For the first time something changes in her eyes.
Not guilt.
Not fear.
Annoyance.
Like I moved a piece on the board she didn’t expect me to reach.
She studies me the way you study an enemy you didn’t plan for. “If I wanted to destroy you,” she says calmly, “you wouldn’t be standing here.”
I step closer. “My bird was taken,” I say, voice tight. “My apartment trashed. The gifts gone.”
“The gifts?” Carmen repeats lightly, making it sound like I’m whining about a missing handbag. “How tragic.”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“And you think I’d risk the club’s reputation over petty jealousy?” she asks, voice sweet while her eyes sharpen.
“Yes.”
It slips out blunt and unpretty.
Her smile vanishes.
The air shifts.
Carmen’s face goes blank in a way that’s almost scarier than anger. “You think I give a damn about you?” she asks.
“You pretend you don’t care too much,” I shoot back.
She doesn’t warn me.
She swings.
Her fist connects with my cheek fast and clean, crack echoing through the clubhouse like a gunshot. Pain explodes along my jaw, bright and immediate. I taste copper as my teeth cut the inside of my lip.
I stagger back a step, head snapping to the side.
For half a second the room blurs and all I hear is bass thumping in the walls and my blood rushing in my ears.
Then something hot floods my veins.
I lunge.
No thinking. No planning.
My hands tangle in her perfect hair and I yank hard enough to make her gasp. We crash into a table, bottles breaking, chairs scraping. Someone shouts, but it’s distant, muffled by the roar building in my chest.
Carmen’s nails dig into my forearm, sharp and angry. She tries to pull back, but I shove her, driving her into the wall. Her silk blouse wrinkles. Her lipstick smears. The sight of her perfection cracking makes something savage in me smile.
“You don’t get to touch my life,” I spit, voice shaking with rage.
“And you are forbidden to touch my fiancé,” she hisses back, eyes blazing now, the mask gone.
We go down in a mess of silk and fury, her knee hitting my hip, my shoulder slamming the floor. Concrete is cold and gritty under my palm, smelling faintly like spilled beer. Carmen’s breath comes fast and she tries to rake her nails down my face.
I catch her wrist and twist, not enough to break it, just enough to remind her I’m not delicate. Not easy. Not hers to slap into place.
