The storm didn't give until midnight. I stood by the tall windows, watching lightning crawl across the sky like veins of fire. The city down there was small-looking-almost harmless-until I remembered who was watching it from shadows.
Adrian has been strange since Isabella's visit. He disappeared inside the study, and with the heavy door closing, it felt like finality. I told myself it didn't matter that his ghosts were his to keep. Still, the truth is that her words burned in my mind.
You don't belong here.
I simmered in that thought when a voice broke the silence behind me.
"Miss Romano."
I turned. It was Dante-the scarred man with the pale eyes who had escorted me to Adrian's study days ago. His presence always made my skin prickle.
"There's something that you'd need to see," he said.
The sane part, however, did not want me to follow the unreasonable other part- the reckless one that Adrian seemed to ignite every time he was around one.
We wound along darkened halls of the penthouse until he reached what I now realized was a service elevator. It rattled in its descent into the belly of the building, opening into a parking garage dimly lit by flickering lights.
Dante stopped beside a black SUV. He opened the back door, and I froze.
Tied to the seat with blood crusted along his hairline was Adrian's lieutenant, Marco. His mouth was gagged, but his eyes were wide and mixed between fear and warning.
"What is this?" I whispered.
Dante's gaze didn't soften. "Proof."
He reached inside his coat, pulled out a small flash drive, and pressed it into my palm.
"That," he said, "shows your devil making a deal with Salvatore Moretti behind closed doors. If you're smart you'll disappear before you end up like him."
I stared at the flash drive as it threatened to burn me. "Why are you showing me this?"
"Because loyalty is a knife," he said, that Adrian would turn on you the minute it suited him.
And then I heard approaching heavy-footed, purposeful steps within the garage.
Out of the shadows stepped Adrian, a hard-to-read mask on his face. His eyes roamed from me to the flash drive in my hand and something dangerous flickered there.
"I guess you would explain," he said softly, "why you're holding that."
My heart raced. Between Dante's cold warning and Adrian's lethal calm, I knew one thing for sure.
The cut was made.
And I didn't know which side of the blade I was on.