CHAPTER THREE: DINNER AND WAR

Dinner was a battlefield dressed in linen and silver.

The table stretched long enough to hold an entire boardroom meeting. The chandelier above glittered like a warning, and the wine in my glass was the color of old blood. I sat at one end, in a chair too big for me, while Lucien Blackwood occupied the far side like a king bored by his own court.

He hadn’t looked at me since I walked in.

I’d worn a deep green satin dress. Not for him—God, not for him—but because I needed armor. Something to make me feel strong. But the way his eyes skimmed past me, barely registering my presence, stripped me bare.

The silence wasn’t comfortable. It was calculated.

The clink of silver against porcelain filled the space he refused to break. So I did.

“Is this what dinner will always be like?” I asked, my tone flat, my fingers tight around the stem of my glass.

Lucien didn’t look up. “What do you mean?”

“Silent. Awkward. Like a courtroom sentencing.”

A faint lift of one dark brow. “You’d prefer something warmer?”

“I’d prefer something real.”

He finally set his fork down, fingers steepled in thought. His gaze was a slow, deliberate pull across the table until it landed on me.

“This isn’t a marriage built on warmth.”

“I didn’t forget. But even arranged marriages have dinner conversation, don’t they? Or are we skipping straight to the power games?”

His mouth twitched. Almost a smirk, but colder.

“This is the power game, Ivy.”

My pulse flickered in my throat. I picked up my fork again just to have something to do with my hands. Ate a bite of risotto I couldn’t taste.

“You act like I begged for this,” I muttered.

“No,” Lucien said smoothly. “But your father did. And now you wear my name.”

I stared at him. “You mean like a collar?”

His expression didn’t change, but the silence that followed buzzed with tension. And then he laughed—soft and cruel. Not amused. Pleased.

“You’re sharper than I thought.”

I set my fork down. “You’re crueler than I expected.”

“Am I?” he asked, voice lower now. “You think I’m the villain in this story?”

“Aren’t you?”

Lucien leaned back, regarding me like I was a puzzle with missing pieces.

“I’m a man who gets what he wants. And I wanted Sinclair patents and a wife with enough poise to keep the board happy. That’s not villainy. That’s efficiency.”

I swallowed hard. “And love?”

He laughed again. “Love is a fairytale told to little girls with wealthy fathers.”

I hated him in that moment. Hated him so thoroughly it made my chest ache. But beneath the hatred was something else. Fascination. Because monsters who look like men are still men, and I wanted to understand what had carved him hollow.

“You’re not empty,” I said softly, surprising myself.

Lucien tilted his head. “No?”

“You pretend to be. But something made you this way. And I think you’re still bleeding from it.”

A flicker. Quick as lightning. There and gone in his eyes.

He rose to his feet slowly. “This conversation is over.”

I stood, too. Heart thudding.

“No, it isn’t.”

He rounded the table before I could think better of it. Stopped inches from me. I had to crane my neck to look up at him.

“You think you’re brave,” he murmured.

“I am brave,” I whispered back. “You married me because you needed something. But I didn’t agree to disappear. I won’t be wallpaper in your house, or a puppet at your parties. If you want a ghost, you should’ve picked someone else.”

Lucien didn’t flinch. But his hand came up slowly, brushing a loose curl from my face. I flinched then—because the touch was almost gentle. Almost.

“I don’t need you to be a ghost,” he said. “I need you to follow orders.”

“I’m not a soldier.”

He smiled, dark and bitter. “No. You’re the war.”

My chest rose and fell in sharp bursts.

Without thinking, I shoved him.

Lucien didn’t stumble. He didn’t even blink. But the air between us shifted—electric now. Heated.

He reached for me. Not roughly. Not tenderly. Just inevitably. And then his mouth was on mine.

The kiss was punishment. It was a dare. It was two people trying to erase power lines with heat.

I kissed him back.

Hard. Breathless. Angry.

My fingers curled into his shirt as he backed me against the table. Silver clattered to the floor. Heat poured into my veins.

Then he broke the kiss. His mouth hovered over mine.

“This changes nothing,” he whispered.

I shoved him away again, but this time I was trembling.

“You’re right,” I said. “It changes everything.”

He didn’t follow me when I walked away. Didn’t say a word.

But I could feel his eyes on my back, and the weight of secrets waiting to surface.

And later, long after the heat of his mouth had faded, I found a letter slipped beneath my door.

Just a single line:

“Tomorrow, the past opens. Be ready. —L”