers. I might be twenty-four, but to a vampire Jean-Michel’s age, I was a half-filled page in a tediously long novel.
I stared at the elevator’s floor indicator light, willing it to move. But it appeared stuck on the fifth floor.
“Kral isn’t going to attack me in the heart of Tremblay territory.”
“You can’t know that.”
I set my jaw. “Is it so hard to believe he likes me?”
“Of course not. But he’s Karoly Kral’s youngest son. He’s been raised to believe the Tremblays are the enemy. Just because your mother and Karoly signed a treaty to end the blood feud doesn’t change that. And now, he’s in town to negotiate a joint venture with us. He has everything to win by seducing you.”
I shook my head. I was saved from answering when the elevator doors opened—finally—and a human couple emerged, dressed for a night out and so wrapped up in each other they nearly bumped into me.
Jean-Michel moved to block them. “Watch your step.”
The woman looked at me and whitened. She elbowed the man.
“C’est la Princesse Zoe,” she said in a stage whisper that I didn’t even have to be a vampire to hear.
“Désolé,” said her companion. “We are truly sorry.” He curved a protective arm around the woman and hurried her out of the hotel.
I stepped inside the elevator and pressed the button for the ninth floor. I turned to face Jean-Michel, whom I’d instructed to stay in the lobby.
He folded his arms over his chest. “Damn it, Zoe. He’s using you."
I narrowed my eyes. The old vampire might be the closest thing to a father I had, but when all was said and done, he was my bodyguard, not my conscience.
“Maybe,” I replied. “Or maybeI’musinghim.”
