Venom & Vows 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 11 - 챕터 20

Caspian is already at the car when we pull up. He takes one look at me, then at Leander, then back at me."He tried to make you change, didn't he.""He tried.""And yet here she is," Leander says, "looking like she belongs on a stage.""That," Caspian says, "was a compliment."Our mother is escorted inside immediately by her security detail. The three of us enter the ballroom together, and I feel it the second we cross the threshold. The weight of every eye in the room, landing on us at once."I am a grown woman," I say quietly, "and entirely capable of handling myself.""Then act like one," Leander says.Caspian chuckles. I let it go.The ballroom is extraordinary. Crystal chandeliers, marble floors, elite guests in gowns and suits worth more than most people earn in a year. Every person here is loaded, criminal, and deeply intimidating in their own specific way, drip immaculate, classy on the surface with something considerably darker running underneath.I cannot read the stares. Som

"You are not much of a drinker?" Maksim asks.I laugh. "I am very much a drinker. But I am here for business, and my father has a very precise understanding of how the three of us behave when alcohol is involved." I glance briefly across the room. "He banned all of us for the evening.""And yet." He nods at the margarita in my hand."This is medicinal," I say.He grins, and it is a genuinely good grin, which I note with the controlled calm of someone who is not down-bad in the slightest. "And if you get yourself into trouble drinking anyway?""I am a princess," I say, with full and deliberate superiority. "Princesses do not get into trouble."I am lying completely. If my father finds out about the margarita, Mrs V will be waking me at a punishing hour every morning for the rest of my unmarried life. I know this. I sip it anyway, bold and stubborn and fearless about the consequences.He leans slightly against the bar, dominant and controlling in ways I am choosing not to examine too clo

Third-person POVThe intelligence arrived from New York at eleven-seventeen on a Friday night.Maksim Orlov was plotting to court the daughter of Viktor Sorano. The gala. A calculated power-play. A clout-grab dressed up as romance.Enzo Valenti received this information with the urgency it deserved. He let out a slow breath, leaned back deeper into Dorian's leather armchair, and resumed sucking on a Twizzler. Black Panther played on across the flat-screen. He fixed his gaze on the man standing at the doorway.Matteo Ferraro. Enforcer of the Valenti Syndicate. Dominant, commanding, and armed with authority and clout that made grown men flinch. He was currently scoffing internally at a situation he found deeply ratchet: being ordered-around and dismissed by an eighteen-year-old with a candy stick. The whole arrangement icked-out something irritated in him. He was lowkey-pissed and pressed in the most cooked, sus way imaginable. A genuine power-move from a teenager, sitting wrong in ever

I scoop Mina into the crook of my arm, toss the empty purée pouch into the trash, and turn toward the hallway. She settles against my chest immediately, boneless and warm, tucking her grey head beneath my chin as though she has been doing this her entire life, which she has.Marco falls into step beside me.We make it approximately three feet before Mina lifts her head, fixes her light brown eyes directly on my brother's face, and hisses. Not a warning hiss. A considered, deliberate, deeply personal hiss. The kind that communicates a specific grievance.Marco stops walking. "Why does she do that? Every single time. I have never done anything to that cat.""Genetics," I say."What?""Being the eldest, I received the best of everything. Superior genes, superior temperament, superior bone structure." I look straight ahead. "You got what was left after me. Rocco got the scraps.""I'm prettier than you," Marco says flatly.I glance down at Mina. She holds Marco's gaze for one more beat, his

"The cleaning crew is already in your office," Marco says, dropping into the chair beside me and flipping open the first of the Asia files across his knee."How long?""Ten minutes. Relax."I do not relax. I open my own file and we work in parallel silence, two brothers running through figures on opposite sides of the same page, which is more or less how we have operated our entire lives. It is efficient. It is familiar. It functions.My father glances up from behind his desk. "Where is Nico?"Marco's jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. "Still in Shanghai.""Che cazzo ci fa ancora lì, quell'idiota?" What the hell is that fool still doing there?Dante snorts. Enzo presses his mouth flat, visibly suppressing it. My father's expression does not shift, but something behind his eyes says he is aware of exactly how amusing they find him when he slips into frustration."He met a girl," I say.Marco adds, without looking up, "He's decided to stay and determine whether she might be someone wort