[COMPLETED] The Night Silas Carbone’s Secret Marriage Put Mave in the Crosshairs

Silas kept his promise and asked before touching her again.

That was almost worse.

At the hotel service entrance, he stood half a step away while two men in gray suits swept the corridor ahead. “May I move you?” he asked when a delivery cart blocked the narrow passage.

Mave stared at him. Blood had dried along the side of his hand where she had bitten him. A red mark was rising on his cheek from her slap. None of it made her feel better.

“You may move the cart.”

Silas did.

The top floor of the Marcellus Hotel had no guests, only a private suite divided into bedrooms, offices, and a sitting room with windows overlooking the river. Silas gave her the bedroom at the far end, then ordered his men into the hall. He did not cross the threshold.

“Your phone may be compromised,” he said.

“My life is compromised.”

His jaw flexed. “I know.”

“No. You know men broke into my house. I know the man I’ve been sleeping with has had a wife for four years.”

“Mave—”

“Don’t use my name like it’s a sedative.”

He stopped.

She folded her arms around herself because the anger was no longer enough to keep her warm. “Tell me what I need to know to survive until morning. Nothing romantic. Nothing designed to make me forgive you.”

Silas looked toward the dark windows. “Vivien Creel is alive because she is legally a Carbone. Four years ago, the Creel and Carbone organizations were killing each other over port contracts, territory, and a ledger neither side could locate. Vivien’s father proposed a marriage as a truce. I agreed.”

“Did you love her?”

“That is not information you need to survive.”

Mave laughed without humor. “Then I’ll assume yes.”

“No.” His answer came too quickly to be calculated. “I respected her. I still do. We lived in the same house for six months. We never built a marriage in any sense that mattered.”

“Except the legal one you forgot to mention.”

“I didn’t forget.”

The truth of that landed harder than another lie would have.

Silas continued. “The marriage stabilized the city. It also put Vivien under my protection when her father disappeared. If we divorce publicly without resolving what he left behind, every faction that benefited from the truce has a reason to move.”

“And tonight somebody moved anyway.”

“Yes.”

Mave pointed toward the television in the sitting room, where the news still replayed hospital footage with the sound muted. “Why was she at the hospital?”

Silas hesitated.

She turned toward the bedroom door. “Conversation over.”

“She was attacked.”

Mave stopped.

“Two hours before I was supposed to meet you,” he said. “A car forced hers into a barrier. Her driver was shot. She escaped with a fractured wrist and glass in her shoulder. Somebody alerted the press before I arrived.”

“And you still couldn’t call me.”

“I believed your townhouse was secure.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No.” His voice lowered. “It’s an excuse.”

For the first time that night, he sounded like a man instead of an institution.

Mave hated that she noticed.

A knock came from the suite entrance.

Silas moved instantly, one hand disappearing beneath his coat. “Stay here.”

“You don’t get to order me around.”

“This one is not negotiable.”

“Then neither am I.”

She followed him into the sitting room before he could stop her.

A woman stood just inside the suite surrounded by two security officers. Her dark hair was pinned carelessly at the nape of her neck, and her left wrist was wrapped in a rigid black brace. A thin bandage traced the edge of her jaw. She looked exhausted, furious, and nothing like the elegant rival Mave had imagined while watching the television.

Vivien Creel Carbone looked directly at Mave.

“So,” she said, “you’re Mave.”

Silas’s expression hardened. “Vivien, not now.”

“When would you prefer? After another camera crew identifies her address?”

Mave’s stomach tightened. “You knew about me.”

Vivien’s eyes shifted to Silas. “Apparently I knew more about you than you knew about me.”

Silas stepped between them.

Mave moved sideways so she could still see Vivien. “How long?”

“Eight months.”

The room tilted slightly.

Silas turned. “Vivien.”

“What? You want me to protect the part of your lie that’s still intact?” She looked back at Mave. “I knew he was seeing someone. I knew your first name. I knew he had guards watching your street without telling you. I told him that if he was serious about you, he had to end our marriage or tell you the truth.”

Mave swallowed. “And he did neither.”

“No.”

Silas’s face went cold. “You came here for a reason.”

Vivien’s anger vanished so quickly that Mave noticed.

“Yes,” she said. “One of the men who hit my car was caught at the hospital garage.”

Silas waited.

“He had a photograph of Mave in his pocket.”

The suite became very quiet.

Mave looked from Vivien to Silas. “A recent photograph?”

Vivien shook her head.

“Then what?”

Vivien reached into her coat with her uninjured hand and placed a plastic evidence sleeve on the table.