Chapter 23 · Silk and Steel Wire

The lock clicks, and I'm already swinging.

I don't have my dagger. Lucian took it in the car, along with every other thing I had. So I'm using the brass lamp I ripped off the nightstand an hour ago.

He catches it one-handed. Like I tossed him a pen.

"Put it down, Bianca."

"Go to hell."

"Already there." He pries the lamp out of my fingers and sets it on the glass table without a sound. "Sit."

"Your guard outside has orders about my kneecaps. Real romantic."

"He has orders about a lot of things."

Rain hammers the window behind me, fast and hard, like somebody's throwing gravel at the building. Forty floors up, and I can still smell the salt in it. My wedding robe is half off one shoulder. I yank it back.

Lucian doesn't look at the shoulder. That's what scares me. He looks at my face like he's reading it for a lie.

He drops a tablet on the table. Silvio's file glows up at me. Morgue photos. A signature. My mother's name.

"Read it again," he says.

"I've read it six times."

"Read it a seventh."

So I do.