Page 54 of Arrow

Not that they’d find any.

The Virelli compound was a fortress with ornate pillars, baroque stone, and stained with centuries of blood and the ghosts of better families. They could have buried me out back next to the roses, and no one would ever know.

My father was nowhere to be seen, probably hiding in his study.

Fucking coward.

Arrow’s gaze started at my heels, moving up my dress, cataloging every inch before locking onto my face. He studied the bruise on my cheek, then the cut on my lip, almost hidden beneath my makeup.

Almost.

His eyes narrowed, then he moved to me, voice low and raw enough to strip a living nerve. “Who did that?”

I shrugged, because it made the cut on my mouth flex. “You’ll have to narrow it down.”

Arrow’s eyes went from storm cloud placid to blood-glinting, but there was no explosion, no grand swerve into violence. He put his hand, palm flat, to my cheek, and turned my head to examine the bruise like I was a delicate relic he was cataloguing for later theft. His thumb traced the curve of my jaw.

For the length of one ratcheting heartbeat, my body went weightless with the force of being seen. I could do nothing but stare.

“Was it your father?”

The way he said it made it clear he already knew.

I wanted to deny it, but that would be a lie, and I was done with lying for men. So I nodded, barely. Arrow’s jaw ticked, a single flicker of violence behind his mask—there and gone.

My blood chilled as I watched him walk past me toward my father’s study. Once he rounded the corner, his men kept their hands on their guns, preparing for a war.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I looked at Frank, and he looked at me, neither of us moving. Then, my feet started running toward the door, right as Arrow exploded back across the marble, holding my father by the throat, dragging him into the foyer.

Blood trickled from my father’s mouth, staining the gold of his incisors. I’d never seen Giovanni Virelli subdued. He fought like a rabid thing, clawing at Arrow’s arms, trying to twist loose.

But Arrow was the stronger animal. He’d been bred for this kind of show.

Frank tried to intervene, hands up. “Arrow—don’t⁠—”

Arrow’s men had already stepped between them, guns drawn, and it became clear who owned the room.

I looked around the room, and my father’s men were looking at each other, lowering their guns.

They were afraid of him.

Arrow slammed my father down onto the marble, one knee on his sternum, and his forearm pressed to his throat. In another life, the urge to help my father would have twitched in my spine.

Now, I only watched, almost calm, as Arrow bared his teeth.

“Touch her again, old man, and I’ll put you in the ground like the rest of your fucking ancestors.”

Arrow’s words were a hiss, a snarl of power, not shouting, because shouting was for men who needed to prove they were in control.

My father gasped. “She’s my daughter—She’s a Virelli⁠—”

“She’s whatever the fuck I say she is,” Arrow spat, and then he pulled out his handgun and pointed it at my father’s head.

He was going to fucking execute him in front of me, leaving his brains all over the pristine white marble floors.

The click of the safety, the cold metal, all of it was a ritual, as old and holy as confession. I flinched, not for my father, not for Arrow, but for the ghost of a girl who still believed there was a limit to hunger.