Page 53 of Arrow
Frank scratched the underside of his jaw, running a thumb across the old scar that split his throat in a white, ropey line.
“Your father’s a wounded animal, Harlowe. He’s desperate.” His eyes softened. “Desperate men make dangerous deals.”
“Like selling their daughter to a Romanov?” I asked bitterly.
He left me at my bedroom door, like I was still a child waiting for a bedtime story instead of a woman being staged for a final performance.
As his footsteps faded down the hall, I pressed my forehead against the cool wood, the house trembling under the weight of secrets and unslept ghosts.
I stalked to the window, considering the drop. I remembered watching my brother scale the facade at midnight, a silk tie between his teeth, triggering every motion sensor to reach a girl he could have called on the phone.
“You always went for the hard entrance,” I muttered to his ghost. “And you ended up dead for the trouble.”
The memory lapped through me, old grief clawing at the insides.
Flicking through old texts from Luca, I read through every message, a fossilized joke or a threat crafted with the finesse only brothers possess. I tried to remember his laugh and found I could only picture the last time I saw him alive—pockets full of bullets and a dumb, crooked smile as he dared me to race him up the east stairs before breakfast.
We’d accused each other of cheating so loudly that we woke up half the house, and Frank himself caught us ankle-deep in orange juice and swearing up a storm. I was always faster, only because he let me win, and he died without ever telling me so.
The last text message I received from him said, “Don’t ever make a deal you can’t run away from, H.”
At the time, we were talking about whether or not you could sneak out of Dad’s Christmas massacre and still score blunts from the Russian gang kids on the Lower East Side. I’d called him a coward. He’d called me a pipsqueak. We’d both agreed, finally, that nobody in our family got to run forever.
Tonight, it seemed, even that option was dead.
I stared at the screen, wishing the phone could conjure his voice and turn data into resurrection. Instead, it just made me lonelier. He was gone, and now I was the deal, packaged and branded for slaughter.
Tossing the phone beneath my pillow, I lay flat on the duvet. When I finally rolled over, the room was darker. I’d dozed off, and now the afternoon sun was sinking toward the horizon. I had maybe an hour before Arrow would arrive, expecting me to be dressed and ready like a good little wife-to-be.
I dressed in a wine-colored, long-sleeved dress with the high heels that Luca had bought me the last birthday I had before he was murdered. Velvet straps twisted around my ankles, tying in a bow at the back. After lining my eyes dark and bloody, I painted my lips with the kind of red that stains glass forever, leaving my ebony hair down.
Outside, the early-fall dark poured over Manhattan. My phone chimed.
Arrow.
This time, just a single word—a command—and nothing else.
Downstairs
I ignored it for a minute, walking to my window, scanning the ring of black SUVs that lined the driveway below. They all idled with their headlights on, exhaust bleeding into the fragile air.
Another text.
NOW.
If obedience were the game, I would lose it. That was the point.
But I had nowhere to run, not with the house sealed tighter than a saint’s tomb, and Frank stationed at the end of the hall in full-bodyguard mode, jaw ticking as he watched the seconds lurch by.
“I’m ready,” I told him.
The bruises were visible, and I didn’t fucking care.
Frank gave me a slow nod. If he wanted to warn me, or comfort me, even to suggest I wouldn’t survive the night, he kept it for himself.
He eased open the foyer door, and I stepped onto the marble like I was being led to auction.
Arrow stood at the foot of the front steps, suit perfectly dark against the oily street. His eyes caught the headlights—bright as a wolf’s. Behind him, two of his men stood at lazy-parade rest—hands crossed, scanning the perimeter for threats or maybe just prying eyes.
