Page 26 of A Vicious Love

“Nothing,” I said.

Harrison’s brows rose. “That answer insults us both, sunshine.”

“It was nothing,” I repeated, brighter. “He’s just stressed. The hotel and everything. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“He should not have spoken to you that way.” Marcel’s voice went flat.

Emmie squeezed my hand. “Come sit with us.”

I wanted to.

I really did. But Jamison had told me to stand where I was placed.

He hadn’t meant beside him exactly, but he had meant something. He always meant something. There were rules with Jamison, even if he never bothered explaining them. I just spent my life discovering them by being punished when I guessed wrong.

“I should probably find him,” I said.

Emmie’s fingers tightened. “Sienna.”

“He’s in a bad mood.”

“He is always in a bad mood.”

Harrison took a sip of his drink. “Tonight he’s making it everyone’s problem.”

I smiled because I was supposed to, but it didn’t work.

People in our world had been raised to understand engagements as contracts first and cages second.

I found him near the western bar.

He stood with two men from the Elric family and one woman I vaguely recognized from a shipping dynasty.

His whiskey sat untouched in his hand, which meant his mood was worse than I thought. Jamison drank when irritated. When he forgot to drink, something dangerous had taken over.

I approached quietly and stood just behind his left shoulder.

The woman looked at me first. Her eyes softened with pity before she controlled it.

I hated pity.

I smiled at her anyway.

Jamison knew I was there. His shoulders changed.

He kept talking.

“Your father doesn’t get to restructure terms after the fact,” he said to one of the men. “He signed with Crow capital because he needed Crow protection. Protection gets expensive when people start setting our hotels on fire.”

The man paled. “No one is suggesting⁠—”

“You are suggesting,” Jamison cut in. “Badly.”

I stared at the floor near his shoes.

The conversation stretched for several minutes. Jamison was brutal through all of it. He dismantled arguments until the people holding them looked embarrassed to have tried.

When they finally left, I took a breath.