No one in the room believed him.
He lifted a hand and counted on his fingers. “One: I don’t care about her. Two: not my decision. Three: I don’t have to do anything tonight.”
“Listen to me, you selfish prick,” Kat hissed. “You can’t walk away from this choice. Not after everything we’ve spent years building. Fuck, all of us have been building this network since before your Conscription.”
Ryker exhaled more smoke. “Empires don’t hunt people.” He took a drag. “They correct imbalances.”
“Another one of your excuses,” Kat shot back, “and a terrible one, too.”
Their argument descended into something feral. Old wounds. Old power struggles. They spoke with the ease of people who had been hurting each other for years.
Audrey watched them with nausea curling low in her stomach. Were they lovers? Enemies? Both? Jealousy flickered through her aura—powerful, unwanted. She drowned it.
Their argument deepened. Audrey caught only fragments—the Simas bloodline, gold triads, abilities she supposedly didn’t have.
“I examined her myself,” Kat whispered to Ryker. “Herpnévmais powerful.”
Ryker let out a bitter snicker. “I’ve been examining the Simas family for years. She’s nothing but a telepath. A strong telepath, but that’s it.”
Tension wound tighter inside her.
Then Ryker—moving so fast it seemed impossible—suddenly had Kat pinned against the wall with his forearm on her throat. Despite his impaired state, his authority was unmistakable.
He wasn’t losing control; he was proving it.
Kat didn’t struggle but simply waited.
“I could kill you,” he whispered. “I could kill you in seconds and not blink. I don’t give a shit who you think you are to me. I run this. And I say no.”
Even Nikos couldn’t keep eye contact when Ryker spoke like that.
But Kat’s icy stare didn’t break, like she’d dealt with far worse and had survived.
Audrey’s breath faltered. This was not the man she’d seen tormenting people from afar. This was something that cracked under pressure and was still lethal.
Eventually, he released her—slowly, deliberately. He lit another trembling cigarette, tattoos writhing faintly along his arm like living ink. Kat straightened her jacket as if nothing had happened.
Ryker stared at Kat for a long moment, as if determining how much he could get away with.
“You want me to test her?” he snarled. “Fine. Let’s see what Mihail thinks he brought me.” His eyes dragged over Audrey with contempt.
But she also felt curiosity from him, and something else she couldn’t name.
No one relaxed.
Kat’s voice lowered. “Just do it.” Her eyes flashed toward the walls, the windows, the people in the room. “Before you decide to burn the entire room down again.”
The room was still.
Ryker steadied himself against the doorway. His hand fumbled, missing the frame once before gripping it. Audrey thought he might collapse. But then he straightened, staying upright anyway, through will, or pure spite.
His abdomen rippled, muscles flexing beneath the thin material of his shirt, and Audrey wished—for everyone’s sanity—that he would put on a damn pair of pants. His jaw worked restlessly—clench, unclench, clench. His eyes were unfocused, pupils engulfed in pits of black. He lit another cigarette with unsteady hands, snapping his fingers as fire ignited out of nothing.
He shouldn’t have been interesting.
And yet he was.
She had the sinking sense he was going to cave in to Kat’s demands. That realization sent gratitude through her, toward Kat of all people.
