Chapter 268: Is he trying to trap me?

Kalisto looked at his son for a long time. There was no shock in his face. There was no anger either. There was only a deep, slow satisfaction, the kind a man feels when the tool he has been sharpening finally cuts.

"Then you know what to do," he said.

"I do."

"You know who is standing in your way."

"Viktor."

"The husband." Kalisto nodded. "The commander of forces. The one who looks at you like a dog looks at another dog’s bone." His voice dropped. "Get rid of him. Quietly, cleanly, in a way that cannot come back to us. Then the girl is a widow, and she is alone. And she is yours."

He tapped the cane once on the floor. "And the empire with her." Shemmel did not answer at once.

He stood very still. The fire was cold behind his father, and the room was dim, and the old man’s face was half in shadow. Somewhere beyond the walls the music played on.

Then a slow, hard smile spread across his face. "Yes," he said. "I will win her." He said it softly, almost lovingly.

"And all of this will come with her. A bonus prize." He turned his head, as if he could see through the wall and across the hall to the girl in the white gown. "I can almost see it. She will fight me at first. She will spit and scratch. But in the end, she will come to me." His voice dropped lower. "She will open up to my warmth, and she will forget the other one’s name."

He lifted his hand.

Slowly, with a sound like a stone being ground against a stone, he closed it into a fist. His knuckles went white. He held it in front of his chest as if victory was already a thing he could grip.

"I will have her," he said. The men in the room looked at each other. Nobody spoke. Kalisto smiled and leaned on his cane.

Out in the grand hall, the music swelled. Sienna stood near a tall window with Viktor beside her, and she was thinking about files. She was thinking about the lab on the other side of the house and a wall covered in papers with her name at the top.

But at the edge of the room, a small figure in silver-white stood watching the doors. Carina had been counting.

She had counted the men who left the table, one at a time, and the doors they went through. She knew every face. She knew who came back and who did not. She had been given a task, and she meant to do it.

The old man in purple was gone. His son had followed him. And so had too many others. Carina’s hand closed slowly around the stem of her glass.

—

The music was loud, but Sienna was not listening to it.

She stood beside the tall window with a glass of water she had not touched. She smiled when someone looked at her, and she nodded when someone spoke. All the while her eyes moved along the walls, slowly, the way they had moved in the courtyard that afternoon.

Guards.

There was one at the main doors. One at the service door. One at each of the side entrances, standing in the shadow of a pillar with his hands folded. They were not rude about it. They did not stare. But they were there, and every one of them was awake.

"Four at the doors," she said under her breath. "Two more by the stairs."

"Five," Viktor said. He did not turn his head. "One is behind the curtain." She almost smiled. He had seen it too.

"We cannot leave together," she said.

"No." He lifted his glass as if he were making a toast to nothing. "That would be the first thing they watch for us walking out hand in hand." His voice was very calm. "You take the east door. I will take the west. We will meet at the corridor to the main hall"

"And if someone stops us?"

"Then we are only two people who got lost looking for the bathroom."

He took out his phone, as if to check the time. His thumb moved over the screen for three seconds. Then it went back into his pocket. Marcus, he thought. A short message. Just in case. He looked at her once, and the look said everything. Be careful. I will be right there.

She nodded. She set down her glass. They had taken one step apart when a voice spoke softly behind them.

"Are you okay?" It was Helena.

She had crossed the room without a sound. She stood a pace away in her pale gown, with a glass of untouched wine in her hand, and she looked like any wife at any party. But her eyes were quick and bright, and they moved over Sienna’s face like fingers.

"I can take you out of here," she whispered. She did not move her lips much. "If you want. Tonight. Just say the word."

Sienna looked at her.

For one second, she wanted to say yes. She wanted it so badly that her chest hurt. She wanted to take her mother’s hand and walk out through the nearest door and not stop until the white house was only a stain on the horizon.

Then she thought of the Don’s face, and the crown on her head, and the lab behind the wall.

"Why is he making me the owner of everything?"

She said it all at once, in a rush. She forced her mouth into a smile, wide and loving, the kind a daughter gives her mother at a party. Behind her teeth, her voice shook.

"Is he trying to trap me? Like he did to you?" Her smile did not move. "What happens to you now? Does that mean you are free?"

Helena’s face did not change. But her fingers tightened on her glass.

"Smile," she murmured. "They are watching."

"I am smiling."

"Everyone is watching."