King of Greed (Kings of Sin #3) by Ana Huang

Until last night.

“Don’t worry. I won’t touch your precious wife. I simply wanted to say hi even if I shouldn’t.” The flash of earlier emotion resurfaced and disappeared as quickly as before. “If you don’t want people to find you, you shouldn’t splash your face all over the Wall Street Journal and society papers.” Roman brushed past me. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a dinner party to return to.”

He made it to the end of the hall before I spoke.

“Tell me you’re not in trouble again.” I shouldn’t care. We’d cut ties long ago, but a small part of me couldn’t shake off my guilt over leaving him in Ohio. He’d made his choices, and I’d made mine, but once upon a time, he’d been the only real family I had.

Roman stopped, his frame falling so still he resembled a statue backlit by the restaurant lights.

“Don’t act like you care,” he said. “It doesn’t suit you.”



The first half of dinner passed without incident, but I barely tasted my food. I was too distracted both by Alessandra, who sat at one end of the table, and Roman, who sat at the other.

He was up to something. He had to be, and my suspicions only grew after Sebastian admitted he didn’t know him personally. Someone on his team had sent Roman the invite.

Meanwhile, Alessandra was doing her best to pretend I didn’t exist, though I caught her looking at me a few times when she thought I wasn’t paying attention. It should’ve made me feel better. Instead, her proximity to Roman, who was smart enough to detect and exploit the tension between us, made me want to leave dinner and drag her with me to safety, etiquette be damned.

“Stop staring,” Dante said without looking at me. “You’re about as subtle as a sledgehammer.”

“Look who’s talking.” He was infamous for his heavy-handed tactics when it came to punishing people who’d crossed him. Broken bones, comas, the whole shebang.

Nevertheless, I tore my eyes away from where Alessandra was laughing with Vivian and Isabella. We needed to talk about what happened at the bar, which would be easier if I could actually get her alone. I only came tonight to see her, but her friends were like bodyguards who refused to leave her side. I should—

A loud clatter broke through the hum of conversation, followed by a fit of choking and wheezing. It cut off abruptly, and the dining room quieted as I jerked my head toward the previous commotion.

One of the guests had collapsed face down in his plate. Blue suit, distinctive silver hair. Martin Wellgrew, the CEO of Orion Bank.

Sebastian was out of his seat in a flash. “What happened?” he demanded.

“I don’t know. We were talking and then he…he just collapsed,” the woman sitting next to Martin stuttered. “Is he okay? He’s not moving. Oh God…what if…”

I could hear a pin drop while Sebastian checked Martin’s pulse. He sucked in a breath, and I knew what he was going to say before he said it.

“He’s dead.”

There was a moment of stunned silence before pandemonium erupted. Half the guests rushed for the exit while the other half ran to the restrooms, presumably in case the food had caused Martin’s sudden death. They nearly trampled each other in their haste, and I lost sight of my friends in the mayhem. However, I was only interested in finding one person.

Alessandra.

I pushed through the crowd, my heart ricocheting in my chest. A familiar buzz drowned out the mounting hysteria in the room. I didn’t know what happened with Martin, but I needed to see her and make sure she was okay. She could be hurt, trampled, unconscious…

The buzz sawed through my head with high-pitched frequency. Fuck, why was it so hot in here?

Sweat slicked my palms as I searched for brown hair and a red dress. Come on, baby, where are you?

The restaurant was small, and it was chaos as I tried to sort through the crush of people.

Black hair. Black dress. Gray hair. Navy suit. The guests blurred into a generic entity. Someone bumped into me, and I was about to push them off when I looked down and a familiar pair of blue-gray eyes met mine.

Relief knocked the breath out of my lungs. She’s okay.

We stared at each other for a suspended second, our chests heaving with adrenaline, before another guest jostled us and spurred us into action again.

She didn’t resist when I gripped her wrist and wrestled us toward the exit. The police had just arrived on the scene, but we managed to slip into a cab without them stopping us. I was sure they’d follow up with every guest later about Martin’s death, but I had zero desire to wait around and play concerned witness at the moment.

Alessandra remained quiet when I gave the driver the penthouse’s address. She seemed shell-shocked by the evening’s jarring turn of events, and I didn’t blame her. I’d attended hundreds of society gatherings over the years; none of them had ended in death.

Then again, none of them had had Roman as a guest.

I hadn’t seen him since Martin’s collapse. Not in the stampede toward the exit and bathrooms, and not outside the restaurant.

A tight knot of dread formed in my stomach. Between the SEC investigation into DBG and Martin’s death, there was a suspicious number of crises involving the banking industry. I didn’t know where Roman’s sudden reappearance fit in, but it was a piece of the larger puzzle. I felt it in my gut.