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Victorine lowered her arm. “Well?”
Rafe’s eyes burned into mine. Seeing me for the hypocrite I was.
I had to force myself to hold his gaze.
“I was just playing around.” The words tasted bitter on my tongue. “I wanted to see if you lived up to the hype. You didn’t think I was serious, did you?”
“No.” His mouth wrenched to the side in a grotesque imitation of his famous grin. “I didn’t think you were serious.”
Victorine stepped inside. I couldn’t see her face, but I suspected it wore a satisfied smile, the kind a cat wears as it eyes a cornered mouse.
I had the bad feeling we’d played right into her hands.
I dug my nails into my palms hard enough to draw blood. Because if I didn’t, I was going to attack my own mother.
The enforcers snapped silver cuffs on Rafe’s wrists. The smell of burning flesh filled the air. His face contorted, but he didn’t make a sound.
The door closed. A quiet but definite click that echoed in my head like a slam.
My chest constricted.
Rafe would survive. Victorine was too smart to stake him. Take out one of Karoly Kral’s sons, and the Kral Syndicate would come after us with everything they had.
Bold. Take charge.
Yeah, right. I closed my eyes, so disgusted with myself I could barely breathe.
“Let’s go.” Jean-Michel nudged me forward.
I walked down the hall. Shoulders back, spine straight, and shame like acid in my stomach.
2
RAFE
THE PRESENT DAY
The July sun shone hot and bright on Montreal’s swanky Crescent Street. I exited the metro, put on my sunglasses, and glanced into a shop window, checking my glamour.
Yep, I looked just like another American tourist. A short, stocky tourist in a Disturbed T-shirt and running shoes.
I didn’t dare travel the city in my real skin. The Tremblay vampires would be taking their day sleep, but every syndicate included a few dhampirs like me, vampire-human mixes who could move about during the day.
I wasn’t even supposed to be in Montreal. I’d warned my father that sending me to Canada was a bad idea. After Victorine’s men had finished with me, the prima had told me that if I ever touched Zoe again—if I even breathed the same goddamn air as her daughter—she would consider it an act of war.
But Father had somehow learned the real story behind my abrupt departure from Montreal two years ago. Not from me, that was for damn sure. All I’d told him was that the negotiations for the joint venture had fallen through because the Tremblays had imposed too many conditions.
“Use a glamour on the daughter,” he’d said. “Or that famous charm of yours.”
I’d shrugged a shoulder, but my gut had churned with humiliation. I’d replayed that scene in the penthouse a thousand times in my mind. I’d thought Zoe and I had something real, something bigger than the Kral/Tremblay blood feud.
I was wrong.
“I was just playing around.”
Father had insisted I try. My brother Zaq was being held prisoner somewhere in Paris, and Father suspected Victorine was behind Zaq’s abduction, that she’d formed an alliance with Slayers, Inc. to take out me and my two brothers.
If so, it was my fault. I was the one who’d fucked up by messing with Victorine’s precious only daughter, putting not just myself, but Zaq and Gabriel at risk.
