Page 7 of Arrow

THREE

HARLOWE

Ispent the next six weeks hating my father with an intensity that felt ultraviolet. I didn’t sleep, not because of the nightmares, but because flaming out was preferable to whatever waited in the dark—where wedding dresses came out of coffins, and Arrow’s face hovered just behind my eyelids. I washed the blood out of my mouth and painted my lips a red so sharp they could be mistaken for a weapon.

The dinner to announce our arranged marriage was two weeks after the conversation with my father, but Arrow Romanov didn’t show up until the day before the party. He sent a package ahead—a Cartier box containing a collar.

Platinum, inlaid with obsidian, heavy enough to function as shackles, etched with the phrase ‘fiat pax.’

Let there be peace.

I laughed so hard that I cried and wore it to the ‘celebratory’ dinner out of spite.

It was held in a restaurant reserved for New York’s most dangerous clientele, which included mobsters, actors, and politicians who pretended not to recognize each other beyond the caviar tower. He wanted a show of our engagement.

My father arrived late, trailed by a swirl of bodyguards, while I sat next to Frank, knocking back martinis. After an hour of polite hell, Arrow Romanov made his entrance.

If the air already ached with violence and old money, then it became suddenly charged when he walked in.

That’s how Arrow moved, like he was made of electrical currents.

He wore a slate-gray suit, tailored to fit his muscular frame like a glove. His hair was black, slicked back like a proper mobster, and when he looked at me, his eyes were so pale they seemed illuminated from within, not gray so much as a blade dipped in ice and set to glint in the dark.

Arrow didn’t make a show of kissing cheeks, as was the tradition at these farcical mafia affairs. Instead, he walked the length of the banquet hall with a confidence so absolute it was offensive, and stopped with a tap of his knuckle against my chair.

“I see my gift suits you,” he said, voice low, gravely from years of chain smoking, or whatever his family did instead of talking.

I swallowed and forced a smile. “I didn’t have time to resize it for the dog.”

His mouth twitched.

Whether it was a smile, or a threat, I couldn’t tell.

He pivoted away from my father’s outstretched hand, ignoring the theatrics, and circled until he could lean over my ear, his mouth so close I could smell the whiskey on his breath.

“It would be a shame to waste something so pretty on a mutt.”

I felt that in my marrow, and I hated myself for how it made my skin buzz. I tasted the shame, sweet as syrup, and turned my head as if searching for Frank, but Arrow’s hand came to rest on my shoulder—a brief, proprietary claim, enough to make my spine lock up.

There was a sliver of pressure, exactly where the nape of my neck met the collar, and the whole table fell still at his touch. He hadn’t even glanced at my father, but I felt Giovanni’s rage simmering across thirty feet of white tablecloth and crystal.

Arrow bent lower. “You look good in obsidian, Harlowe. Have you ever tasted it?”

He was baiting me.

I didn’t flinch or answer, but I did hold eye contact. His stare was surgical and unblinking. If I’d started to believe the rumors about Arrow’s coldness, his perceived lack of appetite, he slashed that fantasy open and made me bleed on the floor for daring to be so naïve.

The room, full of laughter and knives-drawn politeness, faded away. The world narrowed to the two of us, a silent dare strung taut between incisor and jugular.

“Always thought you Romanovs had a thing for gold,” I said, my voice sugary sweet, but laced with venom.

His expression didn’t change, but his thumb pressed a hair deeper into my pulse.

“Gold’s for graves,” he murmured. “Obsidian’s for the living.”

If anyone in the room noticed that Arrow Romanov was on the verge of licking my pulse, they pretended not to. In our world, power shifted by degrees, not by declarations.

This was the closest thing to foreplay I could expect before being fucked for a lifetime.