Chapter Eight

Eight

What do you say when you find yourself face-to-face with your family’s mortal enemy for the first time?

Hello.

I think I hate you.

Can I have that crown back?

None of those seemed right, not that it mattered. My tongue was rooted to the roof of my mouth, and my feet were in quicksand. I’d been the one chasing, but Diane’s harrowing stare made me feel as if I was the one who just got caught.

My tongue decided to come off hiatus. “I—”

“Take off that silly mask,” she said. I did, not because she told me to, but because I felt childish wearing a pink night-vision mask in front of her, in her elegant black evening gown and lacy half mask.

My eyes took a second to adjust to normal vision. Loose articles of costumes hung on racks, and broken float pieces, plaster heads and hands, and spray-painted planks of wood and plastic were strewn around the room, some of it piled from the carpet to the low ceiling.

In real colors, not the greens and blacks of my night-vision lenses, Diane was even more surreal. Not just because of who she was, but because, loath as I was to admit this, she was stunning . Tall with flawless deep brown skin and waves of silk-pressed hair behind her shoulders. There was a distinct lack of laugh lines on her face. Something told me she was one of those people who, when she did smile, it was all the more radiant. Mourning eyes were hooded under long lashes. She was heartbreakingly gorgeous, the flavor of beautiful that people write sonnets about. So drastically different from Mom’s pretty, which was all boisterous and loud and glamorous.

I wondered, during their Gambit, was Mom ever jealous of her quietly gorgeous competitor?

Diane tilted her head to the side. “You don’t look like her much. Not even when she was younger. So lanky. Are you sure you’re Rhi’s daughter?”

Was she teasing me? Why did it almost sound like she was serious?

Whatever. Two could play that game.

I licked my teeth. “I can sort of see you in Devroe, but he has more lively eyes. Did he get that from his father?”

She tensed at the mention of Mr.Kenzie Senior and tightened her grip around the tiara.

The tiara. If she was working for Count, no way was she here to steal it. “I’m guessing you’re here for, what, guard dog duty?”

Diane started circling the room, holding the crown with a deceptively light touch. With her other hand, she carried a black clutch.

“How is Devroe doing?”

The question took me aback. Devroe really hadn’t been talking to her?

My peripheral gaze trailed the tiara. Maybe I could make a move for it if she stayed distracted. Keeping her talking wasn’t the worst idea.

“He’s having the time of his life disrupting mine. You raised a shameless flirt.”

“With you? Still?” She ran her thumb over the bottom row of diamonds stacking up the crown. “I hoped if I stepped away from him for a while, it would help him get his priorities figured out, but maybe I’m just not the priority anymore.”

“You’re beat up because he decided he wasn’t cool with murdering a whole family for you. My sympathy is overwhelming.”

She cut a cold glare at me. “I’m not the one who struck first, and not the one who threatened to come back and do worse.”

I paused. “What do you mean?”

“I figured Devroe was going to fall for someone someday, but never could I ever have imagined this.” Diane grimaced, and I knew the distasteful this was me.

Distasteful to her, but was she serious about Devroe? Was she joking when she said he’d fallen for me? If anyone would know the line between teasing and genuine interest, it would be her.

I wanted to probe more, but Diane was already moving on. A threadbare smile broke through her scowl. “You may not look like her, but you sound identical. I was always so happy to hear her voice. Rhi can be so engaging when she wants to be.” Still holding the tiara, she sighed, stopping in front of a massive grated fireplace, a remnant from when this used to be a smoking room in the theater’s older days.

Cautiously, I followed her. Her grip on the tiara seemed looser than before. She was so melancholically magnetic, but I told myself I was only getting closer for the target. One well-done swipe was all it would take, surely.

I stopped about a pace away from her. Never once in a heist had my target or team or anyone just stopped to…gaze sadly into a fireplace.

“Can you answer something for me?” she asked softly.

“I probably shouldn’t.” A patient silence stretched between us. “What do you wanna ask?”

The tiara was only a few inches from my fingers.

There was a desperate glow in her dark irises.

“Were you happy, you and Rhiannon?”

That wasn’t the question I was expecting, not that I knew what I was expecting.

But the way she waited, as if she was desperate to know…

My gaze slipped toward my kicks, the champagne diamonds glinting under the hem of my skirt, and an unexpected fondness swelled in me. I’d been living with a chronic liar and manipulator for eighteen years. Most of my life before the Gambit was spent being smothered under her wings, trapped on that island.

That was the knee-jerk answer. But if I was being honest with myself…

I didn’t hate our isolated island. There were more good times than bad. Days building sandcastles and topping them off with rubies and emeralds. Nights falling asleep in Mom’s lap when I was tiny enough to fit snugly between her legs while I doodled our house’s blueprint on an Etch A Sketch. Watching trash Netflix shows with her and Auntie. Some of those memories weren’t even that far back.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “I was happy, and she was happy.”

Saying that out loud felt like taking a kick to the chest.

It…made me want to talk to Mom. For just a second, all practicality was gone, and even though this was obviously not the time, it made me want to call her.

My gaze was still focused on Mom’s gift, trying to ignore the sudden urge to be wrapped in cocoa butter–scented arms.

I looked back up to Diane, expecting to see her still staring hopelessly out her window, still expecting that same melancholic expression. But that Diane was gone. I was looking at the hurricane again. A furious, vengeful storm. So angry, she was practically shaking.

It startled me so much I took an instinctive step back—or I tried to. Something clanged and kept my arm jerked in place. My meteor bracelet. It pulled taut and tight from my wrist to the fireplace grate. The end of the chain was a tangled and knotted mess. She’d tangled the links around the wrought iron so the second I moved, I pulled it into a knot myself.

Oh no.

Gritting my teeth, and with more pettiness than logic, I tried to shove her back. She grabbed my hand and twisted. I winced. My breath caught as she grabbed me by the braids and tugged so hard, she might have ripped some out. My back arched painfully. I sucked in air through my teeth, snarling at her.

“Happy, hm? Good for her.”

I bit my lip, tasting metal, and still she just kept twisting.

Diane cocked her head to the side, watching me with a cruel distaste. “I heard you’ve been trying to frame Devroe. That’s cute. Obviously, you haven’t been doing it right.” She twisted harder, making me yelp. “Let me show you how you really frame someone.”

With that, she let me go and started striding out of the room, as if nothing had happened. But before she left, she tossed her black clutch at my feet. With the clasp open, the contents spilled out over the carpet. Bracelets and watches and cell phones and car keys.

She’d been planning this since I got here.

Her phone buzzed as she opened the door. “I have the crown. Please let Madame Senator know I’ll meet her at the floats.” Diane opened the door and raced into the hall. “In there…” And now she was siccing the dogs on me.

This was just not my night.