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CHAPTER ONE

TIFFANY DAVIS PRETENDED she wasn’t affected by the hard stare her brother and father gave her when she entered her father’s office It wasn’t easy to let people she loved pass judgment on whether she’d used sufficient concealer on her scars Soe into the trash and scream, There This is what I look like now Live with it

But her brother had saved her life pulling her fro her in it He still grieved for her groo else Tiffany had lost She didn’t have to rub salt in his wounds

Good girl, Tiff Keep biting back what you really want to say It’s not like that got you into these skin grafts

She ca it was probably ti up that sort of inner dialogue But her harsh exhale caused both men to tense Which made her want to rail all the louder

Being angry all the ti with it, so she shouldn’t bla like this But it still fed her irritation

“Yes?” She clicked her teeth into a tight s patience

“You tell us What’s this?” Christian kept his ar open on their father’s desk The lid wore an international courier’s logo, and the contents appeared to be a taxidermist’s attempt to marry a raven to a peacock

“The feather boa you asked for last Christmas?” Lame joke, sure, but neither man so much as blinked They only stared at her as if they were prying her open

“Be serious, Tiff,” Christian said “Why is the o in my place?”

A claustrophobic band tightened around her insides A year in aon her face again “I don’t knohat you’re talking about”

The frost in her voice made both men’s mouths purse Why did all of this have to be so hard? The touchiness between her and her family was palpable every minute of every day If she was short, they were defensive If she was the least bit vulnerable, they became so overprotective she couldn’t breathe

They’d nearly lost her She got that they loved her and were still worried about her They wouldn’t relax until she got back to norain It made the situation impossible

“Where is it you think I want to go?” she asked in as steady a tone as she could e

“Q Virtus,” her father said, as if that one word sufficed as explanation

She shook her head and shrugged, still lost Did they realize she was in the e worth five hundred million dollars? She didn’t haveas it involved running a multibillion-dollar company, she tried to do it well

“Ryzard Vrbancic,” Christian provided “We put in a request to meet him”

Pieces fell together Q Virtus was that men’s club Paulie used to talk about “You want to s? Why? The man’s a despot”

“Bregnovia is asking for recognition at the UN They’re a democracy now”

She snorted in disbelief “The whole world is ignoring the fact he stole the last dictator’s ht himself a presidency? Okay”

“They’re recovering from civil war They need the sort of infrastructure Davis and Holbrook can provide”

“I’er route? Call him up and pitch our services”

“It’s not that sinized his yet so we can’t talk to him openly, but ant to be the first nunition happens”

She rolled her eyes Politics were so fun “So you’ve set up this clandestine —”

“It’s not confiret there”

“That would be the broad ‘you,’ right? Like the universal ‘they’?”

Christian’s htened He lifted out the feathery contents of the box It was actually quite beautiful A piece of art The blend of blue-black and turquoise and gold feathers covered the upper eyes and forehead and—significantly—splayed down the left side in an eerily familiar pattern Ribbons tailed off each side

It was like looking in theinside her torsoanywhere, especially in public, with or without a crazy disguise