Unseen

Chapter 1

Yvette had never liked the living room. The cavernous space was a showpiece, meant to impress visitors and set them on edge. It wasn't meant for the comfort of the people who actually lived here.

Her father had hired a decorator five years back, a pinched woman who had looked at the then-teenage Yvette as if she didn't match the decor and would have to be thrown out. She had filled the room with black velvet upholstery, modern art that looked like an alien's attempt to understand three-dimensional space, and burgundy walls that would do wonders to cover up the blood if her father ever dispensed with subtlety and had someone killed in here.

Her father used to meet with new business partners in this room. The decor, not to mention the sheer size—the living room took up the entire second floor of the Couvillion mansion—made them feel insignificant, like mere specks of cosmic dust. It had the same effect as staring through a telescope into the vastness of the universe. Except this room was a window into the cosmic scale of the Couvillion criminal empire.

Today, though, the room was full enough that it no longer felt vast. And Yvette hated it all the more.

Black-clad figures stood like statues, matching the furniture as they clutched their wine glasses and spoke in hushed, respectful tones. Or they milled about, keeping their steps appropriately slow and their voices appropriately low, using this as a networking opportunity. Just because they had put their boss in the ground less than an hour ago, that was no excuse to let a valuable chance at making connections go to waste.

They left a ten-foot bubble around Yvette, avoiding her by some unspoken rule. As if her father had died of the plague instead of a sudden heart attack, and she was contagious. Or maybe they simply didn't know what to say to her, when they only knew her as the silent presence at all their meetings with Magnus Couvillion. The fly on the wall. The decorative server of drinks.

That suited her just fine. She didn't want to talk to them either. That could come later, after she put her plans into place.

Which was the optimistic way of saying: after she figured out what on earth she was going to do.

Every so often, someone dared to step into the bubble around her. The conversation always went the same way. They would ask in a near-whisper how she was doing. They would offer an unwanted pat to the arm, or worse, go in for a hug. They would tell her—order her—to reach out to them if there was anything she needed, anything at all.

The part unspoken but implied was that she should go to them, and not any of their rivals. Those conversations, and the surreptitious glances cast her way, told her that while no one in this room quite knew what her role was anymore, they suspected she could be a useful tool to bolster their own power.

She intended to change that perception.

As she stared out from her chosen corner at the sea of black-clad mourners, her heart chest tightened in her chest like a fist searching for a face to punch. Maybe she was the intended target. Maybe heart attacks were contagious.

It would at least break the suffocating hush that had settled over the room as soon as the mourners had walked in.

What would happen if she climbed up on one of the caterers' oh-so-carefully-arranged tables, ripped her modest-but-flattering black dress down the middle, and screamed curses at the top of her lungs? It was a tempting thought. Or it would have been, if it wouldn't have meant more people looking at her. More people asking how she was doing, as if grief were a terminal diagnosis.

A few feet away, three men huddled together by a shrimp platter. She could only make out half of their whispers, but she heard enough to discern the topic. More of the same hushed speculations that had filled the room since the first guests had arrived. Rumors about poison, or an assassination quickly covered up.