Page 128 of Arrow

And that scared me more than anything else ever had.

The ballroom reeked of money and pretense. Crystal chandeliers sparkled overhead, casting fractured light over the sea of snakes dressed in tuxedos and blood-colored gowns. I was leaning against a marble pillar, half-drunk on whiskey and boredom, when she walked in.

Harlowe Virelli.

I’d seen her in photographs, of course—Giovanni’s precious daughter, the one he kept hidden like a Fabergé egg. Protected. Untouched. Off-limits.

But no one warned me she’d look like that.

Like a sin carved out of moonlight and flame.

Like a storm that forgot how to be quiet.

She wasn’t trying to be noticed—that’s what made it worse. Her black satin dress didn’t scream for attention, it whispered. Whispered fuck you in every sway of her hips, every flick of her lashes. Her eyes were two bonfires I couldn’t stop staring into, and she walked like she knew exactly how dangerous she was.

Not to the room.

To me.

And when her gaze found mine across the ballroom, something twisted in my chest like a knife. I should’ve looked away.

I didn’t.

She raised a glass of champagne to her lips and sipped slowly, deliberately, listening to the girls around her talk in exaggerated hand motions, looking uninterested in the socialite gossip. Finishing her glass, her tongue lapped the last gold drop from the rim.

Three men in her periphery faked interest in their wives as they followed her with their lizard brains. Two girls in her circle leaned in, their voices pitched in nervous feuds, but Harlowe never once broke in their scrutiny.

God, that mouth.

I’d spend eternity on my knees if she asked, just to feel it wrapped around my cock—to watch her swallow me down.

Someone touched my arm. I didn’t bother to look at their face—I already knew their name, their lineage, their credit score, and the number of minutes until they’d make themselves irrelevant. Manhattan was nothing if not efficient. Small fingers, manicured hands. Her French was barely passable.

I shrugged off her touch the way you shake off static, and watched the clock on the wall tick down the minutes until I could make a respectable exit. My job was to be seen, not to dance. This was always the deal—show the flag, haunt the margins, let the legends of Arrow Romanov stretch another inch in whatever direction the city decided.

But then her laughter cut through the room—a sound like broken glass wrapped in electricity—and every muscle in my body went rigid. My cock hardened. My hands fisted.

That laugh—smoke and riot and ruin.

She was dangerous, that was obvious. Dangerous in a way those surgically-enhanced socialites could never be. Too pale against the black dress, with a bruised-mouth smile and eyes that calculated angles of escape rather than moments of surrender. She drifted through the negative space other girls couldn’t even see. Where they preened and posed, she bent boredom into a blade and tested it against every throat in the room.

I wanted to own that laugh—make her scream my name instead. Watch her fight me and lose and want to fight again.

She’d already ruined me without knowing my name.

Our parents had staged tonight as a reconciliation—a burial of hatchets that only meant someone, somewhere, was sharpening the knives before the real war started.

Taking my time crossing the room, I watched the currents of power bend, watched the old men at their power-centers clock my movement and triangulate the meaning, already texting their shivering wives or jittering assistants to record: ARROW, ZEROING ON THE PRIZE. THE ROMANOV BOY IS HUNTING. SOMETHING’S ABOUT TO BREAK.

I didn’t give a fuck what they thought. I wanted her under me. I wanted to feel her resist and fail. Wanted to fuck the defiance out of her and watch her come back, asking for more.

She had been mine the second she looked at me like I was just another obstacle to overcome.

Harlowe stood with Frank, her head tilted, that dangerous voice of hers pitched low. Frank was the old Virelli fixer and personal bodyguard, still built like a condemned church.

There was no humor on his face as he watched me approach. Frank never liked me and never made an inch of apology for it. But tonight, even the old men respected the photo op.

She cut her eyes to me without moving her body, like a cat clocking a mouse and evaluating, “Will I bother?” Her smile flicked on in increments, the wattage calibrated to annoyance.