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I had thrown books across my bed because of women like me. Women who heard a noise and went toward it. Women who found a threatening note and kept it. Turns out everything changes when it’s you the monster wants.

Chapter 15

Lux

The southern territories were becoming an inconvenient pain in my ass, which was entirely my own doing. I was, after all, ambitious by nature.

There had been three strikes in forty-eight hours. A warehouse near the southern border. Two trade shipments chased off a road they had no business being on in the first place. A freight storage site outside the city limits hit with enough firepower to make a point, but not enough to justify a counterattack . . . yet. Fucking cowards.

If someone wanted my attention, they should’ve had the decency to be more dramatic. Instead, they decided to rain on me with little more than piss.

Vale stood on the other side of my desk with his tablet in one hand and resignation in the other. Currently, his responsibility was keeping me from answering their pathetic attacks with an “overreaction.” I had a lot of pent-up stress, and going in guns blazing sounded fun right now.

Maps glowed across the glass surface between us, red marks scattered across the southern edge of New Abaddon like a rash.

“The third incident confirms retaliation from the South,” he said.

I tapped the map once. Shadows gathered under my fingertip, bleeding over the southern roads. “If they wanted a war, they would have killed someone important. If they wanted negotiations, they would have sent a message. This is a show of force, a warning.”

“This still requires an answer.”

“Yes.”

Whoever sat behind this wanted me looking south. Wanted me irritated. Wanted me thinking about supply pressure and border response, not the girl who had gone home after a flower shop shift with an unreleased stalker romance in her tote and my camera in her possession.

Liv.

My mouth curved at the thought of her before I could stop it.

Vale went still. “Sir?”

I glanced up at him. “What?”

He looked down at his tablet, then back at me. “Where should we place them?”

My attention sharpened. “Place what?”

He swallowed. “The bombs, sir. You smiled . . . I just assumed.”

For one long second, the room stayed silent. Then I laughed. Not much, but Vale blinked like I had set the office on fire.

“That’s insulting,” I said.

“With respect, your smiles are rarely connected to peaceful solutions.”

“I smile for plenty of reasons.”

“No, you smirk when one person is about to die. You smile when multiple people are about to die. You laugh when the paperwork is about to become my problem.”

I almost smiled again, which didn’t help my case.

Vale’s gaze narrowed.

“Is this about the southern territories,” he asked, “or is this about her?”

I looked back at the map.

“You were right when you said the South has earned a response.”