“You’ll find out soon enough.” Lilith smiled, poison-sweet. “When the time is right.”
The cold knot in Ava’s stomach tightened. Peterson Holdings. The loan her parents barely remembered signing. The year her grandmother died.
They’ve been watching our family for a long time.
“I was the first woman, you know?” Lilith continued, as if she hadn’t just detonated a bomb. “I refused to kneel, and I’ve spent every moment since fighting for scraps while lesser creatures were handed empires.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel sorry for you?”
“I don’t want your pity.” Lilith turned. “I want you to understand what you’re facing. I’ve been clawing my way up since the beginning of time. I will not be outmaneuvered by a mortal who’s been in this world for five minutes.”
“What do you even want from him?”
“Alliance. Position. A partner of equal standing who could give me legitimacy.” Her smile was thin. “Not love; I’m not fool enough to want that. But Victor is old, respected, connected to every Duke in Hell. With him, I’d be more than Lilith the Difficult. I’d be Lilith the Power.”
“Then why warn me at all?”
“Because when I destroy you, I want you to know it was never personal.” She smiled. “Just business.”
She walked toward the door. Stopped with her hand on the frame.
“Victor loved someone once. Before you.” Her nails dug into the wood. “She died. And afterward, he buried every part of himself that had cared for her. Sealed it away so deep I don’t think even he remembers where.”
She glanced back. For a moment, her face held no malice. She just looked tired.
“We don’t get to keep the things we love, Ms. Feng. We ruin them. It’s what we are.”
She left.
Ava sat in the empty room until the sun finished dying and the dark settled in around her.
She’d come looking for a villain.
When she finally left Conference Room Nine, the sixty-sixth floor was empty. The partners had gone home, or wherever demons went when they weren’t terrorizing associates. Only the cleaning crew remained, vacuuming in distant hallways.
She found Victor in his office, standing at the window with his back to the door. The city lights painted him in blue and gold.
“Lilith texted me,” she said.
He didn’t turn. “I know. I felt it when she used power on you.”
“The chair thing?”
“Among other things.” His reflection in the glass was unreadable. “Are you hurt?”
“Just my pride.” She stepped into the office. “She told me about the compulsion. That I should be… craving your touch, if the claim were real.”
Now he turned. His eyes found hers, searching.
“What else did she tell you?”
“That the soothsayers predicted me. That you loved someone once.” She stopped a few feet away. “That she died.”
His jaw tightened.
“Lilith talks too much.”
“Is it true?”
