She took that like she expected it. “Then maybe tonight you pretend,” she said. “At least until they start giving speeches.”
“What do I pretend?”
“That you’re just… here. On a palace, remember?” Her shoulder bumped mine. “Not a Kingpin.”
I swallowed down the reflex to argue. She didn’t need me to win the point. She needed me to try it.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?”
“For ten minutes.”
“Ten,” she repeated, amused. “Generous.”
“It’s a start.”
I looked across the dining tables, thin stems arranged like calligraphy. Someone had spent a lot of money to make it look like no money had been spent at all.
“Careful,” she murmured, following my look. “You’re in danger of appreciating something.”
“I appreciate. I just don’t clap.”
On cue, applause rose from the aft, where a small crowd had formed around two men comparing port contracts like baseball cards. The kind of reunion story where success sounded like the part you didn’t say out loud.
I felt it before I saw it: a heat at the base of my skull. Not a threat. A habit.
Luca.
He was moving along the upper walkway, jacket off, sleeves rolled once, jaw set. Two of our cousins flanked him like they wanted a favor and an audience for it. If they’d cornered me, it would have turned into a game I don’t play. They knew better. They’d tried Luca instead. On the surface, a smart choice. He smiled for the world more than I did.
Except he wasn’t smiling.
I watched his eyes. Flat. Cutting. He listened to whatever pitch they were saying, then slid his gaze over the rail like a man looking for air.
He saw me first.
My mouth tilted. I lifted my head toward the deck like come on, then, and he sent me that glare he saved for when he’d been polite three times too many. I smirked. Couldn’t help it. I knew they had him tangled in talk about votes, permits, cousins of cousins with careers that needed saving.
Then Luca’s glare disappeared. Not because of me.
Because he saw her.
His whole face changed in a breath. He cut the conversation clean, a single word that made two men shut their mouths without understanding why, and stepped away.
Emilia felt it too. That quiet shift in the air like pressure dropping. She didn’t turn at first. Her body knew my brother was coming before her mind did.
“You’re late,” she turned.
She wasn’t wrong.
“You good?” I asked. I could tell by the tension in his shoulders.
He nodded once at me—yeah, I’m good, yeah, I’ll kill them later—and then his focus was all on her.
“You look…”He didn’t finish.
He didn’t have to. We were both trying not to look, and failing.
