Page 96 of Arrow

I bared my teeth in what could generously be called a smile. “You’re enjoying this? Collaring a Virelli bitch?”

His smile was dark with satisfaction. “You’ve yet to see how much I can enjoy it. But there’s beauty in your resistance.”

Before I could respond, a tall man with silver-streaked hair approached us, his smile too wide.

“Arrow Romanov,” he said, extending his hand. “And this must be the famous Harlowe Virelli. The rumors don’t do you justice, my dear.”

His grip tightened on my waist. “Senator Caldwell. I wasn’t sure you’d make it tonight.”

The Senator’s gaze lingered on my throat. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world. The merger of two dynasties? It’s historic.” He turned his attention to me. “Your father and I have done business together for many years, Miss Virelli. He never mentioned how . . . captivating his daughter is.”

“My father doesn’t discuss me with his business associates,” I said coldly. “He’s too busy selling me to the highest bidder.”

The Senator’s eyes widened slightly, but his politician’s smile never faltered. “Well, I must say, the arrangement seems to be working out beautifully for all involved.”

Arrow’s thumb pressed into my spine—a silent warning. “Senator, if you’ll excuse us, I believe it’s almost time for the announcement.”

The Senator nodded, his gaze lingering on me a moment too long before he melted back into the crowd.

Arrow’s breath brushed my ear. “Play nice. These people aren’t your friends, but they’re not all enemies either.”

“Are you sure about that?” I watched several pairs of eyes track our movements across the room. “Because from where I’m standing, this feels like walking into a den of wolves wearing a meat dress.”

A genuine laugh escaped him, low and warm against my skin. “You’re the most dangerous thing in this room, Harlowe. Remember that.”

We did a full circuit.

My father sat forking caviar onto a line of toast points, eyes glimmering with mischief or warning. He saluted me with the tip of his knife.

Next to him, an elder Romanov who looked embalmed—lips deader than the cod on his plate, muttered something in Russian that made the young wife at his side nearly choke on her amuse-bouche.

Arrow leaned in, breathed, and whispered, “Smile harder for the man who sold you.”

I caught his meaning instantly. His breath was minty, but his words drew blood. I bared my teeth and let my hand rest lightly on the inside of his elbow, a gesture so practiced in the families that even infants learned it before their first solid food.

He led me to where my father stood with the caviar knife in hand, showing his age in the thickening jowls and phony bonhomie, but still so alive that he scared me more than any Romanov ever could.

Giovanni watched us, eyes calculating, even from across the room. For all his faults, he was a master at reading a situation, assessing how firmly Arrow had me under his control.

“Arrow Romanov,” he said, opening his arms like a favorite uncle, his accent softening the name into something silkier. “And my beautiful daughter. Don’t you both look ready to rule the city?”

My father leaned in to kiss my cheek, but Arrow’s hand on my hip steered me subtly aside, so the kiss landed somewhere by my ear—a fatherly air-kiss, almost sweet, if you didn’t know the history.

Giovanni’s eyes catalogued my body, the dress, and the necklace at my throat. Noted but didn’t remark, like a mortician ticking the last details before dressing the corpse for viewing. “I hardly recognized you, Bella.⁠* He’s pumping you full of iron-rich blood up at the manor?”

I smiled. “I got a taste for it from you, Father.”⁠*

My Italian was as sharp as his, and he caught the hairy edge of insult, but he beamed anyway.

“Always such a wit, daughter. Arrow, tell me, how do you keep her in line? Electric prod? Or more of a pharmacological approach, hm?”

Arrow only smiled, and the ripple in his jaw told me he was gnashing down on something worse. “She keeps herself, Giovanni. You raised her well.”

A beat, then another. The ‘Oh, you think so?’ registered in Giovanni’s eyes, before he broke the wall of parentheses with a wolfish laugh.

“Well, she gets that from her mother,” he said.

Two men trading handshakes made of glass. My father let his gaze settle on the crimson A again, and for a heartbeat, I thought he’d rip it off my neck with his bare teeth. He reached for a flute, clinked it against Arrow’s, then caught my thumb in his fist, hard enough for the knuckle to pop.