Читать книгу: «The Shadow Game series», страница 3
She had been a lost, naïve, spoiled girl overwhelmed by the City of Sin. And she wasn’t sorry for that.
Now she was no longer lost, or naïve, or spoiled. She was hardened, and strong, and heartbroken. She had made terrible, difficult choices—including murder—but she had survived. She wouldn’t apologize for that.
Vianca would force her to make more terrible, difficult choices, and if Enne ever hesitated to apologize for herself, then she would fail—just like Levi had failed. If someone wanted to call her naïve, then they would. If someone wanted to call her heartless, then they would. It didn’t matter whether she decked herself in knives or pearls. The world would always demand that a girl apologize for herself, but she would apologize for nothing.
And so Enne filled her arms with as many frilled, beaded, silly clothes that she could carry, and she paid with the volts she’d earned through blood.
“You know what would look splendid with this?” the cashier asked her, with the first genuine smile Enne had seen in a while. She reached for the basket behind her and retrieved a pair of white satin gloves. They were delicate, ladylike, and indeed splendid.
Enne pursed her lips, images of the Irons’ signature card tattoos and the Scarhands’ marked palms coming to mind. Vianca had instructed Enne to form a gang, but had “no concern” for how Enne would lead it.
“You’re exactly right,” Enne answered. “But let’s make it two pairs.”
JAC
Last night, Jac Mardlin dreamed of his own death.
It started with a bad decision; he jumped into the driver’s seat of the flashiest motorcar he’d ever seen—white leather seats and a black racing stripe streaking across the hood. He hadn’t intended to steal it; all he wanted was to lean back, close his eyes, and fantasize about owning something so luxurious. But suddenly, the locks on the doors bolted, the keys twisted in the ignition, and the car raced forward at a stomach-lurching speed.
He cursed and fought against the steering wheel. The wind rushed at him so fast his eyes watered, and everything he passed became a blur. Even as he slammed his foot on the brakes and tugged the clutch so hard it snapped, the car still sped on.
Until it drove straight off Revolution Bridge.
Many hours later, in the waking world, Jac eyed his hand of cards and chewed his bottom lip, mentally tallying every foggy detail of the dream. The white from the car’s seat leather made him think he should pick an even-numbered card. But there’d been that black racing stripe, and black always symbolized an odd number, a contrast.
He settled on the four of hearts and threw it down. “Better save your luck, Dove, because—”
Lola let out a wild cackle of victory and snatched a switchblade from the pot of weapons. “You muckhead.” She threw down her own pair of fours on the table.
He scowled. “I don’t like Pilfer. It’s a kids’ game.”
“Then deal a game of Tropps. You don’t have much else to lose.” She shrugged and slipped what had once been his best switchblade into the pocket of her jacket. The nightdress she wore underneath, borrowed from Enne, was clearly several sizes too small and made her look bone-skinny and vaguely feral. Jac had encountered stray cats who looked more charming than Lola did in the morning.
She rested her feet on the table, and he crinkled his nose as he yanked the pile of cards out from under them. “I thought Irons were supposed to be good at these sort of games,” she said.
Strictly speaking, Jac wasn’t half lousy at cards. But the sirens that had blared all through the night in search of his best friend had suddenly gone silent. He twitched his leg restlessly. “I’m gonna open a window.”
“It’s hotter outside,” Lola warned. Both of their foreheads dripped with sweat. It was officially a New Reynes summer.
“I need a smoke.” He stood up and slid the window open. Twelve years he’d lived in New Reynes, and he’d never heard Tropps Street so quiet. Not after One-One-Six, a long dead street lord, shot up every last soul in a private auction house. Not after the casket of Sedric’s father, Garth Torren, had been solemnly paraded outside his casino, as though he’d died some kind of saint.
It was hard to scandalize a city built on sin, a city that had seen it all. But today—more than any other day—the city was shaken to its core.
Jac struck a match and watched it burn like a votive candle.
“I can turn on the radio, if you want,” Lola offered. “But Levi’s probably fine.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Afraid you’ll hear your name?”
He inhaled his cigarette deeply. It was no secret that he worked with Levi; that he lived on 125 Genever Street in Olde Town, apartment 4C; that he covered the Wednesday through Saturday shifts at the Hound’s Tooth tavern. The whiteboots had probably already interviewed his boss, already rummaged through his home and what little he had. He tried to imagine what conclusion they could’ve drawn from his possessions. A loner, this one, they’d say. No decorations. No sentimentals. Jac had lived there for two years and still treated his place like it was temporary—a side effect of someone who’d never really had a home.
“I wasn’t in a good place not that long ago, but I have been lately, or at least in a better one,” he explained. He didn’t normally share these details with anyone, even ones so vague. But he needed to unload his thoughts on someone other than Levi, someone who could feel sympathetic without also feeling responsible. “I guess that’s gone now.”
Levi and Enne had made sure of that last night.
He squeezed his hand into a fist. He knew Levi hadn’t wanted to start that shatz investment scheme that got him invited to the Shadow Game. And Levi had looked out for Jac time and time again, so Jac didn’t feel he had a right to be angry. Hell, he was angry at himself for feeling angry.
But Jac also knew Levi and his reckless dreams. And if Levi was safe right now, then Jac would swear some part of his friend was mucking pleased—even if Levi had put everyone around him in danger.
But he didn’t say that. Instead, he bitterly spat out, “I hate this casino.”
Lola pursed her lips, and Jac waited for her to say something about how, while he’d sworn his allegiance to Levi willingly, she’d been forced to give Enne her oath with a knife at her throat. Or how good people did bad things, and bad things happened to good people, and neither they nor their friends could really call themselves good people anyway. She was annoying and wise like that.
But all she said was, “Deal the cards. You’re clearly very vulnerable right now, and I intend to take advantage of that.”
Jac snorted and tapped his cigarette ashes into the rim of a teacup as he slid back into his seat.
“Enne will hate that, you know,” Lola told him. The teacup was porcelain, covered in some floral design that Enne would find pretty. Jac realized Enne, who’d only lived here for ten days, probably didn’t possess much she could call her own, so he retrieved his cigarette guiltily and pushed the cup away.
Lola leaned over and slid it back toward him. “But fuck them.” The corner of her lips slid into a smile.
Jac barked out a surprised laugh, and the knots in his shoulders loosened. Over the next ten minutes of Tropps, the teacup’s bottom steadily grew coated in ash.
Then the apartment’s front door swung open, and Enne marched inside wearing an outrageous floppy hat, a floor-length jacket she definitely didn’t have on when she left, and at least a dozen bags hanging off of each arm. “I’m back,” she chirped. She set the bags down in a heap by the couch.
“Why are you dressed like you’ve suddenly become a rich widow?” Lola asked.
“I went shopping. Levi doesn’t exactly own anything anymore, does he?” she huffed, collapsing into an armchair as though she’d just finished back to back gloves-off matches in the ring.
Jac raised an eyebrow. “Dressing him now, are you?”
Enne ignored him and gestured aimlessly to all the bags. “I also bought him some medication, since he looked terrible last night. There’s stuff for you, too, Jac. I guessed at your measurements.”
Jac stood up and examined the pile skeptically. “I’m almost afraid to look. What do gentlemen wear in Bellamy? White ribbon boater hats and daisy cufflinks?”
“As if that soiled newsboy cap you wear every day is such a deliberate fashion choice?” Enne countered. Jac cleared his throat, prepared to defend his beloved, patched-up hat to his grave, when Enne furrowed her eyebrows and sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”
“Jac’s been using one of your prized teacups as an ashtray,” Lola said quickly.
Jac glared at her and muttered, “You traitor.”
Enne waved her hand dismissively. “I don’t care. And I didn’t just go shopping. There’s something I want to talk to you both about.” She reached into the closest bag and pulled out a copy of today’s The Crimes & The Times. She tossed it at Jac, who caught and unfurled it. He squinted at the headline for a moment, untangling the words he recognized, but he didn’t need to read them to understand the significance of the two wanted posters on the front.
Lola’s chair screeched as she stood up. She studied the paper from over Jac’s shoulder.
“Three thousand volts,” Lola read under Levi’s sketch. Instantly, all Jac’s resentment from earlier vanished like a puff of cigarette smoke.
His best friend was a dead man walking.
“I’m getting out of here,” Jac breathed. It was still several hours before Levi had asked to meet, but he didn’t care. If Levi was in danger, then Jac would find a way to save him.
Because that was what they did for each other. There was no line they wouldn’t cross. Not even a line of fire.
“Wait,” Enne said sharply. “Turn the page.”
He did, though a part of him already knew what he would find.
“One thousand volts,” Lola murmured, reading his own bounty.
Jac stared at his face with the feeling like there’d been some terrible mistake. Levi was hardly a notorious political assassin, and Jac was barely a second-string bouncer at a third-rate pub. Not that long ago, the two of them had sat on street corners in the Casino District, goading passersby with games of coins and cards in the hopes of conning at least enough for a meal.
“Vianca said there could be a repeat of the Great Street War,” Enne told him, which was the last thing she could’ve said to make him feel better. He supposed she wasn’t trying to comfort him. The clothes she’d bought weren’t gifts—they were necessities. And if daisy cufflinks were what it took to make him unrecognizable now, then he’d happily strut around town like a dandy. “If you want a motorcar to Olde Town, I can call you one.”
Enne’s voice was level, calm, all practicality. For the first time, Jac wasn’t at all surprised that he was looking into the eyes of the person who’d killed Sedric Torren. If she was afraid, she was damn good at hiding it.
“How did you pay for all this?” he asked her, eyeing the shopping bags with suspicion.
“Vianca gave me the voltage.”
“And you took it?” It was Vianca’s fault that they were in this scramble to begin with. And if they all hanged for it tomorrow, the donna would hardly deign to host their funerals.
Enne stood up and held out two more of the bags. “Of course I did. Just like you’re going to take these.”
He hesitated. He wanted nothing to do with Vianca, but that was impossible. So long as he was friends with Levi, so long as Levi was infatuated with Enne and they were both prisoners of the donna’s omertas... They would all be in bed with Vianca Augustine.
“I’m really, really sorry, Jac.” Enne said it like she meant it. Then she shoved the bags into his hands. “But don’t be thick.”
Jac took them with a weary sigh.
“I’m going to call you a motorcar,” she told him. It wasn’t a suggestion. She walked to the other room to find the telephone, leaving him alone with Lola.
“Bossy,” he grumbled.
“No, she’s just the boss.” Lola clicked her tongue. “I guess I wasn’t deserving enough to be showered with expensive gifts.”
Jac reached into one of the bags and fished out the first thing he noticed—a scrap of yellow silk with polka dots. “Here. Take this...”
“Cravat,” Lola finished for him. “And I think I’ll leave that for you. It’ll match your wanted poster. They made you look very dapper, for some reason. Doesn’t suit that terrible scrape you’ve given yourself across your eyebrow.”
Jac sheepishly brushed his finger over the stitches on his browbone, a souvenir from a boxing match he’d lost the other night at Dead at Dawn. His skin was still swollen and tender.
Lola instead pulled out a black felt case and opened it to reveal a leather wristwatch. “Excellent.” She tossed the box on the armchair and buckled the watch around her bony wrist. It hung ridiculously.
“I actually like that one,” he muttered.
“Keep the cravat, Polka Dots.”
Enne returned from the other room. “Jac, the car is waiting for you downstairs. It’ll take you straight to Zula’s. When you get there, can you tell Levi...” She flushed, and Jac had half a mind to crack a very lewd joke, but the other half of him wanted to roll his eyes and stalk out. They might’ve had the good sense not to let anything more happen between them, but he didn’t know why they made things so dramatic for themselves. “Tell him if he so much as opens a window before all of this has died down, I will personally turn him in and collect his bounty. Which, please remind him, is five hundred volts less than mine.”
Jac had braced himself for something sweet and nauseating, so he wound up laughing so hard he wheezed. “With pleasure.”
Then, without warning, Enne wrapped her arms around him in a fierce hug. “Be careful,” she told him.
“Always am,” he managed. But Enne still looked skeptical.
“No, you’re not.”
He shot Lola a smile. “Now’s your chance, Dove.”
“I don’t do hugs,” she said flatly. “Just don’t die.”
“Words I’ll cherish forever.”
After Enne let him go, he grabbed the bags, exchanged goodbyes, and left. He found his driver waiting for him in the alley out back. Before climbing in the car, Jac took a deep gulp of air—his first full breath since he’d entered St. Morse Casino the night before. It didn’t matter how many gifts he received or how much protection he was given; he could never bring himself to think of Vianca Augustine as anything less than despicable.
“I’d like to make a detour,” Jac told the driver, and he gave him the address to his apartment.
Olde Town, much like the Casino District, was quiet and still. Jac peeked from behind his window screen at the streets they passed, at the barred windows and chipped paint. The sunlight came and went as they drove, disappearing behind spires and church towers and reappearing for fleeting moments in the too-narrow alleys.
Jac lived on a large residential street. His building was too old to have central heating or electricity, and on a day like this, he would shove his bed close to the window, drenched in sweat, and listen to his neighbors fighting down the hall while he waited for his shift to start. It wasn’t a great place, but it was far better than his last. There were no bad memories there.
Now, his entire block was cut off with bright yellow signs, informing Olde Town residents that Genever Street was a crime scene. The car came to a slow halt, and Jac stared at the whiteboots standing outside his front steps, speaking to a neighbor of his whom he only dimly recognized. They held wanted posters in their hands.
Have you seen this man before? they probably asked.
Jac fiddled with his necklace. It was a Creed, a symbol of the old Faith. Jac was more superstitious than he was reverent, but it was nice, now and again, to pray for something.
When a priest had first taught Jac to pray, he told him the prayers of a sinful conscience would go unanswered. Jac thought of the volts he’d helped Levi scam—both from the rich and from the Irons. He thought of the wounds he’d left on Chez Phillips to save Levi’s life. He thought of his own anger and resentment and desires, and the ashes left in the bottom of Enne’s teacup.
He tried very hard to feel sorry.
But as he stared at those yellow signs, at what all of this had led up to, he knew he wouldn’t pray for forgiveness. They could all pray for forgiveness when they escaped to a place far, far away from here, where there were no bounties on their heads, where no one knew their faces at all. A place he doubted Levi would ever willingly go.
Or they could pray for forgiveness when they all hanged. That seemed a more likely scenario.
But because Jac Mardlin was an unrepentant sinner who didn’t want to die, all he had left to pray for was mercy.
LEVI
Levi hadn’t forgiven Zula Slyk. Three days ago, he and Enne had arrived at Her Forgotten Histories, Zula’s monarchist newspaper, grasping at their last threads of hope and searching for answers about Lourdes Alfero. Bad news hurt no matter how gently you dealt it, but Zula had crafted knives out of her words, designed to bleed and infect and scar.
And all for what? For Enne to flee to the safety of her old life in Bellamy? She bore Vianca’s omerta. She was a prisoner of the City of Sin, just like him.
As he stepped into Her Forgotten Histories and found Zula sitting at her desk, he glared at the journalist’s serious, unfriendly face and decided he hated her.
“Your shades are darker since you were last here,” Zula said as a form of greeting—though Levi still had no idea what that meant. She had short, curly hair, fair skin, and wore far too much jewelry—most notably a large wooden Creed that hung down past her navel. The black tattoos of eyes over her eyelids sent a shiver down Levi’s spine. “You’ve killed.”
He felt no guilt over killing Chancellor Semper, just as Semper had undoubtedly felt no guilt over almost killing him.
“I’ve survived,” Levi said darkly.
She glanced over him. “Barely, by the looks of you.”
Her Forgotten Histories resembled a typical office, filled with unoccupied desks, an old printing press, and a gnarled gray carpet. It looked like it belonged on the South Side, where middle-aged men carrying briefcases and toiling over paperwork could earn the wages they’d later gamble away on Tropps Street. But unlike those places, bits of Faith merchandise were tucked discreetly around the room—ancient etchings in wind chimes, paintings with Creeds hidden in their background, prayer tokens scattered on countertops. Those would never be spotted below the Brint River; the Faith reminded the wigheads too much of the Mizer kings, who had used the Faith’s lore to gain more political power for themselves. It was technically banned after the Revolution.
“Vianca didn’t give me much of a choice in letting you stay here,” Zula huffed. “I don’t want any trouble. Not from the whiteboots. Not from that gang of yours.”
“There won’t be trouble. I’m an excellent houseguest.”
Zula hmphed like she didn’t believe him, then stood up and slid aside the carpet to reveal a trapdoor. “You’ll be down there.”
As she pulled it open and ushered Levi down the wooden steps, excitement stirred in his stomach. He was a person of interest now. Living a life of whispers and mystery, raising empires out of shadows. Now that he wasn’t bemoaning his future, he could see the glamor in his situation.
Until he smelled the sewage.
Zula pulled the string on a dangling light bulb, illuminating an unfinished cellar filled with dusty, forbidden books; a cot; and, in the corner, a sink and a toilet. The stench wafted from behind a door that Levi guessed led to the sewers—probably to serve as a less conspicuous exit.
It took all Levi had not to retch. Even hooch kept down here would sour.
“Not exactly your penthouse in St. Morse, is it?” Zula asked smugly.
He clicked his tongue. “It was never mine. It was always Vianca’s.”
“It was comfort all the same.”
Levi ignored that comment. “I’m expecting company,” he told her. Jac would meet him here this evening, assuming his friend found a means of safely venturing outside of St. Morse.
“I don’t host playdates.”
“We won’t be trouble. Just let him inside when he comes.”
Zula clicked her tongue and walked up the stairs. Before she closed the trapdoor behind her, she added, “And the girl? Is she this Séance character in all the newspapers?”
“It’s none of your business.” Zula had made it clear she’d rather criticize Enne than help her, and Levi didn’t care that Zula had been Lourdes’s friend. She didn’t deserve to know anything about Enne.
“This will end badly,” Zula snapped, echoing her words from their last meeting, and slammed the trapdoor.
* * *
Two hours later, footsteps creaked upstairs. Levi lay on the rigid cot, attempting to sleep, but he suspected Zula was slamming her drawers and clacking her pens against her desk just to irritate him.
“How long are you staying? This isn’t a hostel,” he heard Zula snap. “And look at you. All those burdens on your soul. They’ll devour you, if you let them.”
“Um... Yeah, well, the bags are actually for Levi.” That sounded like Jac. He was early.
The trapdoor opened, and Jac’s calming aura mingled with the unpleasant odors of the cellar. It wafted in wisps and ribbons and smelled like linen and the color gray. Everything about Jac was gray. His blond hair was more colorless than golden. His irises, his skin...even the ever-present dark circles drooping beneath his eyes. During a bright afternoon, with the sun reflecting off his fair features, you’d almost mistake him for a trick of the light.
Jac thumped down the steps, shopping bags from several ritzy Tropps Street boutiques hoisted over his shoulders. He dropped them on the bed and crossed his heart, as gangsters did for their lord.
“That woman’s spooky,” Jac said, coughing. “And it smells like muck down here.” His face twisted in disgust as he lit a match and waved it around the room.
“You might as well light the whole building on fire,” Levi grumbled.
Jac sighed and resigned himself to breathing through his shirt. “You look terrible.”
“I’ll heal,” Levi responded blandly, even though it seemed like the more time that passed, the more he ached.
“I know you’ll say no, but I’m offering anyway.” Jac gave him a pointed look.
Jac’s split name was Dorner, from a family capable of manipulating pain. Because it was his split talent, his abilities were weaker—he could take pain away, but when he did, he held onto the pain himself. Jac claimed his strength blood talent made him more resistant, that he could heal faster, hurt less, and take more, but Levi didn’t believe that.
Besides, this pain should be his and his alone.
“I’ve never been better,” Levi lied.
Jac pursed his lips. “Well, I brought meds. And clothes.”
“I don’t want any more of Vianca’s clothes.”
“They’re from Enne.”
Levi sat up and eyed the bags with curiosity. He couldn’t believe she’d had time to go shopping, especially on his behalf, but he was surprised to find a full new wardrobe inside. The clothes weren’t exactly his style—all pinstripes and subtle and black—but that was probably the point. Levi needed to be less recognizable.
As if he’d heard his thoughts, Jac handed Levi a tube of something. “Hair dye,” he explained. “It’s for both of us.”
Levi snorted as he popped open the bottle of pain medication. “Do we have matching outfits, as well?”
“Don’t be thick. You look terrible in plaid.” Indeed, Jac pulled out a blazer identical to Levi’s in every way except for the print. The color was burgundy, the stitches silky and light-catching—something flashy that Reymond would’ve worn. The thought hit Levi with a wave of grief. If Reymond were alive, Levi would’ve been hiding with him, not with a woman he detested and barely knew.
The raven black hair dye would suit Levi’s dark complexion, but he was hesitant to lose his natural hair. The coloring—copper at the roots and black at the ends—was the mark of an orb-maker, and it was as much a part of his identity as his brown skin, as the Iron ace and spade tattoos on his arms, as the memories of every boy and every girl he’d kissed. Even though Levi didn’t make orbs, his talent, his family, and his past still defined him. The dye felt like an erasure.
But that was exactly why he needed it. His hair was too recognizable, especially when orb-makers were so scarce. A bounty hunter wouldn’t even need to know his face to guess his identity.
As they washed their hair out in the sink, Jac quietly asked, “Have you seen the papers?”
“I have,” he answered, not meeting his friend’s eyes. He’d hoped for a little more time before telling Jac about Harrison. Maybe it was unfair to stall, under the circumstances, but Levi had just dyed over centuries of Glaisyer history and pride in his hair, and he could use some extra time to pretend at least one part of his life was still normal.
“Do you think it really will be like last time? The war?” Jac asked.
A thrill danced in Levi’s chest—a dangerous, irrational thrill. Because Levi might have raised himself on the legends of the Great Street War and made heroes out of masterminds like Veil and Havoc, but all of those stories had ended in ruin.
The only thing he should’ve felt was fear.
“I doubt it will be like last time,” Levi answered, even if a small part of him hoped that wasn’t true. Despite his many recent and frightening brushes with death, the thought of failure scared him more. He would rather die a legend than end his life in anonymity. Jac would probably punch him if he heard him say that, though.
Once Levi finished rinsing out the dye, he nervously checked his reflection in the mirror. It was silly to claim he looked drastically different, but he felt like he did. He wondered what his father would say to see him like this. He’d probably grunt that, because Levi’s two talents clashed with one another, Levi had never been much of an orb-maker, anyway.
Without the mark of his blood talent, Levi’s head of tight, short curls resembled those of most people from Caroko, the city where his parents had been born. Levi was actually pleased with his new look. He’d never noticed how closely he resembled his mother.
Jac, meanwhile, appeared nearly unrecognizable. The black hair contrasted harshly against the pallor of his skin, as did the new pair of thick-rimmed glasses. Apparently Enne had provided them with a full dress-up set. The plaid burgundy suit, the bow-tie, the hint of his tattoos beneath his collar—Jac was remade. Something slicker and more wicked.
“How do I look?” he asked, grinning wide enough to show his dimples.
“You look sharp. What about me?”
Jac examined his all-black ensemble. “Like a menace.”
Levi smugly rubbed some hair grease through his curls, then straightened his jacket. He didn’t normally wear this much black, and the platforms on his shoes made him unusually tall, but he did feel good. Fresh. A new look for a new beginning.
Zula’s voice echoed above them. “I wasn’t expecting you,” she said, sounding annoyed. “You’re asking quite a lot of my hospitality.”
“I thought we were in agreement about Mr. Glaisyer,” the intruder responded.
Levi and Jac warily met each other’s eyes. Levi would recognize that voice anywhere, and sure enough, he sensed the faint wisps of the donna’s green, acidic aura from upstairs. Jac turned a similar shade of green himself.
“He’s downstairs,” Zula told her.
Levi’s skin prickled as the trapdoor swung open and Vianca Augustine descended into the grimy cellar. She scanned the room, narrowing her green eyes—an exact match of her son’s, he realized. She passed over Jac with disinterest, as if he might as well have been wallpaper. Her gaze, instead, fell on Levi, and his stomach clenched.
“You’ve changed your hair.” Vianca pouted. “You used to be so striking.”
Levi rolled his eyes. Dyeing his hair had been a hard decision, but it had nothing to do with his vanity.
“How have you found your accommodations here?” Vianca asked. She ran a finger along one of the liquor shelves and inspected the dust.
“Who wouldn’t want to live in a cellar that smells like muck?” he said flatly.
“Missing St. Morse already?”
Levi would gladly inhale the odors of sewage every night if it meant avoiding her casino. Even if he could barely breathe, he was still breathing somewhat free. And if he had his way, he’d find a more suitable place in Olde Town as soon as possible. Maybe even tonight. As long as Vianca had a means of contacting him, what did she care where he lived? She and Zula didn’t exactly seem like friends.
“Why are you here?” he asked. He didn’t like the idea of Vianca paying him visits whenever she wished, or Jac witnessing exactly how helpless Levi was in the donna’s presence.
“Because I’m in need of you, of course.”
She twisted the emerald ring around her fourth finger, identical to the one Harrison also wore. Levi resisted the urge to wipe his sweaty hands on his jacket; his betrayal was probably written plain on his face.
“I spoke with Miss Salta this morning. Since you’re already so close...” Vianca looked at him pointedly, as though accusing the two of them of something. Perhaps she assumed their relationship was more than a casual acquaintance. The thought didn’t sit well with Levi. All of his weaknesses and desires were Vianca’s to exploit, and he didn’t want Enne to face Vianca’s torment more than she already did. “I thought a joint assignment would be appropriate.”
Бесплатный фрагмент закончился.
