I slam my palm into the elevator wall hard enough to rattle the panel. My skin’s already shredded, blood dripping between my knuckles.
“Jesus,” he mutters, still grinning. “That explains it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you cave to Sterling so fast. Thought he was gonna stroke out when you didn’t bite back.”
“Yeah, well.” I breathe out slowly. Control. I need control. “Didn’t feel like bleeding all over his fucking floor.”
“Sure. Or maybe you’re distracted.”
“Keep talking, I’ll make you swallow your teeth.”
“Just saying. Stray must’ve hit a nerve.”
I don’t answer. Because he’s not wrong.
She got under my skin. Not because she outsmarted me. Not because she stabbed me and stole my ride. But because I can’t stop seeing her.
Every blink—her face.
That stubborn jaw. Those eyes that didn’t beg. That fucking mouth, curled into a challenge even as she choked on her blood.
She should’ve died. I should’ve finished it. But I didn’t. And now I’m going to find her. Not for the truck. Not even for the information she might be sitting on. But because I need the release. The destruction. The scream.
“Where we going?” Raze asks.
I step out of the elevator and turn toward the armory.
“I’mgoing hunting.”
Iknow there’s a limit on how many painkillers a person can safely down, but I’m pretty sure I’m way past the recommended dosage.
The room still spins, my head feels stuffed with cotton, and my side throbs with a dull ache. I’ve stitched myself up more times than I can remember—always a rush job, just enough to keep me from bleeding out—but this time? This time I took it slow, made sure it was right, trying to focus on anything other than the fact that I was shot. Twice. And the fact that I’ve seen a Sovereign up close—too close.
The reek of alcohol, stale cigarettes, and whatever sickly-sweet vape flavor the kid next to me is blowing out isn’t doing my queasy stomach any favors.
“Did you hear the news?” Ivan slides up to the counter, dropping off a fresh set of shot glasses.
“What news?” I barely look up.
“Mira’s kid was found,” he says, lowering his voice as his eyes dart around the club, making sure no one’s listening in.
“Seriously?” I widen my eyes and attempt to sound surprised. I should win a damn Oscar for my acting skills.
“Yeah. Kid was found a few nights ago, at her divorce attorney’s office. Poor little guy was a mess—covered in blood and bruises. Half-starved. Kept babbling about an angel and fire.” He continues muttering under his breath in Russian.
My eyes scan the dimly lit club, the bass pounding through the floor, rattling in my bones. Mira’s in the far corner, giving some slob a lap dance topless. She’s a disaster, spiraling ever since her dirtbag ex-husband beat the hell out of her and snatched their kid when she wouldn’t push his drugs. One of Thames’s men, a dirty cop. And Mira’s a dancer working at a Russian strip club—not exactly a winning look in court.
It took me nearly a month to track down where they were keeping her son, Liam. A month of shadowing her scumbag ex-husband and his dirty cop buddies. I watched, waited, and bided my time until the perfect moment to strike—didn’t know the Sovereign was after him too. And now I’ve got two gunshot wounds as a souvenir of that shitshow.
The Thames operation is dead, at least that’s what the news says. But I’m not stupid. These operations have a nasty habit of crawling back out of the darkness, stronger and meaner. It’s a never-ending war. But for now, I can breathe. I can heal.
I can take a damn break from trying to make a dent in the endless corruption.
People like Mira don’t have anyone watching their backs. I glance across the room at her, and for the first time in weeks, she’s smiling—a real, genuine smile. People don’t give a damn about a sex worker’s kidnapped kid. No one cares about the poor. It’s the wealthy, the connected—the ones who matter in society’s eye—who get the world’s protection.
I learned young that the world doesn’t give a shit about you. Orphaned as a little kid, like some cliché out of a tragicbackstory. No one looks out for you, no one’s in your corner. You either fight back, or you become a victim. And my father refused to ever let me become a victim.
He wanted me to be able to protect myself because he knew the monsters that lurked in the dark—he was one of them. One of the worst, actually.
He started my training when I was barely five years old. I learned how to fight. How to kill. How to survive.
