Page 37 of Boardroom Mask

“Then we’re at an impasse.”

“No, we’re not,” he says. “An impasse implies equal footing. You’re sitting in your kitchen in pajamas. I climbed through your window. These are not equal positions.”

I screw up my face in a grimace. “And yet you’re the one askingmefor information. So who really has the leverage here?”

He doesn’t answer that. I take it as a win.

“Here’s what I think,” I continue, pressing my advantage. “I think whoever sent you is getting impatient. I think you were supposed to kill me and you chickened out, and now, you’re scrambling. You’re here because you need to figure out how much I know so you can report back to your boss like a good little?—”

“Careful.”

“—errand boy.” I finish the sentence anyway. “That’s what you are, right? Somebody’s stupid, thuggish little errand boy. You break in, you rough people up, you write scary messages on walls. But you don’t actually make any decisions. You just do what you’re told. Empty-headed toy soldier.”

He goes very still. His hands, which had been loosely folded on the table, curl into fists. I watch the knuckles go white.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he growls.

“Don’t I? Because from where I’m sitting, it’s pretty straightforward. Somebody points, you go fetch.Good boyand a nice chew toy and a pat on the head when you get it done, maybe. That’s the whole job description.”

“Shut up.”

“Oh, did I hit a nerve? The big, scary masked man doesn’t like being called what he is? What if I said?—”

“I saidshut up.”

“Make me.” I cross my arms. “No, seriously. Make me. Because so far, all you’ve done is shove me around and beat up a guy half your size. You haven’t actually done the one thing you were sent here to do, which means either you can’t or you won’t, and either way, that makes you a pretty lousy soldier, doesn’t it?”

He shoves the table. It lurches toward me, hitting my hip, and I grab the edge to stop it.

“You don’t know a single fucking thing about me,” he snarls.

“Au contraire,I think I know plenty. I know you answer to someone. I know that someone is connected to the Lazarevs. I know that a body came through the Queens Medical Examiners’ morgue that’s raising some really nasty red flags re: all things Lazarev. And I know that right now, right this second, you’re sitting in my kitchen losing your temper because a woman in flannel pajamas called you an errand boy and it fuckingstung.”

His breathing is heavy above the mask. His fists haven’t unclenched.

“How am I doing so far?” I taunt. “Getting warm?”

“You have no idea how warm you’re getting,” he says. “And you have no idea how dangerous that is.”

“See, that’s the thing. You keep telling me how dangerous everything is. But I’m still here, aren’t I?”

The Masked Man jumps to his feet, rounds the table, and snatches me up by the front of my shirt. “Would you like me to change that?” he rumbles in my face, breath hot with cinnamon.

My feet leave the ground. He carries me backward until my spine slams into the wall next to the fridge. His other fist comes up to punch against the wall beside my head.

“Mouthy little girls like you,” he grits out, “should not be so bold around broken, insane men like me. Do you understand that? Do you hear what I’m telling you?”

“I hear you just fine.”

“Then fucking act like it.” His grip tightens on my shirt. “Because I am not stable. I am not safe. I am not your neighbor with a fucking takeout bag and a schoolboy crush. I am the worst thing that has ever walked through your door, little fox, and the more you wriggle and yelp, the worse it will be for you when the time comes for me totrulyput my hands on you.”

He’s so close that the mask is all I can see. Those pale gray eyes boring into mine from six inches away.

He’s enormous. When he’s sitting down, I can pretend this is some kind of fair fight. But here, with my back pinned to the wall and my feet off the ground and his body taking up every inch of available space in front of me, the reality is unavoidable: He could snap me in half. He could do anything he wanted and there is not a single thing I could do to stop him.

My hands are clinging to his forearm on some ludicrous pretense of ripping his grip off of me, even though we both know that’s impossible. All it’s doing is reminding me of the corded muscle under his jacket sleeve and the heat of his skin through the fabric.

Once again, I’m brimming over with The Fear. With it is its new companion:The Want.A sick, unwelcome, undeniable hunger.