Twisted Throne

Lyra

The photograph trembles between my fingers. I look down at the photograph again. The little boy can’t be more than a year old, dark hair and bright green eyes, with one tiny hand wrapped stubbornly around a building block.

An unfamiliar, sharp twist aches deep in my chest—something primal and entirely uninvited.

Slowly, my gaze lifts. Dante hasn’t moved.

He is watching me, waiting with an unsettling patience, as if he had already lived this exact moment a hundred times inside his head.

The silence in the room is suffocating, the air too thin to breathe. I tighten my grip on the paper, the edges crinkling under my thumb.

"Who is he?" The question leaves me in a whisper.

"Someone worth killing."

"What does that mean?"

Dante doesn't blink. He just tracks the movement of my lips.

My voice grows stronger, fueled by the sheer frustration of his stillness.

"Why does he look like you? What is his photograph doing in a file about my father?"

I wait. One heartbeat. Then another. The silence stretches until it feels deliberate, every passing second tightening around my throat.

"You know what?" A bitter laugh escapes me. "Forget it."

I clutch the photograph against my chest and take a step back. "I don't know what game you're playing, but I'm done."

I turn sharply toward the office door. It doesn't matter if it's locked. I'll pound on it until someone opens it. Behind me, Dante doesn't call my name. He doesn't tell me to stop.

The absence of his voice unsettles me more than if he'd shouted. I reach the door and grab the sleek metal handle. It doesn't move. I twist harder. Nothing.

A pulse of panic flares through me. I press my thumb against the biometric scanner beside the frame.

A harsh red light flashes.

Access denied.

My stomach drops. Slowly, I turn around. Dante hasn't moved from his sit. His expression is unreadable.

"You locked me in."

"You were told not to leave."

My disbelief erupts into anger. "You don't get to imprison people because they refuse to marry you."

"No." His voice remains maddeningly calm. "I imprison people when walking away would put lives at risk."

I stare at him. "What does that even mean?"

He doesn't answer. Instead, his gaze drops briefly to the photograph still clutched in my hand, before rising back to meet mine.

I march back toward the desk, every step fueled by equal parts fear and fury. I slam the photograph flat onto the cool, polished wood between us.

"Then explain this." I jab my finger toward the little boy's face. "Is he your son?"

"...Yes."

The single word knocks the breath from my lungs. My eyes fall back to the photograph. The little boy smiles up at me, oblivious to the way my world has just shifted.

My throat tightens. "When?" I ask quietly. "When did you have him?"

He holds my gaze without answering.

A bitter laugh escapes me.

"So that's it." I shake my head, unable to look at him.

"You ask me to marry you. . ." My voice trembles despite every effort to steady it. "All this time, you've been asking me to become your wife. . . and you already have a child."

My eyes remain fixed on the photograph. He can't be more than a year old. About the age my own son would have been.

Pain squeezes around my heart so suddenly I have to swallow against it. For one impossible moment, jealousy and grief become the same emotion.

I don't even know who I'm angry with.

Dante, the woman who gave birth to this little boy, or fate itself.

A memory flashes without warning; Green eyes laughing across a tiny café table. Dante reaching over to steal a chip from my plate before I could slap his hand away.

"You're impossible," I'd laughed.

"And yet you keep saying yes to dinner."

The memory vanishes as quickly as it comes.

Then something nags at me.

I frown and look down at the open file again. The photograph isn't sitting in a family album.

It's inside an investigation file.

My gaze snaps back to Dante.

"Wait. . ."

I lift the photograph slightly.

"What is your son's picture doing in a file about my father?"

Dante remains silent. Instead, his unwavering gaze is piercing as he stares at me.

"Why won't you answer me? Do you enjoy this? Watching people tear themselves apart while you stand there saying almost nothing?"

For the first time since I walked into the penthouse, Dante closes his eyes—just for a fraction of a second. When they open again, they're colder than before.

He sets his whiskey glass down with a quiet, deliberate clink. His fingers curl briefly against the edge of the desk before relaxing. His hand settles on the dark wood right beside the photograph. Not touching it. It looks like he's protecting it.

For the first time, I see something beneath the control. Not anger. Not impatience. Something far more dangerous.

"My son's name is Cassian," he says.

His voice is quieter now, rougher around the edges. The name settles somewhere deep inside me, heavy and permanent. Cassian. He isn't just a face in a file anymore.

I lower my eyes to the grainy image once more, my thumb gently brushing over the little boy's face.

"Cassian," I murmur.

I swallow the lump in my throat and look back up, refusing to let Dante see me break. "What is Cassian's photograph doing in this file?"

Dante studies me before dropping a bomb. ". . . because your father has been searching for him."

My breath catches. "What?"

"For over a year."

The words refuse to make sense.

"Searching for him?"

"Do you remember what I told you?"

I frown. "You said my father has spent the last year trying to find him. I swallow the lump in my throat. "But that still doesn't answer what his picture is doing here?"

Dante inclines his head. "You're not asking the right question, Lyra," he says, his voice drop-dead quiet. He leans in closer across the desk, his green eyes burning into mine. "Ask me why your father wants him dead."