Novels by Lyric Stone

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

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

Briar was seven weeks pregnant.Seven weeks and the nausea came in the mornings now. She had learned to keep crackers on the nightstand. She had learned a lot of small things in seven weeks.Breakfast was toast and tea because that was what stayed down, and Mabel was talking about something she had seen in the market, some overpriced kitchen gadget that she had strong opinions about, and Briar was listening with half her attention while watching the steam rise from her cup.Then Mabel said, in the middle of a sentence about the gadget, "Liam's family lost the distribution contract by the way, Gideon's people moved in last week, and Liam himself has been on border rotation since Monday so I haven't been able to reach him about the next injection and we might need to find another"She stopped.Briar looked at her."The whole beta family," Briar said.Mabel pressed her lips together. "I shouldn't have said that.""Mabel.""It's being handled. Liam knew it was a possibility when he starte

Mabel was waiting outside the hotel entrance on the low stone wall, her bright orange hair visible from halfway down the block. She had two paper cups ready and held one out the moment she saw Briar's face.Briar took it. Her hand was shaking badly enough that the cup tilted and some of the coffee ran down her fingers and she did not notice."Hey." Mabel was on her feet immediately. "Hey, what happened. Are you hurt?""No." Briar's voice came out wrong, too high and too thin. "No, I'm not hurt. I just." She looked at her own hand. "I hit her. I actually hit her. In front of everyone. What did I do, Mabel, what did I just do.""Sit down," Mabel said."I hit Vivienne. Killian's fated mate. In front of his whole family. At his sister's birthday party that I wasn't even supposed to be at." She sat down on the wall because her legs were not entirely cooperating. "What is wrong with me. I keep making everything worse. Every single time I open my mouth something terrible happens and I think

Mabel's parents lived forty minutes outside the city in a house that had been added to so many times over the years that it no longer had a coherent architectural style, just room after room that had been needed and built and made comfortable. There were plants on every windowsill. The kitchen smelled like something that had been simmering for hours. A dog of indeterminate breed was asleep on the couch and did not move when they came in.Mr. Finch took Briar's bag from her before she had finished getting out of the car. Mrs. Finch came out of the kitchen with flour on her hands and said, "There you are, we've been expecting you," like Briar was someone who had been coming here for years and was simply a little late.Briar stood in the hallway and did not know what to do with her hands.They had made up the small bedroom at the end of the hall. There were fresh towels folded on the chair and a spare blanket at the foot of the bed and a glass of water on the nightstand.Briar sat on the