“Argh!” I snarled as I slammed the passenger door behind me.

Matthias drummed his hands on the wheel. “Anything I can do to help?”

“You have a pillow I can scream into?” I asked.

“Not on me.” He chuckled. “But when we get back to my place, you can have your pick of the ones on the couch.”

I dropped my head against the seat, smiling. “Thanks. You’re true blue, Hartford.”

“I try.”

Our eyes met across the car, lingering for a moment.

“You should smile more often,” I told him. “It looks good on you.”

Whoa. My mother must have really thrown me for a loop. The compliment slipped out without so much as a hint of a second thought.

Matthias narrowed his eyes, the aforementioned smile staying in place. “Are you flirting with me, Ms. Vaughn? What would the other suitors have to say about that?”

I laughed. “First of all, it’s Lady Vaughn.”

“Ah, my deepest apologies.”

“I’ll let it slide.” I grinned. “And secondly, as for the other suitors, I don’t see any of them here and you don’t seem like the bragging type.”

He chuckled again. I decided I liked the sound of his low, rumbling laugh. It suited him. Understated but layered. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

I shrugged one shoulder. “Besides, it’s not like my opinion really matters. You’re all doomed to beat one another to a pulp, regardless of how I feel.”

His mouth hardened, his lips going back to a firm line. “And on that note …” He turned the key in the ignition, the SUV’s engine roaring to life. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.”

“Works for me,” I said.

He backed down the long driveway and I noticed my mother watching from one of the upper windows. Guilt wound around my stomach, clenching at me. I ignored it. She’d made her choices. I would always love her. She was my mother. But she’d made it very clear I was on my own in this fight.

The back end of the vehicle poked into the street and Matthias used the end of the driveway to turn around and head in the direction of the city. I cast one glance back at the window before we sped past. She was gone.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” I said after a few minutes.

Matthias glanced at me and offered a small smile. “I don’t recall you giving me much of a choice in the matter.”

I laughed softly. “That’s true, I guess. Although, technically, you did get us past my dad’s thug. I’m pretty sure that makes you an official accomplice to my escape.”

“What can I say? I negotiate for a living. I went on autopilot.” He grinned in a self-satisfactory way that would normally annoy me, but for some reason, didn’t.

The guard my father posted outside the door to Matthias’s penthouse was two seconds away from calling my father when Matthias stepped in and explained that while he might make the baron happy with his report, he’d be depriving the baroness of seeing her daughter. While he left the rest unsaid, it was clear from the look on the guards’ face that he knew my mother’s reputation all too well.

Matthias assured the man I wouldn’t be out of his sight the entire time and that if anything went wrong, he’d take the fall. Only then did the guard put the phone away. When he offered to accompany us, Matthias shifted and asked who would be watching the front door of the condo. The guard eventually agreed to stay and we made our getaway.

“It’s my job to find a way to help people see reason. Once he understood his choices, he was quite amiable, don’t you think?” Matthias asked, still smiling.

“Yes. Quite.”

Without directions, Matthias drove through the historic community. He didn’t speed or give any indication he was in a hurry. Spring was waking the trees around the hollow, their branches no longer bare and spindly. The dusky light made for a nice drive, though I’d long wondered what it would feel like to walk the streets in daylight, the sunshine pouring down onto my skin. As a bornling, I’d never had the experience, but listening to turned vamps talk about the things they missed post-turn, the sunshine was usually at the top of the list.

After a few minutes, we left the hollow and merged onto the freeway that would take us back to the heart of New York. I watched Matthias out of the corner of my eye, wondering if he’d ever stared out a car window and wondered what it would be like to be something different. Nearly twenty-four hours had passed since our strained introduction and my initial assumptions about him were coming undone a little more with each one that passed.

“I’m surprised your phone hasn’t been ringing off the hook today. Don’t you have to check in at work?”

Matthias ran a hand over his jaw. “Technically, I’m on a leave of absence.”

“Aha.” I gave him a sly grin. “You messed up?”

Traffic cluttered the freeway and we rolled to a stop. He glanced at me, frowning. “Who says I did anything wrong?”

I cocked my head and flashed an easy grin. “I might have missed out on a few years of gossip, but I still know how things work around here. You mother runs the Hartford House and that includes overseeing all of the business dealings. As the heir, you’re no doubt her second-in-command. If you’re taking a leave, it’s basically a grown-up time out.”

His eyes darkened. I’d struck a nerve.

Interesting.

“I run Hartford Enterprises. Not my mother. The decision to leave the company temporarily in her hands was …” His jaw clenched. “Mutual.”

My smile widened. “Uh huh. And I’m Glenda the Good Witch.”

He looked me over. “Your pink cupcake dress at the dry cleaners?”

I laughed, the joke catching me off guard. “Yes, actually. And my tiara is being re-jeweled.”

“Aha. Sounds expensive.”

“You have no idea.”

He chuckled and we began moving forward again as traffic broke apart ahead of us. “Actually,” he said after a moment. “My mother wanted me to spend all of my spare time practicing for the fights. I tried to tell her that was unnecessary, but she insisted. So, until this whole tournament is over, I’m stuck in limbo.”

“You and me both, pal,” I muttered.

“At least you’re guaranteed to walk away in one piece,” he replied, a hint of bitterness in his voice.

Not that I could blame him.

We didn’t speak much after that. I stared out the passenger window, my mind churning over different possible backstories for the man sitting beside me. He’d made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with the tournament and that entering had been at his mother’s request-slash-command. But why was he going along with it? Surely he was a smart enough man to find a way to talk his own mother out of it. Wasn’t that what he’d said, it was his job to negotiate? Why did it fall short when it came to his family?

I got the distinct feeling there was a whole lot more to the story than he was willing to share. He was hiding something. A secret? Possibly a lot of them. I scraped through my memories, sifting and picking apart the details surrounding my experience with the Hartford family. As a young vamp, I’d been forced to memorize details on every Court family.

Melanie was the one who taught me most of the histories and family trees. She’d been forced to study it all herself in the decade and a half before I came along. My mind stumbled when I landed on a memory of Melanie reading to me from a large leather-bound volume of family trees. Her dark curls fell over her face as she read out loud. She was always so serious and dutiful about the tasks handed down from our father. When had that changed? We’d changed places somewhere along the way. She was free and I was the one stuck, living at our father’s beck and call.

We entered the city and Matthias drove to an abandoned garage where a portal existed for cars to go back and forth between the human world and the haven. The yellow and black caution barricade was busted, likely done by the same people responsible for the graffiti tags and broken windows on the old toll-taking booth. No one was around, and if someone happened to walk by, they would probably assume we were lost tourists, pulling over to fight with the GPS system on a rogue rental car.

Matthias rolled down the window, punched in a code, and the rickety arm of the barricade shuttered and lifted. He rolled forward and the garage swallowed the SUV.

“I swear, that never gets less creepy,” I told him when we emerged on a brightly lit street on the other side.

A large, ironwork sign hung above us: Welcome to the New York Haven. Established 1892.

“So, where do you go for a good drink around here?” I asked.

“I know a spot.”

“You’re really not going to tell me?” I asked.

He flashed a grin. “Where would be the fun in that?”

“I see. You’re one of those people.”

Matthias laughed. “Just trust me.”

I sighed and relaxed back, though I’d noticed my shoulders were still tensed.

No one had called me. There’d been no update on Jupiter or any news about the grisly scene in my bedroom the night before. Before leaving the condo, I’d dialed the mansion, but was told Lord Vaughn was unavailable. I’ll just bet. I knew he was keeping me in the dark on purpose. As long as I was out of his way and somewhere he deemed safe, he didn’t see a need to involve me.

We drove for another fifteen minutes, eventually entering into one of the garages that led to the underground vampire transit tunnels. As night had fallen, the tunnels were no longer necessary for travel and were mostly empty. Occasionally we passed another vehicle. Matthias took a right turn at a fork in the road and pulled to a smooth stop before a large gate. He rolled down his window and punched a code into a black box. No obvious signage hung above the iron bars. Where were we?

A green light flashed, accompanied by a robotic voice. “Welcome, Mr. Hartford and guest.”

Matthias remained silent. The gate swung open.

“What is this?” I asked when he’d rolled up the window again.

“Shade,” he replied. “It’s a vampire club.”

I must have looked surprised, because he cracked a smile. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been to a vampire club before.”

I furrowed my brows. “Of course I have. I just didn’t expect you to be a card-carrying member of one, that’s all.”

“Guess you don’t have me all figured out, huh?”

“Apparently not.”

Still-grinning, he pulled forward and we entered another underground parking lot. He took a right and cruised down a lane where all of the spaces were numbered. Seconds later, he swung into 15.

“Frequent flier, huh?” I asked, removing my seat belt.

Matthias shrugged. “A few times a week.”

“Drinks that good?”

He chuckled and turned off the engine. “It’s the one place my mother refuses to come looking when she wants something.”

I bit out a laugh. “Oh.”

We exited and Matthias waited for me at the rear bumper of the car. I glanced down at myself, taking inventory of my jeans and long-sleeve sweater. “I’m not exactly wearing club attire.”

“You’ll be fine,” Matthias replied, reaching toward me. He placed a hand at the small of my back and guided me forward. Normally, I’d twist a guy’s arm off just for trying that particular move, but decided to give Matthias a pass.

For the time being, at least.