By the time I’m in the garage at the house, Kane is waiting for me at the door. He studies me with intensity, intensely unreadable. He’s assessing, questioning, but not talking. God love him and his understanding of how I operate.I’m in my head.

I need to stay there right now.

He backs up to allow me to enter the back hallway and I’m quick to do just that. Once we’re both inside the warm house, I strip off my wet boots and he takes my coat before I follow him to the kitchen. I settle onto a barstool in front of the marbled island, while he prepares, and then hands me a hot Bailey’s coffee with whipped cream. Yes, the dark, dangerous Kane Mendez put whipped cream on my coffee. And still, we haven’t spoken a word.

He joins me, claiming the spot next to me while I sip my coffee, the warm, sweet liquid sliding down my throat and helping me come down about two notches.

Ready now, for more than my own mental ping-ponging of thoughts, I grab my phone, thumbing through photos until I find the image of the jar of blood. I set it in front of Kane.

“That was left for me in the refrigerator of the crime scene.”

He glances at it and then me, arching his dark brow. “The victim’s blood?”

“Pig’s blood,” I say matter-of-factly. “That’s not confirmed, but it’s going to be pig’s blood. I know it.”

He doesn’t freak out but then I don’t expect anything but calm, thoughtful contemplation from Kane. He doesn’t even ask why I make that assessment. He simply asks, “Is this Pocher or a Roger protégé?”

Just that easily he’s already in my headspace. And the question spoken at just the right time grounds me in logic rather than the emotion that had me storming out of Emma’s kitchen ready to kill Pocher.

“Logically,” I say, “the dress and the jar could point to either. Of course, my first reaction was Pocher. We just found out he came back. And when I saw that dead woman and then saw the jar of blood, I was ready to kill him.”

“Andrew influenced that. He already believed it was Pocher when he called you to the scene.”

“True. And it could be Pocher.”

“But your gut isn’t reading it that way. I can tell.”

I sip my coffee and add, “With the dress, and without the jar of blood, this would have read like a classic jealousy crime. The groom was already neglecting the bride and she had a side dude. And yet, it wasn’t a crime of rage. We’re not even sure how the woman died.”

“Meaning what?”

“She seemed to have a rupture from her throat, but there was no obvious cut.”

“Poison?” he asks.

“The new medical examiner doesn’t think so.” My cellphone rings with Lucas’s number where it still lays between me and Kane. His jaw clenches.

“I called him to hack for me, and he’s coming to dinner. And before you scowl, he was going to be alone, Kane.”

He downs his coffee, every last drop, and stands up, his spine stiff. Fuck. I answer the call on speaker. It’s better that way, with Kane’s ear where my ears are right now. “Lucas,” I say, and I don’t warn him that Kane is in the room. If he’s not smart enough to figure that out, he deserves whatever he gets. “What do you have for me?”

“I pulled Danica and North’s records. I’m sending them in a secure file by maildrop for you to accept. But there’s nothing exceptional there to see. And before you bitch, I’m digging deeper, but that will take time.”

“What about the victim and the men in her life?”

“Both her dead husband and her fiancé have donated to various Pocher-driven campaigns. That was easy to pull. Her fiancé has actually donated to your father’s campaign. But Lilah, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in this town who hasn’t pandered to Pocher’s power. And that’s all I have now. I’m drunk. I’m still drinking. No more updates tonight.”

“Yes, but—”

“No,” he says, “and I’m hanging up.” He disconnects.

I grimace and I’d call him back, but I decide better.

Kane at this point has filled a whiskey glass and is leaning on the counter in front of the sink. I stand up and close the space between us. I step directly in front of him and he downs his drink and sets the glass down. His hands are on the counter behind him. He doesn’t even think about touching me and I know it’s about Lucas. Which is exactly why I want him to know that I’m not thinking about Lucas, but rather those donations that connect Emma’s fiancé to my father. And I’m thinking about his words, his declaration that we’re dangerous to the Society. “What if—”

He grabs me and pulls me to him. “If you say that woman died because we’re together, and turn this into another reason to take off my ring, I swear to God, Lilah, I’m done.”

I can be hard. I can be cold. I can apparently be a killer. But I love Kane Mendez. He’s hard, too. He’s cold as ice. He’s forever in control. But he’s not those things with me. And it’s in this moment, for the first time ever, I realize how much I hurt him when I left him. Just how much I cut him.

“I regret every moment we were apart more than you can know. I’m not taking off the ring, Kane.” My hands settle on his chest. “Not ever. I’m not—”

His mouth closes down on mine, his hand on the back of my head, and just that easily, he reminds me I’m human again, capable of wanting, loving, needing, and forgetting all but the moment. But more so, he reminds me that he’s human. He isn’t always in control. He has emotions, torment I can taste on his tongue, even desperation he’d allow no other human to know he’s capable of feeling. I’ve pushed him away. I’ve hurt him. But I’ve always loved him and he doesn’t yet know that I’m done fighting against this, against us.

He just doesn’t know that.

And that’s a problem.

Kane picks me up and I don’t fight him. He has this thing about taking me to his bed, now our bed, as if that establishes some sort of ownership of me and us. Not that I could ever be owned, but deep down, I know we own each other. We always have. We always will. And if that’s what he needs, to feel that ownership, I’m not at war with him. I’m at war with Pocher and the Society. But he doesn’t take me upstairs and to the bedroom. He walks to the living room, neutral territory, and I understand his message. The tide has shifted. The demands have changed. Either I’m in this as his equal or I’m not in this at all. And neither is he.