Page 123 of Dishonored

Angelo tipped his chin up, and then glanced over at Aria with narrowed eyes. “Well … it seems you’ve managed to find your way out of yet another one of my arrangements for you, Caesar. I hope this woman is worth the trouble. You won’t like what happens if she’s not.”

She’s to stay here until the day you marry—that’s my demand. Take it or leave it.

Those parting words of Angelo’s before he’d sent them from the office were still echoing in Aria’s head like a bad fucking dream—a nightmare that had somehow become her reality. She didn’t know how any of this had happened. This was not what was supposed to happen!

She trembled all over. From the five-inch patent leather pumps on her feet to the very top of her head—she vibrated with her rage. How she had managed to hide it for this long, she didn’t know. They were just entering the upper, private wing that had become her prison before all that fury she had been holding in finally started to show.

She was going to break her teeth from clenching them so hard. Her nails were breaking the thin skin of her palms because she couldn’t unfurrow her fists.

Caesar’s hand came to press at her lower back as they stepped through the oak doors leading into the wing, and she snapped.

Her hand swung hard, and snapped against his wrist to knock his touch as far away from her body as she could get it. He did not get to touch her now.

How dare he?

Spinning in her heels, she faced Caesar and let him see all that anger and betrayal she had been keeping hidden since he decided to open his fucking mouth downstairs. He didn’t look the least bit surprised to see how mad she was—if anything, he looked smug.

Too fucking smug.

Too arrogant.

Too cocky.

This man was too much of everything!

“You didn’t think you would get off scot free after everything, did you?” he asked.

Aria’s cheek twitched as she replied, “I thought you understood what I needed—we had a plan.”

“You had a plan. I used what bit of it would work for me, and the rest … well, shit happens. What you need isn’t always what everyone else wants. I’ve been told time and time again that the world rarely revolves around me. Maybe it’s a lesson you should learn as well.”

Screw him.

“Since when do you give a fuck about everyone else, Caesar?”

His lips curled at the edge—only one side. A sexy, hateful half-smirk that she might have enjoyed seeing any other time. But not right then.

“Low blow,” he said.

Oh, he hadn’t seen anything yet. She could promise him that, but very little else.

Caesar took one step forward, but Aria refused to let him come closer to her. Not after everything. She took one giant step back. He didn’t even seem bothered or offended by it.

“You manipulated me in to making a bigger war with your family—in to killing your father, and your husband. You showed everyone just how vicious and dangerous you can be, donna. And what? You thought after all of that, he was going to let you go?”

He, she noticed.

Angelo.

Not Caesar, though.

“Killing you would have been the easy choice,” Caesar said, “except I had a better option.”

“For who?” she asked. “Not for me. You’ve ruined everything, Caesar.”

“Have I?”

“How could you?”