Novels by Lyric Stone

Briar was lost in her fantasy, but in the next moment, she saw Liam gently shake his head. He was warning her. Briar came to her senses. She no longer wanted to be the naive girl who was always expecting to be loved.Killian stood by the hospital window, his back to Briar. The tension in the room was thick enough to choke on. Outside, the rain had stopped, but the atmosphere inside remained turbulent."I saw her, Killian," Briar said. She was sitting upright in the bed, her hands still instinctively shielding her stomach. "Vivienne was with him. In the alley, before the rogue wolf attacked me. She was talking to him like they were friends. She did this to me. She wanted him to hurt me."Killian turned slowly."Vivienne is many things, Briar, but conspiring with rogues is a death sentence in this pack," he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous low. "Are you sure your mind isn't playing tricks on you again? You were terrified. You were in pain.""I am slow, Killian, but I am not a lia

She knew that he was tall and had immense strength, and even using all her strength, she couldn't compete with him. So she bit him.His hand was clamped over her mouth and nose and she could not breathe and she turned her head the half-inch she had and sank her teeth into the flesh between his thumb and forefinger as hard as she could."FUCK!"He yanked back with a sharp curse and she used all of it, both arms coming down to wrap around her midsection, knees pulling up, curling her body into the tightest possible shape with her hands pressed flat against her stomach. She made herself into a ball around the one thing that could not be hit.The next blow caught her shoulder and snapped her sideways. She did not uncurl.Another one across her back, hard enough that her vision went white at the edges. She pressed her hands tighter against herself and tucked her chin and stayed curled.Her face hit the alley floor. Cold stone. The smell of wet concrete and old garbage and her own blood from

"Just in time," she said. "I've been cooking. Come in." Vivienne pointed to the apron on her body. Vivienne held the door for Eliza and smiled. "I'm so glad you're here. Killian will be happy too."She was so considerate, making Briar seem rude and impolite.Eliza came in and set her bag down and looked at the kitchen where something was actually simmering on the stove. "You've been busy," she said."I like to keep busy," Vivienne said, already moving back toward the pot. "Sit down. It's almost ready."Briar went upstairs.---Eliza leaned against the kitchen doorway and watched Vivienne cook."Briar was different today," she said.Vivienne's stirring did not pause. "Different how?""I had a certain idea of her. Based on what you told me, mostly." Eliza said it plainly. "You said she was jealous of everything, that she embarrassed the pack, that she had stolen money from pack accounts, that she had deliberately spread rumors about you to the elders.""I said I believed those things,"

Briar yanked her hands away from her stomach.Too late. She knew it was too late. She pressed them to her sides and made herself look at Vivienne directly."I'm not pregnant," she said."You just grabbed your stomach like""I have a stomachache! I always do that when my stomach hurts, I hold it, it's just a habit!" Her voice came out too fast and she knew it. "And I've been eating too much lately because everything has been terrible and I stress eat, okay? That's why I look different. That's all it is."Vivienne looked at her hands. Looked at her face. Looked at her hands again."Stress eating," she said."Yes.""That explains the stomach.""Yes! Can you stop looking at me like that?"Vivienne tilted her head slightly. She was still looking at Briar with that focused, private quality, the expression of someone turning something over very carefully.Then the front door opened downstairs.Killian's footsteps in the entry hall. His keys on the table. Then his voice coming up the stairs,

Briar stared at her."What are you doing in my house," Briar said. Vivienne’s voice was smooth and sweet like poisoned honey. "I’ve actually been staying here for the last three days. Don't be mad, sweetie. I’ve been having these terrible, awful nightmares lately. The doctors said it’s stress. Killian was so worried about me that he insisted I stay here. I feel so much safer when I’m close to him. I hope you don't mind.""I do mind," Briar said. "I mind a lot, actually.You have your own house, You shouldn't be in my house. You shouldn't be in his bed."Vivienne blinked. "Briar.""Don't." Briar turned back to the stove because looking at Vivienne's face was making her chest tight with something hot and not entirely manageable. "Don't do the voice. I know what the voice is for."Briar felt a hot flash of anger. It felt like a physical weight in her chest. A few weeks ago, she would have cried and asked Vivienne why she was taking her husband. She would have believed the lie about the

Eliza Vane did three shifts a week at the hospital's nursing station reception desk. She came in at nine and left at one and spent most of the time between looking at her phone.Briar arrived at eight fifty-five with a container of coffee and a plan Mabel had described as optimistic.The plan was simple: be present, be helpful, let Eliza get used to her. Eventually ask about the compound.She set the coffee on the desk. Eliza looked at it. Said nothing. Briar took that as a neutral sign.There was a supply cart in the corridor that needed moving to the second floor. Briar volunteered before anyone asked. She got the cart into the elevator fine. She got it out of the elevator fine. She misjudged the turn into the supply room by about six inches and the cart clipped the doorframe and the top tier shifted and went over.Gauze rolls. Tongue depressors. An entire box of latex gloves that opened on impact and scattered across the linoleum in every direction.She crouched down and started co

Lena's POVHe gave me a brief tour that first evening, the kind that covered function rather than feeling: kitchen, laundry, the study I was not to enter without reason, the terrace that required a key code, the emergency contact list posted inside the hall closet.My room was at the end of the long corridor, opposite end from his.Dante carried my bags without being asked and set them inside the door. I thanked him. He nodded and left.I stood in the doorway and looked at the room.It was a guest room in the structural sense. Good furniture, clean lines, a window that faced east as Salvatore had mentioned. But I had passed two other guest rooms on the way down the corridor, their doors standing open in the casual way of rooms that are not currently in use, and something about this one was different in a way I could not immediately locate.I stepped inside and stood still for a moment.The light was wrong. Not wrong badly, wrong specifically. The overhead fixture was off and the room

I watched my mother's face move through several expressions in rapid succession. Confusion first, then the beginning of understanding, then something I had not expected: grief."Salvatore," she said. Her voice had changed entirely."It is not a subject for discussion beyond this room. I'm telling you because it is the relevant fact and because you need to understand that Lena will be safe. In every sense.""How long?""It doesn't matter how long.""It matters to me."I looked at the curtained window. "Thirteen years."She made a sound that she quickly suppressed."You should have told me," she said."There was nothing to tell. There is still nothing to tell. It is simply a fact." I paused. "Lena is safe. That is the only point."Isabella was quiet for a long moment."Three conditions," she said. "She calls me every day. I have the right to visit without prior arrangement. The moment the threat is resolved, she returns here.""Agreed.""And Luca."I met her eyes."He put his hands on t

Salvatore's POVThe call came in at 11:47 PM Rotterdam time.Marco's voice was flat in the way it only got when he was controlling something. "Mrs. Venturi was taken this afternoon. West Village. Dante lost her when she exited through the side entrance. Gabriele and Dante recovered her approximately three hours later. She is physically intact. Minor bruising. Luca Corleone was present at the location."I said nothing for three seconds."Get the plane ready," I said. "I'll be at the airfield in forty minutes."I did not finish the Rotterdam meetings. I left a single message with Lorenzo to handle the remaining two days of negotiations with whatever authority he could project, and I got into a car and went to the airfield.We landed at six twenty in the morning. I was at the estate by seven.Marco met me at the gate. "She's outside," he said. "Garden. She couldn't sleep."I didn't go inside first. I went around the side of the house, through the gate in the garden wall, and found her.Sh

Lena's POV"Turn around," I said.Dante glanced at me in the rearview mirror. "Ma'am?""I said turn around. I want to go to Salvatore's office."A pause. "Mr. Venturi is in a meeting—""Then he'll have company." I met his eyes in the mirror. "Turn around, Dante. Or I get out here and walk."We turned around.---The Venturi Group's Manhattan offices occupied four floors of a tower in Midtown. I had been here twice before. Both times I had been escorted, managed, contained.I walked through the lobby without stopping at reception and took the elevator to the top floor.The assistant outside Salvatore's office stood when she saw me coming. "Mrs. Venturi, he's in a—"I opened the door.There were two men I didn't recognize seated across from Salvatore's desk, both in suits, both turning with the startled expressions of people unaccustomed to interruptions. Salvatore sat behind the desk, his pen still in his hand, his eyes moving from the door to my face with an expression I couldn't read.

Lena's POVThe announcement had been made four days ago, at what Isabella described as "a small gathering".I hadn't been present for the meeting itself. but What I gathered was this: Salvatore had stood before the family's inner circle and stated that in light of the Moretti situation and the possibility of surviving loyalists seeking retaliation, his sister-in-law would be placed under his direct protection until the threat was neutralized.Direct protection. The phrase had sounded almost considerate when Isabella relayed it to me, her hand pressed to her chest with evident relief.Then I met the four men who would be implementing it.Their names, as far as I could determine, were Irrelevant, Also Irrelevant, Still Irrelevant, and Dante — the last one being the one who spoke, who made the decisions, who materialized at my elbow at precisely the moment I least wanted anyone at my elbow. He was somewhere in his thirties, square-jawed, with the polite expression of someone who had been

Lena's POVThe chair beside me was empty for approximately eleven minutes after the main course was served.Then Gabriele materialized into it, carrying his wine glass and the particular energy of someone who has decided to be somewhere and sees no reason to justify the decision."The conversation at that end of the table," he said, settling in with easy confidence, "has turned to shipping insurance. I have strong opinions about shipping insurance, but none of them are interesting." He nodded toward the older cousins clustered near Salvatore. "You looked like you were having a more civilized evening over here.""Isabella was telling me about a restoration project in Palermo," I said."Much better." He topped off my water glass without being asked. "What do you work on at the museum? Isabella mentioned Flemish, but she may have been guessing.""Northern European, primarily. Provenance research. The unglamorous end of art history.""Provenance is never unglamorous." He said. "Every gap i