Page 4 of The Boss
It was the way she had made him sleep.
The elevator opened. He stepped out and headed for his car. He looked down at his palm one more time. The lion looked back up at him, dark and certain.
“Mary,” he said again, and this time he let the smile come, slow and hungry. “We’re not done.”
Chapter 2
LEIF SEVERIN’Sfist hit the oak door with the kind of force that should’ve summoned the police. He didn’t care. The night was thin and brittle and full of things he couldn’t name.
The lion on his palm pulsed like a heartbeat, black and incandescent, an accusation and a promise all at once. He’d stared at it on and off for the whole drive, willing it to be some trick of light, some smear from a crowded club. It hadn’t been. It had burned itself intohim.
The lock clicked and the door swung open. Cade Dante filled the frame like a threat made flesh—shirtless, gun loose in one hand, the rest of him taut muscle and command. He sized Leif in a breath. Behind him, Elise slid into the doorway, silk robe barely tied, hair a dark tumble, bare feet whispering across marble. Her face went white the second she sawhim.
Leif Severin shoved across the threshold like a storm, completely ignoring the gun leveled at him. His face was dark with fury, his palm already raised, thrusting it straight into Cade’s face without hesitation.
“What the fuck is this?”
Cade blinked, stepped back.
And froze.
Elise stepped forward, her breath catching as her eyes locked on Leif’s outstretched arm. Wordless, she reached for it, hand curling around his wrist as if needing to touch the truth with her fingers. Her thumb brushed the edge of the Brand, her voice stunned. It glowed, sharp and binding.
“That’s a Dante Brand. What are you doing with one?”
Cade’s voice had gone quiet, dangerous. “An excellent question, wife.”
Leif’s hand gave a single twitch before he clenched it into a fist and forced it open again. “It hit in the middle of the night,” he said, voice hard and clipped. “Lit me up from the inside, like fire under my skin, like something alive trying to break out.”
He shoved his hand forward again, eyes blazing. “And when I woke up, this—this fucking Dante lion—was burned into my hand.”He stepped in, nose to nose with Cade. “So tell me what the hell that means.”
Cade’s eyes stayed locked on the mark, his voice dropping into something flat and final. “There’re only two explanations.”
“Which are?” he bitout.
“You slept with a Dante.”
Leif’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t sleep with Dantes. What’s option two?”
Cade’s voice dropped, quiet and lethal. “Then you are a Dante.” He shoved the door closed and gestured toward the living area. “Come in. Sit. And explain.”
Leif tried. He went through it fast and ugly. The Alabaster Club, the way she stood apart from the glitter, how the emerald silk had seemed to move with a life of its own. The look she’dgiven him the minute their gazes collided. The dance that had been more a challenge than an invitation, the way her hand had been warm inhis.
The rest of it he kept to the edges, tasting memory but not stripping it bare. Despite that, he told them enough. Lust, laughter, awoman’s name pulled out of the air like a lie—Mary—and then waking to an empty bed and a hand that told a different story.
Elise took his wrist again, her fingers trembling as they brushed the black lines. Heat pushed into her skin and her face shaded to something like a child’s frightenedawe.
“It’s real,” she whispered. “It’s real, Leif.”
Cade’s jaw tightened so hard his neck corded. “This is impossible. Dante brands only appear for a Dante and their soulmate. They don’t appear on outsiders.”
Leif considered the old geography of his life, Severin edges and margins, curl inward around him. He’d spent years knowing precisely where he belonged. His family had taught him the borders. They’d printed them into him after every mistake his father made. None of that mattered now. The Brand sat on his palm like a trespasser that wouldn’t be moved.
“I don’t care what the rules used to be,” Leif said. “It’s on my skin. So we deal with what we have.”
Cade’s mouth flattened. “No. We don’t run the Dante story from whatever shows up in a stranger’s fist. We convene my brothers. We see the Brand in daylight at Titus’s estate. We close ranks. You don’t tell anyone until we figure out whether this is a fluke, atrick, or something far worse.” He said the last word like a promise to himself.
Elise’s hand tightened on Leif’s forearm. “Please, Leif. Don’t—don’t go tearing through the city tonight. Don’t do anything rash. Wait for morning. We’ll be there. We’ll help you.”
